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By mixing a love of cooking with innate food savvy, Patricia Panozzo whipped up a soufflé of the good life. She has been at it for quite a while, but her long, blond hair and girlish figure belie her age. She appears to have jumped off a billboard espousing healthy eating.
Two decades ago, Patty was one of the early re-settlers of the area in Michigan that was newly being called Harbor Country. In 1985, when the once thriving, but long dormant town of Union Pier, began to show signs of life, she opened a natural food café for the people who purchased vacation homes there.
“I’m from around Kankakee, [Illinois],” she recalls. “I come from agricultural land, a couple thousand acres. So I know food from the roots. I was a chef at a health spa when I found Harbor Country and fell in love with it.”
She has now lived in southwest Michigan for 21 years, watching as wealthy Chicagoans bought houses in New Buffalo, Union Pier and Lakeside. She noticed that their cocktail parties were in need of hors d’oeuvres, their dinner soirees in need of dinner. She gathered that these folks didn’t want to spend too much time in the kitchen. After all, they were on vacation!
So, following the closing of her Panozzo’s Café in the mid-’90s, she created Panozzo’s Pantry in New Buffalo.
“My theory is high flavor units, low effort,” Panozzo says. “Using just a few ingredients, you can have a delicious meal. You know when people are gathered around a table and breaking bread together, it’s a beautiful thing.”
And now she is trail blazing again. She recently moved Panozzo’s Pantry from New Buffalo to Benton Harbor’s burgeoning arts district. For her, involvement in a new community is yet another form of nourishment.
When a long-time customer stops by to view her airy, high-ceilinged digs, Panozzo shows her around, explaining: “These grape seed oils are high in anti-oxidants and blended with different things like roasted garlic.” She motions the customer to try the brie with chutney, on display for grazing, and hands her a recipe for beef tenderloin, using a coffee barbecue rub she sells — another example of the simple and divine.
“These vinegars are easy to use,” she continues. “For instance, this black fig vinegar — a drizzle of that over ice cream or pound cake with poached peaches or pears is wonderful. Just a little bit goes a very long way. You don’t have to do much.”
As the woman’s eyes grow to the size of large olives, Patty brags about the products assembled here, as if she were their mother: “This goat cheese has edible flowers. Martinis are a hot thing, so [I have] lavender, rosemary, chocolate martini mix; all you add is alcohol.”
It’s not just food, it’s nourishment, of both the body and the soul. “I just try to get people involved in the food so there is a connection,” Panozzo says.
The thing she is most passionate about is how food brings people together the way a hearth does. That notion fills the “Family Table” segment of her food talk-radio program on Radio Harbor Country 106.7 FM. “People talk about an experience they’ve had growing up,” she says, explaining that the aim is simply “to gather people around a table to share stories, to share experiences.”
In the store, Panozzo stirs up enthusiasm by getting the whole family involved. “I’ll bring kids into my store’s kitchen, get the skillet out, make some pancake batter,” she says. “We start making pancakes and they love it. When they flip it and you can see their eyes light up and it’s an accomplishment, it’s empowerment,”
Panozzo also teaches classes in preparing dinner, brunch and seasonal/holiday family events; and she is the author of two cookbooks, “Breakfast at Panozzo’s,” and “A Need to Feed.” The latter’s also the name of her show on Radio Harbor Country, a program she describes as “tasty listening.” In her spare time, she writes a food column for the Benton Spirit newspaper. She is also the events chairman of Benton Harbor’s new arts district, working to heighten awareness of the nouveau locality.
According to Patty: “Superstores have homogenized our nation … it is the small communities that provide unique flavors.” Churning exuberance like butter, Patty thinks of her community involvement as one more form of nourishment, yet another “need to feed.”
(140 5th Street, Benton Harbor, www.aneedtofeed.com, 269-925-6822
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