Mail Order season is suddenly upon us. The third-floor DeWitt-Seitz office is already primed for near-optimal success is preparing hundreds of skillfully packed boxes. You know what? This is my first Thing™ this week. Let's play it again.
Mail Order season is suddenly upon us.
The third-floor DeWitt-Seitz office is already primed for near-optimal success is preparing hundreds of skillfully packed boxes. Any surface that could possibly be repurposed as a work surface is or soon will be.
Storage space is at an all-time premium—we've even rented spaces in Proctor, MN and Superior, WI to keep from overburdening our DeWitt-Seitz location.
We've brought in seasonal reinforcements, who will be training in on Sunday the 17th, and making our Mail Order Director, Andy's life way less stressful. It's a whole thing.
We've updated our shipping policies and providers so that we'll hopefully be turning a profit (albeit small) on each package shipped, rather than losing a little bit of money on each. For our small, family-owned, community-oriented business, this is great news.
We met with our publisher.
On Tuesday, a cohort of those of us involved in producing the first Northern Waters Smokehaus cookbook took a field trip to the University of Minnesota Press's office in Minneapolis. We're honored and excited to be working with the press, and the feeling seems to be mutual. Icing on the cake: the building in which they're located has very comfortable conference room chairs.
In the wake of that meeting, we've developed a plan to methodically comb through the rest of the recipe testing, while polishing the text into something worthy of telling the story of NWS, DeWitt-Seitz Marketplace, and our beloved City and Lake.
While the cookbook itself won't be hitting shelves any time soon, it's been 20+ years coming at this point, and it will be a great accomplishment to kick off the next two decades of NWS.
Rush Creek Reserve has returned.
For the uninitiated: RCR is Uplands Cheese Company's (Dodgeville, WI) Autumn-exclusive, washed rind, raw cow's milk cheese made with the rich and silky milk that emerges when the cows' diets shift from Summer pastures to Fall and Winter hay.
The extremely seasonal, small batch cheese is sold in 12oz wheels ($35/wheel) that are intended to be served at room temperature in a single serving. (No worries if you and yours can't manage that: Just re-package it in its breathable wrap and tuck it in the coldest part of the fridge.)
Maker Andy Hatch has described the cheese as a "savory custard, [which] exudes a very soft, delicate texture with a savory, rich finish likened to cured meat."
Each wheel of the cheese is hand-wrapped with spruce bark, then aged 60 days before it is shipped off to distributors. For more information on serving—beyond the obvious: serve it on a fine cracker alongside a sparkling or dry white wine—chat with our deli staff.
You don't want to miss out on this exceptional cheese, and the rest of the delicious offerings—including my personal favorite, the Shepherd's Way Sogn Tomme—in our grab'n'go case, this holiday season.
The 127th Annual Sandwich Lab is this Sunday night!
On Sunday night at 7 p.m., the best of the best will be assembling to brush up our sandwich-making skills, pitch new sandwich ideas, and just generally have a good time.
Unlike our most recent Sunday night meeting, we'll be open full business hours (all the way to 6pm) on Sunday. I didn't realize that there had been so many until we received this official notice from our HR director, Greg:
We've smoked a few batches of North Road salmon.
The global salmon market is currently in flux—with causes and effects that extend outside of the purview of this particular blog post—and as a substantial importer of salmon, we strive to continue to bring you responsibly and sustainably sourced Atlantic salmon.
North Road provides huge (we're talking five-pound filets!) , beautifully marbled salmon sourced from sustainable farms off the coasts of Norway and Scotland, and within the Faroe Islands. The smoked product is melt-in-your-mouth tender and has taken especially well to our brown sugar & salt cure, resulting in some of the best smoked salmon I've had the pleasure of eating, even by our stringent standards—especially with dill seasoning.
Currently, we're only smoking it in small batches and selling it in our deli, alongside our other smoked salmon options. Next time you stop in the deli, ask for a sample and see for yourself, or just buy a big ol' slab and show all your friends and family.
Thanks for tuning in!
NEXT WEEK ON 5 THINGS™: More about mail order season, a follow-up on Sandwich Lab, an in-depth look at our new enormous standing mixer (described to me as "something out of War of the Worlds"), and more!