Yoopie Soul Food

Driving across northern Michigan, this time admiring Lake Michigan, we saw signs for "Pasties." No, get your mind out of the gutter, this is food, not adult entertainment. We stopped for lunch at a place that had on it's sign: "Yoopie Soul Food" My curiosity is really piqued...I was about to discover what is a "pasty" but had a new question: what is a "yoopie"?

We ordered three, the original-a beef pasty, a veggie one and a pizza pasty. A root beer and a cream soda completed our lunch order. Back in the RV we set about tasting Yoopie soul food.

The beef pasty had lean ground beef, potato and rutabaga encrusted in a pastry crust. They were shaped like a half moon, smaller than a calzone, but bigger than a pirogi. It was baked, not fried and was more flaky than a calzone, it was not a yeast dough, more like a pot pie crust. A little dry, but tasty. The veggie one was similar but had carrots and celery. I didn't taste the pizza one. It just seemed wrong. If it wasn't yeasty dough, I wouldn't like it.

I took a flyer from the store that answered some of my questions. Pasties have a Cornish heritage, the Cornish immigrants worked the mines and often took pasties for lunch into the mines. The real mystery was solved, a "Yoopie" is a person from Upper Peninsula Michigan.

We stopped again to put our feet into Lake Michigan then drove around the upper peninsula and across the Mackinac Bridge. Lake Huron to one side and Lake Michigan on the other. I'm not into bridges, but this one WAS beautiful. As promised, I thought of our waiter in Oregon who haled from this part of the world. We stayed at yet another lake, Higgins Lake, but arrived too late to explore the area.