It’s always a surprise, though it shouldn’t be. The smoothness, the mountain stream clarity , the way it slips past my lips like a lover’s tongue on its way down my throat to ignite a furnace of everything-will-be-alright.

I love sake. That’s why my stores carry 28 different kinds of this Japanese national drink which has been brewed since at least the 3rd century by fermenting rice until it’s as smooth as the purest stream in a mountain valley. (We also sell 11 kinds of Shochu – Japanese vodka, some made with rice, some with buckwheat, some with sweet potato.)

When I think of sake, I can almost taste bite-size pieces of fresh raw fish and crisp vegetables with just the right amount of wasabi-zing.  And it doesn’t hurt that the alcohol content (15-18%) is higher than beer or grape-wine. I sip sake like I’m actually tasting the moments. Clear, sweet, cool, a long swallow to a crisp awakening. For me, drinking good sake approaches perfection.

The story of sake is a perfect metaphor for my business in these times. Grounded in history, improved with technology but returning often to traditional processes to ensure perfection, this is a drink with meaning, symbolic of culture and celebration and solid identity.

The earliest mention of alcohol as a drink in Japan comes from the Book of Wei, a Chinese 3rd century record that illustrates Japanese celebration through drinking and dancing. In the first documents from Japan, the Kojiki, compiled 500 years later in 712, sake is mentioned by name as a significant element in the Japanese way of life.

The first incarnation of this famed beverage was unlike the smooth swallow of today. Called kuchikami no sake, or mouth-chewed sake, it was created by people crunching nuts or grains, spitting them into a pot and allowing fermentation to occur through saliva enzymes. (A great example of time creating an improved product.)

For 500 years beginning in the 10th century, houses of worship were the main centers for sake brewing. A detail that I love is that today, most of the 2,300 sake breweries in Japan are returning to old-fashioned methods of production.

This is a pure drink, with low acidity and no sulfites to mess with your equilibrium, made by the passion of generations and the crystalline water of mountain streams and snow melt. I am heartened to ingest a product protected by the pollutant-free air of the Niigata Mountains, where more than 30 feet of annual snowfall wards off the invasion of impurities.

And in fact, while I almost love all sake the same, as if the different incarnations were individual children of mine, it is the blue bottle from Niigata – Kikusui – that I love most. It’s almost impossible to describe its clarity and hint of sweetness, how it stands apart from the rest just enough to win my heart. The taste is so smooth it instantly becomes part of me and then there is no separation between a sip and a sentiment.

Perhaps this version of sake is so good because it is made according to the natural order of the seasons. Think about what it would be like if we lived dedicated to the local harvest, imbued by our natural environs. If the very climate of our home locale dictated industry and quality. If the mere process of creation demanded only a few wholesome ingredients. If natural air purifiers like a constant winter blanket almost guaranteed that nothing would impinge on the purity of process.

What strikes me most, though, is that despite centuries of change and adjustment and alleged improvement, for the sake of perceived quality or to save a few dimes, the original processes have reappeared time and again as the best true way to create a fine drink. Saving a dollar can sometimes mean sacrifice of meaning.

It’s ok to switch from cedar tanks to ceramic-lined or stainless steel holdings. It’s the way the ingredients are generated, especially the koji, that makes such a difference to sake’s ultimate flavor. Traditionally, koji was made by hand in wood-paneled rooms kept warm and humid, and for the best bottles today, I’m thrilled to know that it’s still hand-pressed.

Koji is this drink’s magic ingredient, steamed rice with koji-kin, or mold spores, added in. Change the way you polish the rice or make the koji and you affect everything.

The art of sake-making is so subtle. Each bottle has its own characteristics, its own saving graces, its own details that make it my preference at that very moment of sipping. I like the clearest. I like the cloudy unfiltered Kuromatsu Hakashika Nigori. I like it all. It is indeed an art to make this fine drink and an art to taste it on a mellow night, in good company, with nowhere more important to be.

Because the best sake comes from pure water, perfect rice and expert koji. Nothing more, nothing less, no added elements to muddy the outcome. I remember that as I stroll the aisles of my stores. Nothing more, nothing less, no added elements to muddy the outcome. Simply the perfection of time and thought, of attention to detail and processes put in place carefully, with concern and care and the notion that every step matters along with the purity of every ingredient.

Every week, eager food entrepreneurs traipse through my office with samples of the best-food-product-ever. My departmental buyers hold court at their desks and in our two conference rooms and office kitchen, and my office staff members eat their way through the day, sampling and tasting the next-best-thing to cross the threshold of Hiller’s Markets.

It was an innocuous day in February when Laura Garelik quietly entered my office with an earnest package of gluten-free baked goods. I am never optimistic about these demos; everyone and their brother wants to launch a food company with a heretofore unknown edible that’s going to solve all the problems of the world. We sell thousands upon thousands of food items in our seven stores – who needs another?

Of course that’s a rhetorical question. We all know that success lies in the belief that new is good and around the corner and within our reach. In these difficult economic days, especially, I am of the belief that innovation trumps tried-and-true –I’ve always lived that as a personal truth. Being the best, producing the best, giving others what they didn’t know they needed – that, my friends, is the secret.

Laura Garelik. She filled my rectangular conference table with gluten-free baked goods – slices of banana and carrot cake, thick fudgy brownies, chocolate chip and sugar cookies, flaky-moist biscuits. In her quiet voice, Laura told us how she began baking and remaking recipes in an effort to find something to satisfy the palate of her courageous husband Phil, who has battled gluten-intolerance for at least 17 years, when he was diagnosed with Celiac Disease 17 years ago this fall.

When they married 38 years ago, Phil was already enduring Crohn’s Disease, with repeat surgeries and an inability to gain weight. Doctors urged Phil to consume pasta, ice cream, bread and muffins but the more he took their advice, the sicker he became.

One day, after the urging of a friend and a holistic doctor, Phil eliminated wheat from his diet altogether and the metaphorical sun shone on his face.

Seventeen years ago, a diagnosis of gluten intolerance signaled a culinary death knell. Not even my stores stocked enough items to support a Celiac’s yearnings. Today, since we’re the Midwest leader in gluten-free grocery items, you can find many delectable frozen and packaged products to suit a Celiac. But there’s nothing better than homemade.

Tired of running up and down the grocery aisles, reading package labels and searching for gluten-free goodies that would taste better than cardboard, Laura took to her kitchen to create desserts Phil would love and which wouldn’t make him sick. She started with a family favorite - her grandmother’s banana cake – and modified the recipe until she had created a gluten-free delight without the dreadful taste of nothing.

“I wanted it to be healthy – not just throw in gluten-free ingredients,” says Laura. “I wanted something of substance – organic ingredients, wholesome, not processed or bleached. Instead of just gluten-free, I wanted it to be nutritious and low-fat, too. I always loved baking but never found the time for it until it was a necessity.”

As a handful of us sat around the conference room, sampling Laura’s Delicate Desserts, as she has named them for consumers, I was impressed with the taste, the consistency, the moistness – I couldn’t discern anything different, really, from standard baked treats. And I listened to Laura’s narrative: Food is so important in our society, she said. Everything is based upon eating. We connect over food, we are separated by food, food sustains us and repels us. I never found the time for cooking until it was a necessity.

Food is our lifeblood, people. We cannot go forward another day without it. Doesn’t that make it imperative that each of us find the right combination of ingredients to nourish our bodies and simultaneously satisfy our souls?

I’ve been selling gluten-free grocery items for years, and proudly so. I troll the aisles during our frequent gluten-free fairs and listen to stories from customers who drove long distances to stock up on many items. In this time, when there are so many delicious products available, I still hear tales of denial of life’s basic pleasures and flavors – at least until they found salvation of a sort in my stores.

After I tasted Laura’s cakes, I began to ponder what, exactly, the meaning could be in a food intolerance like the one Phil faces – when the very foods you eat attack your immune system. That musing led me to a favorite famed movie, D.W. Griffith’s silent film, Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Through the Ages.

Lavish sets, exquisite period costumes, more than 3,000 extras went into this film, which chronicled four historical downfalls driven by human intolerances. This well-regarded film was ahead of its time in magnitude, scope and cost and of course, when it was current, it was a total flop. But it brought to light a universal truth: that intolerance at its most basic level tears apart every working thing until we are left desolate and despair, in ruins and amid chaos.

For a body to repel the very building blocks that lead to its endurance – foods from the basic elements of nature, the substance in wheat and rye that makes bread crumbly and which satisfies carb cravings late into the night – it’s almost a cruel joke. To turn the body against itself, as happens with Celiac Disease, to crumble the immune system and render the eater as sick as the sewer, to pass from generation to generation, like the storyline in that old film, well, it has to mean more than a simple illness.

It takes an average of 12 years to figure out that one suffers from Celiac Disease. Nearly 3 million Americans have it but many don’t know. They eat and agonize in pain.

To succeed in beating the beast, you can’t do it alone. “My husband is the epitome of health now,” says Laura. “I wanted to create a delicious product for other people so they wouldn’t feel denied like he did.”

She did more than that. She took the love of a devoted wife and poured it into the bowl with the gluten-free goodness of organic ingredients and created magic. I always loved to cook but didn’t have the time for it until it was a necessity. Driven by the love of another, Laura was transformed from begrudging home cook to gluten-free baker extraordinaire, pleasing not only her husband but an unknown number of consumers. It takes that passion, that love, that sincere form of devotion, to create something worthwhile.

I’ve decided gluten is a metaphor for all forms of intolerance, lurking as it does in salad dressings, yogurt drinks, cold cuts and egg substitutes. It requires exploration and embarking upon a whole new regime, getting to know amaranth, quinoa and tapioca, speaking a new language, befriending others who can ride the waves with you.

If we are to gather over food, build our communities on the basis of collecting around the table and sharing our stories as we eat, then we must make our meals accessible for every single soul. I’ve watched Laura as she demos her cakes and cookies – she listens intently to stories and shares hers. She builds community over food and eliminates the very nature of denial that defines so many. She rends apart the cliquishness that lies in cracks and crevices, eliminates barriers between people.

She’s a great example of the Hiller Way. And of course, you can find Laura’s Delicate Desserts at Hiller’s, $4.99-$5.99 per package.

It was in the middle of the night in the dead of winter when I awoke with a vision of myself in a small engineless boat in rough seas. Suddenly I was handed an oar by a faceless person. I put every ounce of my strength and energy into each swipe through water and wave. I paddled and paddled against the current, the skies stormy and dark, heavy clouds screaming their thunder in the black night.

And somehow, because it was a dream, or maybe a nightmare, or maybe a vision of these times we’re living in, people kept appearing in my boat and each had a small paddle. And though the boat was small, there was always room for more souls onboard. Together, we rowed our way through the storms, through the rising seas, until somehow we came out on dry land and the dark clouds disappeared.

When I awoke from that dream, I knew it was significant. It was a metaphor for these turbulent economic times and I interpreted the row boat as a lifeboat of sorts that I was somehow intended to create and steer toward a safe harbor. The next day, I created the Hiller’s Hometown First program, to promote local businesses and give my shoppers extra value when they do what they need to do: buy groceries to feed their families.

As with all good and true things, we started small. I launched this program in February with 10 restaurants on board. Today, there are nearly 100 various businesses and the list continues to grow.

I realized the merit of coming together in a community of sorts, of dedicated Michigan residents who live here, work here and all want to see our hometown thrive. The only way to build anything lasting and good is to do it one brick at a time so that the foundation won’t collapse.

The Hiller’s Michigan Initiative was a slow-growing awareness campaign to highlight all of the good things about our home state. Our circular front page became a newspaper proclaiming the many Michigan companies whose products we sell. I printed company name, number of employees and location so that every single one of us would focus not only on the  price or flavor of a food, but rather how many jobs each company ensures for Michigan residents.

We indicated Michigan products throughout all of our seven stores with little shelf tags featuring a smiling mitten-state icon. And we hosted Michigan food fairs, where we filled stores with as many vendors as we could pack in, all presenting tastes of their locally-created, produced and disseminated products.

Every day, another idea blossomed like the first daffodils in spring. Because the clarion call of working together in the interest of building a stable community and rebuilding, if you will, was louder than any other noise, the background din of fear was reduced to a whisper.

I knew we could focus on how many jobs are being lost, how many houses foreclosed, how many empty shopping malls we drive past.

Or we could focus on the innate knowledge that things go in cycles, that this too shall pass, that there are many steps WE can take to help it go away sooner, rather than later.

I choose to remain optimistic. I’m a bloody realist though. I’ve never lived through a time like this. I never believed our core industry could crumble.

But the key to success is recognizing the times in which we live, embracing them even if they are studded with thorns, and evolving to meet the ever-changing needs of life-as-we-know-it.

Recently, one of my favorite local restaurateurs, Jim Lark, mentioned Hiller’s in his monthly newsletter. It’s unusual, first, that an elegant and refined restaurant with such an established local history would produce a monthly newsletter directed at the community. That’s The Lark, and that’s the signature of a creative and inspiring entrepreneur.

This West Bloomfield fine-fare mainstay devoted a page and a half to the Buy Local craze sweeping through our state. He began by commending Hiller’s for our Michigan Initiative, “during all the years, through every glitch in the economy.”

He mentioned our circulars and our in-store promotions and then went on to name so many fine products – Garden Fresh Salsa, Better Made Potato Chips, Kowalski sausages, Guernsey Dairy and others.

Jim and Mary Lark had a fortuitous vision in 1981 when they opened The Lark, after successful careers – he in law and building, she in art. They had a vision and a dream and they turned those into an experience for the rest of us to savor and which operates now solely by the hard work of their daughter Adrian.

The Larks and their restaurant exemplify what Michigan has always offered – taste, elegance, unusual ambience and vision beyond existing and familiar boundaries.  We are not a small-potatoes place but rather a community with a vision and a desire to surmount any challenge.

Without talent and drive, without the willingness to not only take risks, but to lead the way toward exhilarating discovery, we would not be the city that drove the world for so many years. I know, any mention of the automotives today makes each of us cringe with exasperation and sadness.

But even as I drive my American car, I recognize that the company that built it would have benefited from thinking beyond life-as-it-was-known years back. We all would.

Hindsight is perfect, of course, and I have made my share of mistakes. What I’ve learned through these tumultuous years is that it’s not too late, it’s never too late for a new start.

Walk with me toward our collective salvation. Become a part of the Hiller’s Hometown First and focus on rebuilding this place we call home. Bring your businesses and your neighbors on board so that our awareness can build and our economy can once again thrive.

Some communities are borne of faith and others are created around geography. Communities arise around lifestyles and they sprout around causes. A community is a group of people finding familiarity, friendship and a sense of being true to your heart and your soul.

When communities are centered upon ethnic similarity or religious observance, they are places we go home to because it’s where we are automatically accepted. To gain acceptance in some communities, we pay membership fees or follow rules or wear a sort of uniform or flare as proof that we belong, that we speak the same language. And sometimes, a community is ours simply because we say it is, with nothing to show for it and no place to gather.

Hiller’s is as genuine a community as any or all of these , yet we demand no sameness from our members. Individuality and uniqueness are the tickets in our door and the only requirement to remaining a member is the recognition that quality, choice and flavor are absolute rights.

Since 1941, the Hiller name has meant a lot of things. What has endured as our stores have grown, changed, expanded and moved location is the hallmark meaning behind our signs. We are a place where you walk in the door and receive a smile just for showing up. We are a place for living out your choices, for finding flavors to match your preferences, for experiencing journey and destination all in a selection of foods.

In every aisle and department, we lovingly select items for your discovery. Each department is led by an authentic expert, and we go to the source again and again to find exactly what you’re looking for, what we’re looking for, to satisfy needs we didn’t even know were lurking.

We invite you in for special events and write you newsletters of explanation. We offer programs for greater value and band together with like-minded Michigan businesses because it’s the right thing to do. We live where we work. We integrate and meld with our community. We respect the history beneath our foundations. We tell the stories that continue to unfold. And we adapt as circumstances change, we evolve because to do anything else is to ensure certain demise.

At Hiller’s, we enjoy every step of the journey with you, because we are a part of the community. We are a community.

Like my father before me and my sons to come, I believe in the ability to adapt, to make smooth butter out of curdled cream. Times are tough now. We are seemingly in free fall, and the bottom has yet to appear. Yet I know from the histories I’ve read and the ones that I’ve lived that communities that stick together are the ones that survive the worst of storms and the ones who splinter, cease to exist.

When I walk with my Scottish Deerhound Lilly on soft dirt paths, I breathe in the ever-present scent of evergreens. The other day, it occurred to me that their endurance through all seasons is significant and a perfect metaphor for my blog.

But I also recognize the springtime beckoning and the call of Cormorants winging over water. We live in a beautiful place brimming with potential. In our tough times, we are not just defined by one anchor industry; we forget how many different talents live here.

As the poet Carl Sandberg wrote, “The shimmer of lights across a bitter night, the birds singing to their mates in peace, war, peace, hope is an echo, hope ties itself yonder, the spring grass showing itself where least expected…”

Hiller’s is different because we  fervently believe we’re in it together. We aren’t here merely to take; we feel kinship every time you choose to walk through our doors. That’s real; it’s the kind of community that will bring us through these dark times with our souls intact.

(Photos courtesy of Hiller’s customer Madison Christopher www.madisonchristopher.com)

It was thrilling it was so good. The taste – a medley of flavors I already knew but which, when spun together in a soft bite, were new to me – banana, chermoya, vanilla, strawberry. There isn’t much I find that is unobtainium. I’ve been fortunate. I’ve conquered. I’ve achieved. I’ve found success in many measures. I’ve even found love.

But when my produce buyer Fabrizio Casini walked into my office with a long green scaly plant and flicked off the ripe-as-ever scales with a fork, I had no idea what I was in for.

The first kiss. The anticipation of what comes next. The explosion of flavors and the realization that there is a whole world of which I am not a part.

Soon, my stores will sell monstera deliciosa, a tropical fruit whose peculiar look insists that it must be as delicious as it is weird.

It is not often that I encounter something I’ve never known before in the kingdom of produce. Having faced foes on battlefields and in boardrooms, I am a man steeled for situations, always carrying the hope of peaceful discovery and true exploration but ready to face the worst at a moment’s notice.

This fruit comes from a mundane house plant found in the lobbies of hotels in warm-weather destinations. Its flat smooth green leaves decorate the yards of homes near the Equator. It is not a plant that will garner your attention or even call to you as you walk past.

It takes monstera three years to flower and then another year for its fruit to ripen. The plant creeps toward the rainforest canopy, on a masterful vine that can reach more than 70 feet in length if it is allowed to grow untended.

Long like a cucumber and green as the forest, the fruit is aromatic and sweet, with hints of banana, pineapple, mango. I don’t troll the jungles of Central and South America so it’s not a plant I would encounter on my own – and if I did, I would be unwise to eat it. Before it’s ripe, monstera is as poisonous as the wind from a volcano. The plant contains oxalic acid, which, if ingested, causes painful blistering, immediate irritation, swelling, itching, even loss of voice.

It takes a full year after flowering for the fruit to ripen. This fact is worthy of repetition. How can a plant be omnipresent and yet pose great danger? Toxic and also luscious?

If you pass a monstera fruit on the street, fallen from its creeping vine, you would not take notice. It is odd-shaped and phallic, green and scaly like a pine cone. When the scales fall away, it is no prettier – it is a secret how tasty its flesh will be upon eating at the absolute right moment, if you can pinpoint when that will be. Otherwise, its sweet gift of flavors remains hidden along the concrete paths of development, a secret pleasure for discovering only at the right time, with enough knowledge and wisdom to endure its inherent dangers.

Of course, you can find it at Hiller’s.

Monstera will be available at Hiller’s at the end of May.

I remember it as if it were yesterday. I was 4, sitting with my parents in the Northwood Inn.. My father ordered oysters on the half-shell and I wanted one.

My mother waved away the notion. “You’ll get sick,” she said. Of course, that made me want one more.

With my first slurp of silky, slippery orb, from lips to tongue to the almost-instant slide down my throat, I found the seventh level of nirvana. It was wonderful and memorable – and to this day, I can slip a raw oyster into my mouth and become a different man.

Famed adventure-chef Anthony Bourdain says his most meaningful memory was the day he first ate a raw oyster. It was the same for me.

Perhaps it’s the suggestive power of eating something which may bring harm. After all, oysters eaten raw contain the hint and promise of potential food-borne illness.
But it’s never happened to me.

I like the frontier-rebel nature of the raw oyster – a rich source of zinc, crucial to the production of testosterone, an uncooked orb of pleasure that only the bravest dare taste.

“He was a bold man that first ate an oyster,” said Jonathan Swift.

The act of eating an oyster is an art and an adventure, much like the seduction of a woman. Merely placing my order includes the thrill of the chase and anticipation of a smooth finish.

The plate arrives to my table - an arc of silvery jewels, hinting of brackish water and the memory of rhythmic waves driven by the pull of the moon.

Some are gathered easily from their beds while others must be culled by small rakes in shallow waters. Those that reside in deeper waters are found by long rakes or tongs or dredges. Some oysters live so deeply in the sea that divers must go beneath the currents to find them.

I don’t even know if I can describe the taste. Salty? Smooth? Acidic from the tide? Maybe it’s the taste of anticipation, the flavor of softness. The palate of conquest, triumph on my tongue.

There are many ways to prepare this perfect, lowfat, vitamin-A-rich food, but I prefer them straight from the sea. No sauce for dipping, nor any horseradish. Just the pure taste of this tiny gunmetal-gray treat.

The taste of an oyster changes with age, which is why they’re best eaten fresh. Like wine, like women, like relationships, raw oysters have layers of complexity, with textures and flavors reflecting the places they’ve been, the experiences they’ve had, the waters they’ve lived in.

My love of the oyster has never stopped, and there was only one time in my life when I ate enough. It was at a Fancy Food Show in Chicago, where a 30-foot-high wall of oysters beckoned me like a drug.

I ate until I became so full, I had to retreat to my hotel room.

I’ve shucked oysters free from their shells at raw bars in Annapolis, consuming a piece of the Chesapeake Bay with each bite. I’ve never had one I didn’t like.

Perhaps the explanation is simple: I eat oysters because in doing so, I become one with the sea, my favorite place, the place of infinite power, adventure and dread.

In some places, oysters are a Christmas treat. I prefer them at New Year’s, when the possibilities are endless and the world seemingly begins anew once more.

Oysters top the list of alleged  aphrodisiacs….. though there’s little research to back it up. Some say it’s the high level of rare amino acids in oysters that trigger increased levels of sex hormones. I think it’s the texture, the taste, the thrill and dare of eating one that makes a person heartier, ready to conquer  anything.

I began sailing in 1973. I attended sailing school, learned how to sail and purchased a 27-foot sloop on which I made frequent mistakes.

Thankfully, the boat was solid, the seas were mostly kind, and so I didn’t kill myself through inexperience.

As the years passed, I continued to log miles under my boat’s keel. With each ocean mile, my hand on the tiller grew steadier, my knowledge of wind and weather more intimate, my ability to handle my boat and trim its sails grew and gradually, sailing began to flow like the undulations of a beautiful ocean wave.

These days, I think of my journeys at sea often. I suppose I see it as an analogy to what we are experiencing in Southeast Michigan right now. In my head, the lessons are loud: in order to do well, in bad weather and in dangerous conditions, you need a solid, stable, well-built boat, a captain with a steady hand under tough conditions, and a willing and able crew ready to give one hand for the boat whilst hanging on with the other.

Under such conditions, the boat and its crew weather almost anything.

So what is my point here, on my grocery blog? Who am I, but a local grocer, a man at the helm of one company in a nation of thousands of companies? I am a father among millions of fathers. I am a man among countless men. I am neither exceptional nor unique. Lest I sound preachy with my metaphors and my musings, let me say that in the midst of a busy day and a tough economy I cannot help but think of the sea, to learn from my experiences in its strong embrace.

Riding breaking, white-capped waves, steering over and around the ones that can destroy the boat and then back on course again once danger has passed. It’s a ready metaphor. Metaphors float all around me, all day long, and if I’ve built any momentum on this blog at all it’s that I want to connect with you my readers, because we are one and the same. My metaphors can become yours or maybe you’ll share yours with me.

So the metaphor of a boat captain? Sure, I am captaining the Hiller’s boat and I am hoping that in some way I can turn Hiller’s into some kind of a local lifeboat for us all. But I know I cannot really save anybody except maybe the people who work for me, maybe my family, maybe myself. Or maybe I have no power at all and just believe in the stories of the skies and the ocean that I have learned to read quite well. And maybe I know – and impart to everyone who wants to listen – that the lessons of the past are the building blocks of the future.

I’ve seen some very stormy times at sea, days when the mackerel skies and mares’-tail clouds foretold something frightening that was on its way and unavoidable. I’ve been lucky more than once.

And yet sometimes I prefer the storm to the calm. Charcoal-painted skies, a ripping breeze, twilight-blue as far as the eye can see. In the toughest times it is the sea that calls me, that takes me away from my desk of piled papers and my hometown’s economic woes. And just when I sink into a dreamy memory of a smooth sail, I remember that even the smoothest sails can turn deadly on a moment and either you’re prepared to survive or you’re not.

When my eldest son Justin turned 21, he and I took off on a little sailboat named Cyrano that I specially built for the occasion. We spent a month riding the seas between Florida, the Bahamas and the Keys.

On a day dark as night, we encountered some very rough weather–but by the time it happened, we had been together for a long time, we trusted the boat, we trusted each other and everything worked out fine. The storm passed while we rode with the waves side by side rather than fight them or each other.

Hiller’s is not just a grocery store; we are a metaphorical lifeboat riding out the storm of this time until we can once again see gentler seas for miles around.

Anything can happen when you’re caught in stormy seas. But if you begin with a sturdy boat, a crew of people determined to survive and maybe a few dozen bottles of rum, you’re damn well going to get through just about anything.

It’s the boat AND the knowledge, sturdy and well-built, that determine the outcome. A well-found sailboat, skippered by an old sea fox whose mind brims with knowledge from hundreds of days at sea, will weather any storm.

The ocean hasn’t changed.   In the worst conditions, we let the boat carry us through the crests and the falls. We do it because we are not an enemy of the sea; we are part of it.

I was a skinny 13-year-old the first time I dragged a match across the scratchy edge of a matchbook and touched it to the end of a Marlboro cigarette. The slim length of the smoke captured between my lips, I closed my eyes and breathed in the acrid aroma of tobacco alight, trying not to cough.

The year was 1961, long before the time when surgeon general warnings accompanied discouraging glances from mothers and other hovering figures disapproving of this habit. Everyone smoked. It was a distinguishing characteristic among long-legged, black-haired European women who oozed the kind of sexuality we pubescent American boys dogged after and it was the hallmark of the leather-jacket-wearing hot-car-driving older boys we aspired to be.

Smoking was the after-touch of a sensual movie scene and it was the badge of being cool. I first lit up unaware of the inherent toxicity of the habit; I certainly had no clue that dragging on cigarettes, even for the 13 years that I was addicted to nicotine, would have more farther-reaching effects on my body than almost any other habit.

I quit after I graduated law school in 1973. It was then, entering into my adult life and all the responsibility and adventure that came with it, that I made the conscious decision to engage only in vices that would give me some beautiful pleasure without the high price to my health that cigarettes demanded.

Smoking gave nothing to me except the shakes when I tried to stop. For a month after my last toke, I walked around with Tootsie Roll Pops hanging out of both sides of my mouth just to simulate the habit while I dragged through withdrawal.

I enjoy an occasional gin martini on a sunlit or grey afternoon and there’s nothing better than a Creekstone steak blood red on the inside. Those are indulgences I can afford because I bookend them with so much more healthy intake of veggies and oily fish that the balance is skewed in my favor by a long-shot.

For decades, I’ve sold cigarettes in my stores because that’s what groceries have always done – make available items that the consumer demands and which society has deemed permissible, despite evidence to the contrary. This month, I acted on a hunch I’ve harbored for years – I pulled all remaining inventory from my shelves and announced that Hiller’s Markets will no longer sell cigarettes.

I’m not trying to lecture, believe me. Every person has the supreme right to choose their habits and behaviors. It’s just that no one has the right to kill others — overtly, subtly or otherwise without cause. Simple proximity to a smoker is not good enough reason to risk death.

Discontinuing cigarette sales is going to cost me a quarter of a million dollars a year in income. And it might cost me even more if I lose customers who are angry that I won’t enable their habit.

Change is easy for no one, so the realization that Hiller’s won’t be an outlet for this vice might hit hard at first. But by next month, my stores’ shelves of smokes will be a distant memory as we move on to more important matters.

That’s ok. There are so many statistics about how smoking not only destroys an individual’s lungs and sets him up for cancer and other deadly ailments – but the secondhand smoke, the off-air breathed in by anyone around a smoker, is just as deadly.

Babies of smokers have higher rates of medical problems than the children of non-smokers. And now there’s research indicating that even the unborn babies of someone who was surrounded by secondhand smoke risks the negative effects of this habit.

That’s a long channel of impact.

I’m glad none of my sons smoke. I wasn’t the best example, smoking for 13 years as I did, well before they were born, and then later allowing the sale of this crutch in my seven stores. It wasn’t something we spoke of; I discouraged adamantly the obvious illegal drugs, issuing and maintaining a no-exceptions policy in my house to marijuana use or even experimentation.

The heinous part of all of this is that cigarettes are legal. So is alcohol and God knows I love a good drink. I sell foods that contain trans-fats. Yes, there are vices for sale at Hiller’s that, if abused, could certainly be the downfall of even the kindest customer. But they will only be hurting themselves.

And…. I’ve got to start somewhere.

I won’t sell fish raised in China. I won’t sell meat clinging to filthy pens and stuffed to the point of illness. I won’t sell produce grown in valleys where cattle run-off makes it susceptible to e.coli and worse.

I maintain the highest standards at every point where I know I can make an impact on the community around me. When you’re a leader, however slight and humble, your every move makes a statement.

So I won’t sell cigarettes anymore. You can do whatever you want and you can hate me for having scruples. But as Zechariah Chafee, Jr., wrote in the Harvard Law Review in 1919, “Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins.”

I didn’t always drive American cars.

About five years ago I woke up one day with the realization that any purchase I make directly impacts people in my neighborhood, my town, my state. Plus, I expected and hoped my fellow Michiganders would choose to shop in my stores, support charities I believe in and otherwise contribute to the well-being of our community – but I didn’t behave the same way in return. My purchases weren’t governed by a local-business-first focus, looking for the quality, service or selection in products made close to home before turning to sources from afar, because I didn’t believe one person could make a difference.

I was wrong.

My epiphany came as I stood on slick-top pavement in a moon-lit night, waiting for my car after a fundraiser for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

I stood with General Motors Vice-Chairman Bob Lutz, watching foreign car after foreign car drive away into the rain-slicked night. He turned to me as those foreign luxury vehicles peeled out of the parking lot and said, “How many people realize that when they buy an American luxury vehicle, they’re providing work for a dozen people for at least a week?”

Before then, I hadn’t felt in my bones the direct connection between the car I drive and the people in my hometown being in, or out, of a job. Many of my friends had told me so, but I didn’t listen - friends from other countries, shaking their heads in disbelief at the thought of neglecting one’s homeland.

I see it now.

And I feel it in my heart.

It struck me that night that I expected all of these people to support my local causes – ALS of Michigan for one - with their presence and their pocketbooks . Why didn’t I expect the same from them with regard to the place that gave us life and ensured our freedom of consumer choice?

I don’t even remember what kind of car I was driving, but the next day I bought a Cadillac STS and loved it. All of my preconceived notions that foreign cars were better-made and were longer-lasting, well, they proved untrue.

As a son of the Motor City, I can honestly say that for years, I found it easy to look across the ocean and see nothing bad in a car born overseas– a rose-colored view of the exotic promise of a place I didn’t know the texture of or the smells. I can describe the air-clear scent of the Detroit River and the open-sky echo of children on a summer day on Belle Isle, but I couldn’t tell you about the rapid plod of workers’ footsteps in a Korean, German, Bavarian or Japanese town or the series of sunset hues in their dusk.

Intimacy doesn’t always breed loyalty. In my own backyard, I could hurl the easiest accusations, based on nothing factual at all, and believe them true.

It’s harder to see a beautiful thing from close up.

My Cadillac is a superior vehicle in every way. Yes, I feel duty-bound and even intellectually-motivated to buy American, but I have to say that I buy American cars first and foremost because I know I’m getting a great product crafted by hands I know and with whom I share a destiny.

Plus, as I drive down the road, I feel like I’m part of a secret society of people taking care of one another.

Of course, any car you buy locally and drive off a lot owned by a guy who lives on your block means you’re in some way supporting local commerce. Still, it’s infinitely compelling to know that 100% of the car I drive was created, assembled and finessed just a few miles from where I live. Dozens of Michiganders took part in the creation of my vehicle, from concept to the moment I drove it off the lot.

American cars have a long illustrious history. It’s OUR history, for we come from a place of innovation and belief in the discovery, invention and possibility of great things.

I’m cooking  goose this year in true Hiller tradition.

Like my father before me, and my godfather and namesake, James Alexander, every year I gather my  sons around to slice off  the fat on the goose’s back and stuff a succulent bird with apples and prunes.

When I was a boy, I stood beside my father, absorbing the cadence of banter between Dad and his dearest friend and life mentor, James  Alexander.  He was a proper British gentleman who oversaw the preparation of our holiday goose and did the same for my father’s career.

Then, as now, it was an event for the men of the house. Being among the generations,  it was a time when we exercised our belief in trimming the fat, seasoning the bird just right so that it would roast slowly toward proper moistness and flavor.

Roasting the holiday goose has become a spiritual endeavor. It’s a time when I hear the subtle drip and sizzle emanating from the oven, when I smell the fragrances of the hearth as they envelop my home.

It is a time of men, showing strength in a way you might not expect, in the kitchen– Feeding our family– Sustaining those we love in a most fundamental way.

Every year, as I prepare the ceremonial goose, I am reminded of the Charles Dickens tale, A Christmas Carol. In the homes of England’s Victorian poor, there were open fireplaces but no ovens for roasting.

Bob Cratchit’s children ran to the baker’s shop to retrieve their Christmas goose. It was a silky-tasting luxury to celebrate the finest day of the year, and nary one that a family would pass up simply because they did not have the means to cook it themselves. The baker collected a fee to roast the bird for those who could not.

Working-class Dickensian families like the Cratchits belonged to Goose Clubs, sharing in the festivities of a stuffed bird. In literature and in life, a Christmas goose was tradition through the 19th century.

Few Americans eat goose to celebrate the holidays now. For one, it’s hard to find – though Hiller’s sells Young North American Geese in the meat freezer, 12-14 pounds apiece at $4.79 per pound.

We all connect to loved ones and traditions through food. The goose was always the standard ritual feast of the winter solstice, Michaelmas. Its migratory patterns symbolized the transition of the seasons, and people ate this rich bird to connect with the patterns of the sun and moon and crops.

A goose was also a thank-offering for the harvest. Eating its flesh represented the belief that nature would return after harsh winter. We used to believe everything would regain vigor and health, leaves would sprout, temperatures warm.

As I command this family of men, I am bolstered by the simple satisfaction of a goose well-cooked with thin-sliced meat to serve to all, with which I can sustain those I love. By my own belief that simple celebrations among family ensure the continuation of a legacy started long before me and which will continue after I am gone.

You don’t have to remove the fat. You could raise the goose off the bottom of the pan and let the juices drip down.

Yet, I like the metaphor inherent in tearing away a thick layer of fat and cooking my goose slowly. Patience cooks a healthier goose that is still full of flavor.