Wisconsin Travelers' Delights

Last weekend we drove through Wisconsin to get to Minneapolis. We were out of honey and made plans to stop near Janesville to pick up a new supply at Orlovsky Apiaries. When we called ahead to place our order, we were told that the bees had not had a good year, so we were going to be limited to 3 gallons. Rats.

I did some research on the Wisconsin Honey Producers Assn. site to see who was close to the Interstate AND had an e-mail address. The first one to get back to me was a guy in Tomah, home of the Warrens Cranberry Fest each September, who has hives in the cranberry bogs around there, so - cranberry honey! It's very thick and a little darker than other honeys. He told us it's as sweet as any other honey, but has a slight "tang" (I can't tell, so far). A third of our new supply is gone now, as we gave away some to relatives. My mother wants some, too, but she'll have to be content with a 2 oz sample that will pass airline security.

In Tomah, we got an additional 20 lbs. of the cranberry honey, 2 cheap bags of fresh cranberries, and a big pumpkin for Halloween carving. Lastly, we stopped at our all-time favorite Wisconsin eatery, Norske Nook, where the pies are huge and the crusts taste like homemade. We have been stopping there for years, and this time we got a banana cream (no refrigeration needed in October!) and a peach praline to go with a stuffed shells dinner with family in Coon Rapids that night. Excellent!

We always buy the pies in the metal pie pans which require a $7 deposit. With an accumulation of a stamp on their business card for each pie you buy, you get a freebie with 7 stamps. Two pie pans to return, plus the 7 stamps, means we got 2 more pies for practically nothing - yay!