After the obligatory stop at Timmy's for a coffee (an extra large, double-double if you ever want to get me a coffee sometime, thank!), we were on our way to Motown.  A beautiful sunny day and an uneventful trip down, and even a pretty easy sail through customs (although the 'Who's your Prime Minister?' question caught me off guard).

In all kindness and fairness, I think it's safe to say that Butcher and Packer is not exactly in the best of neighbourhoods in Detroit, but the store itself is clean, with a nice bright blue awning to help find it along the row of packing houses (thus the choice of store location, I would assume!) and liquor stores.

There is some product out on shelves, but the vast majority is in the back warehouse area, thus most of the time was spent looking through their catalogue to uncover some forgotten shopping items and unearth some unsuspected 'must-get' accessories.  Things we really had to have included a big roll of butcher paper (and dispenser), some Bactoferm starter culture, which is the stuff that gives salamis their 'tangy' edge, a new meat mixing bus bin w/lid, the Rytac Kutas sausage making book, which I had read before by borrowing from others who had it or else borrowing from the library but really, really wanted one for myself, a bone scraper for when we cut chops etc from the primals we can pick up any bone dust off the meat, some sheep casings for our English banger recipe, some pumping phosphates for giving moisture to ham and peameal when brined, and then three complete jerky kits for various pepperettes and such, since the kits that include the casings, spicings and cure are not much more than just buying the necessary casings alone.  Anyway, when all was said and done, Big Dog's Visa was carrying another 300 dollar burden and we were on our way back into Canada.

At the border, we presented our bill from B&P, and the guard wavered a minute on whether to flag us into secondary processing to pay the GST and PST on this stuff, but instead, just said, "Have a good day, guys; go ahead."  A good day indeed!  In fact, it called for a celebratory Timmy's stop.