We had a big weekend (7/19-7/21), and we didn't run out of anything we planned on having in-stock.
That's all. We have evidently found our stride. As always, if you'd like to ensure we have what you're looking for, give us a call before you stop in @ (218)724-7307. You can even place a pick-up order, then skip the line when you arrive.
The D&D Summer Season.
While our epic, levels one-through-twenty—for the uninitiated, that is all the levels—campaign is on hold through the summer, it doesn't mean we haven't been rolling dice and speaking in funny voices. With new characters and varying levels of seriousness, we have taken to a ghostly sea as a cohort of debt collectors-become-zombie-hunters, taken up arms as an elite unit of kobolds to punish another group of kobolds for their crimes against the Dragon Queen, Tiamat—namely stealing magical artifacts from the Queen's hoard—by stealing powerful magical artifacts from the Queen's hoard, and a handful of other brief adventures to come, before we return to our dubious heroes' adventures in Waterdeep.
Good cheese weekend.
Taylor, our resident cheese connoisseur, announced at our morning meeting that this is a great weekend for cheese lovers at the Smokehaus. Primarily, it's the Comté (or Gruyère de Comté) that just arrived at our deli. The flavor of this semi-soft, unpasteurized cow's milk cheese from the Franche-Comté region of France is heavily influenced by the natural pastures and strenuous guidelines for a cheese to carry the name.
My personal favorite cheese that we've ever carried, Shepherd's Way's Sogn Tomme, will also be a regular fixture in our grab and go case until at least the end of summer. It's a buttery and crumbly sheep's milk cheese, with a slightly higher fat content, and it is too good for mere words when drizzled with local honey and decorated with a blueberry, if that sounds good, but slightly lacking, put that combo on top of a cracker and add a bite of smoked salmon to the mix.
A number of other great cheeses are in-stock as well, including Marieke Young Gouda and Carr Valley Apple Smoked Cheddar.
Our current cheese selection has even me, a lactose intolerant individual, drooling.
All Pints North this weekend.
More than 120 MN breweries gather at this enormous Bayfront Festival Park gathering each year, and attendees make their way through the offerings two ounces at a time. Lovers of beer travel hundreds of miles to attend this event (which is listed on the website as "Sold Out"), so expect a busy weekend in Canal Park and downtown, with ancillary events at local breweries and restaurants all weekend.
For more information about All Pints North, follow that hyperlink.
We'll be serving beer on our patio.
In honor of All Pints North, and our newly minted selection of adult beverages, Eric Goerdt himself will be slinging beers on our patio today (Friday) from noon until sometime after noon—weather permitting—to try to cater to the influx of beer enthusiasts and test out the viability of "refilling" beverages on the deck. Hopefully no one has to wait in a summer Smokehaus line just to grab another beer.
Next week on 5 Things™: It's August! Whoa! Where did the summer go?