Linda Falkenstein
If you've lived in the Capital City for a while, you're probably familiar with Myles Teddywedgers, our local purveyor of the traditional Cornish miner's lunch, the pasty.
While the upper peninsula of Michigan is probably the place in the Midwest where you'll find the greatest concentration of pasty shops -- pasty stands are everywhere -- another home to Cornish miners was Mineral Point, Wisconsin, where you can get fine representatives of the genre.
Myles Teddywedgers takes liberties with the pasty, which is usually made with beef, potatoes, onions, rutabaga and seasoning. (You won't find rutabaga here, even in the traditional beef pasty.) There are chicken, veggie, pizza, and salmon versions of the pasty on the menu... but my favorite variation is the breakfast pie, sold from 6:30 a.m. to noon.
The standard pasty was apparently traditionally eaten by miners for breakfast as well as lunch. They're definitely a hearty (heavy?) approach to starting the day. But they work well as a dinner entree, too.
The breakfast pie is like a super quiche, or a quiche mated with a calzone -- the pasty dough pocket holds either Canadian Bacon, eggs and cheese (the B1) or Canadian Bacon, eggs, cheese, tomatoes, mushrooms and Italian sausage (the B2). I love the super-rich B2, but prefer it for lunch or dinner. The combo of the cheese, tomatoes and Italian sausage does make it taste a little like pizza, although it's a little lighter and, minus the pizza sauce, isn't as gloppy.
If you're lucky, you can still nab a breakfast slice for lunch ($4-$4.50), or order a whole pie ($8-$9) to take home, where paired with a crispy green salad, it makes a nice quick dinner. I would love it if the breakfast pie menu included a veggie option -- egg, mushroom, peppers and broccoli, say?
Perfect for a cold day like... today.
