I remember Shopping Center in Berkley. I grew up on Greenfield between 10 Mile and Lincoln in what was then Royal Oak Township. My mother was instrumental in forming and serving on the Charter Commission that formed the City of Southfield! There were only three families in the half-mile from 10 Mile to Lincoln; people drove from the city to buy corn, tomatoes and melons from the local farm at the corner.

Widowed young, I raised my son alone. When my parents retired, they sold their Greenfield house and bought two duplex townhouses in Oak Park. My son and I lived in one, and I managed the rentals in the other units. More than 35 years ago, we moved to Union Lake (now West Bloomfield).

We had trouble sleeping there - it was so dark and quiet, no streetlights, no ambulance sirens in the middle of the night.

My son is a teacher now and a father. He lives in Cadillac and I visit my family monthly. I still live in West Bloomfield and work in Bloomfield Hills four days a week as a legal assistant.

As soon as I realized my neighborhood store was a Hiller’s, I was there. I remember my mother having involved conversations with the meat guy at Shopping Center in Berkley. Mom was a great cook. I still cannot make gravy or rolls like Mom and Gramma. They never measured a thing - a handful of this and that and out came wonderful biscuits, dumplings, cakes, pie crusts.

I remember vividly our weekly visits to that Berkley store. We always got what was on her list. Mom planned, budgeted, shopped, cooked. I remember the comforting smells of that grocery and feeling like there was so much on those store shelves from which I could pick and choose.

I truly feel like Hiller’s is MY store. If you have never tried anything from the deli counter – get there ASAP! Almost every Sunday I buy a couple of entrees so I have work lunches I don’t have to make myself - salmon with leeks, rosemary grilled chicken, lots of grilled veggies. It costs less than going to a restaurant and it’s just as delicious.

The brown rice, tofu and edamame salad is a weekly staple in my house. And, Hiller’s chefs make vegetarian-friendly dishes. Where else can you shop and meet the chefs who come out from the kitchen to talk to you?

Once you shop at Hiller’s, it’s difficult to go to another store. Hiller’s is always clean, bright, well-stocked and fresh.

If your recipe has unusual ingredients, Hiller’s has them. If you can’t find something, Hiller’s will order it. Groceries are groceries. You want the best for your family at a fair price. Families on a limited budget, in this tough economy, would do well to check out Hiller’s.

I have been a Hiller’s shopper since we moved to Novi 13 years ago. Usually I shop at the Northville store because it is the closest, but have often shopped at the other stores on Haggerty Road (Plymouth and Commerce Township). We eat a lot of fresh fruits, vegetables and fish. Hiller’s always has the freshest produce and fish.

One thing that sets Hiller’s apart is the international foods sections. I have a friend from the U.K. who generously shares her recipes. I can always find the right ingredients at Hiller’s.

When my children were in elementary school, their Japanese classmates brought food items for lunch that my children requested. We became familiar with Pokey sticks and Japanese jello. It was great fun to try new things.

We are relatively new to the gluten-free foods arena. My daughter, Liz, was diagnosed with gluten allergies about six months ago. I visited every store in the area to see what was available. Baking is an entirely different process without gluten, and the learning curve is steep! We found all the special ingredients necessary at Hiller’s.

I have really enjoyed the Namaste line of mixes. All you need to do is add a couple of ingredients and you are done. The Namaste brownies, muffins and cakes are as delicious as gluten-filled alternatives.

We also like Hiller’s wide selection of gluten-free noodles. I make pasta salad with brown rice pasta, and my friends can’t tell the difference.

One of the more difficult aspects of a gluten-free diet is finding good food to-go. My daughter attends Mississippi College and travels with her school’s soccer team. When the rest of the team is eating pizza, it’s difficult for her to find a quick, easy meal on the road.

The “Gourmet on the Go” product from St. Dalfour is a good alternative. The “tin” is microwavable and comes with a fork, so it could not be simpler. It’s quite tasty - especially heated and eaten with corn chips.

Thousands of people swirled through the Union Lake store on November 8, for face painting and tattoos, clowns and balloon animals, free hot dogs and Sanders sundaes. Product samplings throughout the store included Hiller’s own Polly’s Pastries and Chef Rick’s gourmet mac-and-cheese plus much, much more. Hiller’s: The Place To Feed Your Family.

When I was little, as a treat when I’d visit my dad every other weekend, he used to take me to Hiller’s (at 14 Mile and Haggerty Road) to get twice-baked potatoes and chicken and rice. We started going to Hiller’s when I was 9 or 10. I was a huge Beanie Baby fan (one Christmas, my dad decorated his tree with Beanie Babies instead of ornaments – I was delighted!) and we’d go to the little toy store near Hiller’s, then to get some weekend foods – an artichoke, twice-baked potatoes, chicken and rice from the deli counter.

We’d eat dinner Friday night, most likely the artichoke and a steak, bean soup, chili, pepper stake – all homemade. My dad loves to cook and eat. On Saturday and Sunday, we’d eat the chicken and rice and twice-baked potatoes.

When I started high school, I learned Japanese. Then I loved going to Hiller’s even more, to look at the Japanese foods – especially the unique snack foods! I’d sometimes buy Japanese pop, Ramune, with a marble in the neck of the bottle – you’d have to drink it a certain way or the marble would stop the flow of the drink.

But the potatoes and chicken dishes were my favorites. The chicken and rice wasn’t like anything else I’d ever eaten – and I have not yet succeeded in finding something like it since I left Michigan. I remember the wild rice and almonds and a very light sauce. Everything tasted really good.

The store was always clean and organized. Sometimes, we stopped at the bakery to get chocolate treats. My dad would kinda spoil me on the weekends he had me.

My dad told me he liked shopping at Hiller’s because the food was fresh and always tasted good. And, there was a good supply of fresh produce – artichokes especially; I have a hard time finding good ones like I’d find at Hiller’s.

Hiller’s carried everything we liked, especially items we couldn’t find in other stores. I first tried stuffed grape leaves from Hiller’s. It became our tradition to go there when we were together.

Now, I’m 21 and live in Fort Collins, Colorado. We stopped going to Hiller’s together when I was 18 or 19 – when I stopped going to my dad’s house every other weekend and started college.

I’ve looked everywhere for a recipe to make that chicken and rice but can’t find it. I would love to have a Hiller’s nearby. So many good memories.

Being involved with food for so long, I receive many solicitations from organizations requesting my participation in fundraisers.  Due to time constraints, I can only do a few.

One of my favorites is the Slow Food Movement. In 1998, a friend in the wine business brought me the “Slow Food Manifesto,” a proclamation of passion from Italy.

In 1986, on the eve of the opening of a McDonald’s at the foot of the Spanish Steps in Rome, a member of the Italian Gastronomic Association, Arcigola, was offended by the introduction of low-quality American fast food in one of the world’s gastronomic capitals.

In response, the International Movement for the Defense of, and the Right to, Pleasure, was formed. We know it now as Slow Food International.

Other countries were quick to follow.

In 1989, at the Opera Comique in Paris, food lovers from many countries endorsed the Slow Food Manifesto:

Our century…invented the machine, and then took it as its life model.

We are enslaved by speed, and have succumbed to the corrupting virus [of the] Fast Life, which … forces us to eat Fast Foods…A firm defense of quiet, material pleasure is the only way to oppose the universal folly of Fast Life.  May suitable doses of guaranteed sensual pleasure and slow enjoyment preserve us from the … mistake of frenzy for efficiency.

The manifesto recommends starting at the table, rediscovering the sensual quality of slow bites of flavor and savory regional cooking. It proclaims that real culture is defined by developing taste rather than demeaning it.

We have a Slow Food group close to home, in Ann Arbor. We are all guilty of forgetting the pleasure of time, how it feels to slow down.

Take time when you shop. Prowl the produce section at Hiller’s, and plan your evening meal from the bounty of our local harvest. Look for Made in Michigan shelf tags and create meals from locally produced delights.

Share your family’s heritage as it relates to food traditions. Learn your ancestry through the flavors that have endured. Search for favorite family recipes and recreate them for your family.

We will all benefit from living life instead of rushing through it.

– Rick Halberg, Hiller’s Director of Culinary Services

Autumn is a time when wine distributors host holiday trade shows for retail wine buyers. At these extravagant, overblown affairs, hundreds of wines are displayed and thousands of small portions poured – all for a milling, sniffing, sipping, spitting and pontificating crowd of restaurant sommeliers, party store owners, supermarket buyers, writers and uncategorized others.

People say they wish they had my job all the time, but the truth is that attending trade shows can be daunting.

After all, wines reveal themselves best and most enjoyably through contemplation and careful consideration. The ritualistic three- to five-second look, swirl, smell, slosh, spit, score process can’t be rushed. Nevertheless, there are so many wines to be evaluated, so we endure the trade show circuit, trying an awful lot of bad wine along the way so you won’t have to.

Of course, there is a lot of good wine out there, too, and this is the time of year when I look at the big picture: What’s hot? Who are the rising stars? What is trending down?  And, where are the best values?

Right now, you’ll get the best value out of wines from Chile and Argentina. Their well-made wines at all price points are clean, fresh, varietally correct and well-balanced, with bright fruit and zippy acidity.

For a white, try Argentine Torrontes - lovely floral and stone fruit aromas and a refreshing, palate-cleansing finish. For a red, Argentina’s Malbec and Chile’s Carmenere are the signature varieties but excellent Cabernet, Merlot, and Pinot Noir are easy to find.  Some brands I like: Cono Sur, Maipe, Ventisquero, Terra Andina, and Morande.

On the domestic side you cannot beat wines from Washington for value and distinctiveness. We recently devoted an edition of Jim Hiller’s Wine Club to Pacific Northwest wines.

(Click here to download the newsletter!)

Columbia Crest, Red Diamond, Hogue, Covey Run, Chateau Ste Michelle and Snoqualmie offer outstanding depth of flavor and solid, honest value.

- Eric Novak, Hiller’s Wine Buyer

October 1988, I was in Italy, researching stops for a guided tour of Detroit foodies. I stopped at Cibreo for a meal. Back then, Cibreo was a small neighborhood trattoria known for incredible old world Tuscan cuisine - like Ribollita soup made with cavalo nero, Tuscan black kale (which we sell at Hiller’s); Ciangale, wild boar slowly braised with sweet and sour fall apples; or Bistecca Fiorentina, a triple-thick Porterhouse steak done in a wood-fired oven.

Today, Cibreo is known internationally – and it’s a veritable food empire consisting of the original trattoria, an elegant restaurant, a coffee bar, a take-out store and a new Theatre Salon. All of these are located in the old Santa Croce neighborhood of Florence, where you can find the oldest Franciscan church and a beautiful example of Italy’s many piazzas as well as one of my favorite fruit and vegetable markets.

Some vivid memories from that meal:

• fire roasted yellow pepper soup-a mélange of sweet yellow peppers, fresh oregano, a swirl of fresh olive oil and the smell of the wood fire
• porcini mushroom-one huge, just-picked beauty wrapped in parchment paper, splashed with oil and paired with a garlic sliver, roasted to perfection

But the best dish was the brains! After seven courses of incredible food, with dessert on the way, I remembered reading in an old Gourmet magazine that Cibreo’s chefs do wonders with lamb brains.

I called to my waiter: “Cervello?”

He looked at me with amazement in his eyes, then reminded me of all I had already consumed.

I convinced him I was serious. No more than five minutes later, a small plate arrived with a tiny foil packet. No wonderful odor, no glorious droplets of sauce. Despite the heat of the packet, my fingers navigated the foil open - and the soul-soothing scent hit me straight-on.

It was like nothing I had ever experienced: butter, lemon, garlic, olive oil, fresh bay leaf, laurel and something else….

Fabio Picchi, Cibreo’s chef-owner, had placed a tiny sliver of “Tartufo Bianco,” the prized Italian fungus with an aroma of things exotic and forbidden, inside the packet with the tiny lobe of lamb brain. Mmmm…eyes closed, I opened my mouth.

Two tiny bites, and I was done in! Delicate couldn’t describe that dish. It was the epitome of rustic perfection, supremely fresh ingredients treated with the utmost respect.

Just how I like it.

– Chef Rick Halberg

A bottle of wine begs to be shared; I have never met a miserly wine lover.
-Clifton Fadiman

Of all ways that wine enriches our lives, the joy found in sharing it may be the greatest.  A friend drops by and you share a bottle while swapping stories of the kids, the house, the dogs. You prepare a recipe from the latest issue of Gourmet or Real Simple, anguish over the perfect wine to pair with it, and delight afterwards in the fact that it really didn’t matter to any of your guests which wine you chose.  It was perfect because wine loves company, and company is always better with wine.

So why not organize a wine-tasting party for your next gathering of friends? A wine event can be elaborate or simple; only a few essentials are required and the rest relies on your crowd and creativity.

Unless you are conducting a formal, blind tasting and don’t want other tastes to influence the wines, arrange bread, cheese, crudités, olives, and fruit. And don’t forget to have lots of water for drinking between sips.

Have plenty of clean stemware with bowls large enough for a good swirl, but certainly don’t need to be Reidel.

Some folks offer paper and pens to encourage note-taking; jotting down thoughts on appearance, aroma, flavor, and overall impression of each wine is an excellent way to focus. (Of course, omitting the schoolwork keeps your party informal and less intimidating.)

Make sure you accurately assess your group’s true interest; don’t make things too technical, or too much work, if most guests aren’t seriously into wine.

Consider these ways of structuring a tasting, based on the crowd’s collective level of experience:

Cross-varietal tasting. This can be fun for beginners or a group with widely different experience levels. Taste a number of wines in approximately the same price range made from the same grape, and focus on identifying distinguishing characteristics. For reds, pick a Cabernet Sauvignon, a Pinot Noir, a Merlot, and a Syrah. For whites: a Chardonnay, a Sauvignon Blanc, a Riesling, and a Gewurztraminer. At the end, pour from a covered bottle something tasted earlier and see who can figure out which one it is.

Cross-regional tasting. Try the same type of wine but from different regions or countries. For example, compare Sauvignon Blanc from Bordeaux, the Loire, New Zealand and California.  Or Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa, Australia, Chile and Bordeaux.  Syrah from the Rhone and Washington State, Shiraz from Australia and South Africa, Pinot Grigio from Italy and California, Pinot Gris from Alsace and Oregon.

Price-level tasting. This is appropriate for an intermediate level of wine knowledge. Compare the same type of wine at different levels of quality: a Bordeaux, a Pauillac and a Premier Cru Pauillac; or, a Kendall-Jackson Grand Reserve versus the K-J Vintner’s Reserve versus Camelot (a K-J second label).

Vertical tasting. One needs a pretty extensive cellar or some good connections for this. Compare the same wine over several vintages. A vertical tasting can clearly show the effects of weather variation on wine.

Blind tasting.  Wine bottles are covered so there’s no way to identify the wine. The point is either to compare similar wines without prejudice or to have tasters identify the grape, region and vintage. Definitely not for the faint of heart.

For a wine tasting party with minimum pretension and maximum conviviality, you can’t beat an idea from Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher, who write the wine column for The Wall Street Journal. Ask each of your guests to bring a bottle of the same kind of wine within a certain price range-say, for instance, Chardonnay under $20. Tell them to put the wine in a bag with their names on it. Do the same. When people arrive, give each a glass of your wine (no more than two ounces; remember, this is a tasting) and put theirs on the table. After everyone finishes the first wine, pour tastes of the second and leave it on the table. And so on. Keep opening until all the wines have been tried. Then, take the bottles out of the bags. Don’t worry about assigning best and worst. It’s exciting enough to see who brought what, find out how much everything cost and compare who liked what.

Some members of Jim Hiller’s Wine Club say that after each quarterly arrival of Club selections, they convene a party of friends to taste our picks. They discuss the wines, decide which ones they like and as a final laugh for the evening, read my newsletter aloud and rate the level of bombast in my tasting notes. It’s okay - I’m tough, I can take it.

No matter what type of tasting you organize, if your friends are driving, be careful. Have designated drivers or call for cabs. You want your friends to be around for your next party.

- Eric Novak, Hiller’s Wine Guru

Today I was frying up our first batch of arancini…“little oranges” you can find on streets in certain parts of Italy. But they’re not produce. Arancini are deep-fried balls of creamy risotto filled with meat, peas, sausage, Mozzarella di Bufalo, or saffron…mmmm…

They are sometimes called Supli di Telefono in Italian, which translates to “the wires of the telephone,” because of all the stringy cheese that dangle when you take a bite.

As I worked over the pot of bubbling oil, in walked Fabrizio Casini, our Florence-born produce buyer – or as I like to think of him, a worker of produce wonders. I love cooking for Fabrizio, especially Italian dishes that remind him of home.

But he said he’d never eaten arancini before. That revelation spurred me to make one of the finest batch I’d ever fried up. One bite and I could see on his face how joyous the flavors were as they oozed onto his tongue.

At that moment, he started talking about his family in Italy, growing up in Florence, palming the produce in his father’s market when he was just a boy. His whole life has been sensory-rich and food-centered.

Having been to Italy many times, I closed my eyes and pictured exactly what he was talking about. The places, the people, the senses…

I’m American-born and bred, but Fabrizio’s memories called up images of home, food, love, the concept of soul-filling and soul-touching. This is why I cook, why I stand in the kitchen and work ingredients into tasty pieces of art. Anyone who spends a life around food is devoted to the idea of conjuring feelings when people sink their teeth into something prepared lovingly and with thought.

When I closed my last restaurant, Emily’s, we hosted farewell dinners. On the last night, when all of the emotions of serving a last supper of sorts swirled around and inside me, I didn’t think I could handle speaking to the group about what they’d meant to me.

I didn’t have to. People rose from their seats, one by one, and told stories of favorite times in my restaurant. They shed tears, giving permission for my own, and recounted stories of first dates, engagements, weddings, anniversaries, births, even deaths. Moments celebrated and marked with food, friends and family.

The love of food can do that to you….share with me…..

– Hiller’s Head Chef Rick Halberg

Countless cultures have a phrase for clinking glasses and toasting to one’s good health. In Hebrew, it’s L’chaim. In French, it’s a votre sante. In Czech, it’s Na zdravi.

It’s not all colloquialism, either. Medical research shows a link between regular, moderate consumption of red wine and a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and certain cancers as well as the slowing of neurological degenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

The idea that drinking wine in moderation is good for your health became popularized after the 1991 “French Paradox” broadcast on 60 Minutes. Ever since, wine consumption – red wine in particular - has risen dramatically.

How, exactly, does red wine promote good health? And do different farming or fermentation techniques provide different levels of protection?

Dr. Roger Corder, a cardiovascular expert at the William Harvey Research Institute in London, wrote in “The Red Wine Diet” about oligomeric procyanidins (OPCs) as the source of red wine’s health benefits.

Corder dismisses the idea that resveratrol is the reason for wine’s health-promoting qualities. It does exists in grapes and has been known to discourage cancer - but there isn’t enough reservatrol in wine to make a difference.

All red grapes, particularly those with thick skins and high skin-to-pulp ratios, contain OPCs.

After measuring OPC concentration of several common red wine grapes, Corder identifies Tannat as the grape with the greatest concentration. Tannat’s benefits can be seen in the surprisingly long lifespans of residents of the département of Gers in southwest France, whose local wine appellation is Madiran. Gers contains more than double the national average of men in their nineties.

Madiran’s principal grape is Tannat, a thick-skinned grape native to southwest France that makes wonderful dark, dense, smoky wines renowned for their ageworthiness.

“One small glass of this wine can provide more benefit than two bottles of most Australian wines,” Corder writes.

It’s a good thing Hiller’s sells Madiran!

Alain Brumont Torus, a blend of 50% Tannat, 30% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 20% Cabernet Franc, with loads of black fruit flavors and soft, ripe tannins, is on sale now for $11.99.

* http://www.whri.qmul.ac.uk/staff/corder.html
** http://www.whri.qmul.ac.uk/

- Eric Novak, Hiller’s Wine Guru