5 Ways NWS Can Help You Win the Holidays

First of all, welcome back to 5 Things™, returning on an atypical day after an atypical absence. We're right on the cusp of my favorite holiday, Halloween, so I'm feeling festive. This week's edition is a special one, focused on our upcoming holiday mail order season, and the many ways in which Northern Waters Smokehaus can help you "win" the holidays.

It's an audacious claim to make, but I'm somewhat certain that by the end of this article, you'll have a clear advantage over your holiday competition. No longer will your guests be "saving room" for more exciting meals to come, leaving you with an abundance of leftovers to deal with in the following weeks, and if they do, hey, you've got Smokehaus leftovers.

Here we go, in no particular order:

1. Roast a whole hunk of meat:

We've got options: our smoked Berkshire ham, smoke-roasted porketta, maple-sage smoked Ferndale Market turkey breast, and smoked pastrami are all guaranteed to launch your guests' taste buds right into the stratosphere, and preparation is simple enough: braise alongside some choice seasonal vegetables, allow to cool, carve to perfection, profit.

Here's a handful of ideas to get the brain moving:

2. Catch "The Worm" with our Early Bird sale:

Oof. That's a gross one, but, low-hanging fruit that it was, I had to go for it. Would it have been better if I'd said, "The Proverbial Worm?" Perhaps.

More about our actual Early Bird sale follows:

October 24th through November 14th, you can take 15% off your cart when ordering online, by entering the coupon code earlybird19 before checkout.

15% off everything is nothing at which to shake a stick, unless you're shaking that stick with joy. Here are the sales's details:

• You can use the code on as many transactions as you like, within the timeframe of the sale.

• The 15% discount applies on everything except items already affected by another sale, and is applied before shipping costs.

• The discount cannot be combined with other coupons.

• As long as you finalize the transaction within the sale's timeframe, you can have your items shipped whenever you like. Perfect for planning your holidays ahead of schedule.

3. Read some of our previous blog posts about NWS and the holidays:

While I've got some great ideas for improving the proverbial wheel, now isn't the time to re-invent it.

Here's a handful of links to previous years' writings about NWS Mail Order and the holiday season.

4. Memorize these cutoff dates:

For those who prefer to wait until the last minute, whether it's waiting for that holiday bonus to clear, or simply living on the edge, these are the hard-and-fast cutoff dates you ought to remember:

Tuesday, November 19th – Last day to order to receive before Thanksgiving. Wednesday, November 20th for Minnesota

residential shipping addresses.

Tuesday, December 17th – Last day to order to receive before Christmas. Wednesday, December 18th for Minnesota

residential shipping addresses.

Wednesday, December 18th – Last Day of Shipping before Christmas AND New Year's Eve

Tuesday, December 24th through Sunday, January 5th 2020 – NO SHIPPING! Mail Order Office closed for the holidays.

Monday, January 6th 2020 – Normal shipping schedule resumes.

Keep these dates in mind and you'll have your favorite NWS goodies on hand, on time

5. Don't forget about these upcoming holiday deals:

Pigs in Space is our special Cyber Monday deal. From 12 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. (00:00:01 - 23:59:59) on Monday, December 2nd, Minnesota and Midwest orders will have free shipping, and continental shipping will be half-price.

Holiday Gift Card Frenzy is the working title I'm giving to our annual gift card sale. For every $100 of gift cards purchased—whether $10x10, $20x5, $50x2, $100x1, or some combination of the like—you'll receive a bonus $20 gift card, and there's no known limit on how many bonus gift cards you can accumulate. 20% back for yourself, or to spread the gifting a little further, is pretty great. Offer available in-store only (whether you wait in line, or order in-advance for pickup), online gift cards do not apply.

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5 Things: October 4th, 2019

This week has been one of triumph, of heartbreak, of new beginnings.

To get the heartbreak out of the way, I misinformed our readers last week, this Monday was not the return of D&D to the Smokehaus. I know you are all super invested in this, so I'm sorry for playing with your emotions like that.

Please accept this photo of assorted battle miniatures as an apology—

And some ketchup exploded in our dry storage. It fell, for unknown reasons, although there is some speculation that our former General Manager Mary's visit—which eerily coincided with the fall and resulting explosion of the ketchup—dredged up feelings of abandonment from the DeWitt-Seitz ghost.

Messy as it was, it wasn't an entirely bad occurrence—it inspired a deep clean of the affected area, which was probably due. A good deep-clean is rarely a bad idea.

Now on to the triumph and new beginnings!

We've come to the last leg of our 2019 Sandwich Lab Journey! The G.O.A.T. debuted on Wednesday, October 2nd. We've sold a grip of them already. For more words on this, check out the announcement post.

We also launched our Fall Wine List. Read more about our new wine offerings here. As someone who most often buys bottles of wine based on the aesthetic value of their labels, I would probably buy at least three of these. In the flavor category, however, these are all winners. TK is dedicated to bringing a unique selection of fine natural wines to the Smokehaus each season, so dedicated grapeheads (that's what they're called, right?) should take note.

Who made this salad? Whose salad is this?

Next Monday (10/7), we officially launch our New & Improved Happy Hour. Monday through Friday, from 4-7pm, we're offering $2 Pabst Blue Ribbons and $1-off any craft brews, ciders, and adult-seltzers. Technically, you can grab a happy hour drink at those prices today, we're just waiting until Monday, October 7th to go crazy on the cross-platform promotion.

Patricia made spicy cheddar crackers using Gochugaru chile flakes, a component of our kimchi recipe that offers a warm spice with fruity and smoky tones—The Smoky Tones is also the name of our in-Haus vocal jazz group, coming eventually to an orchestra hall near you. The heat of these crackers has a slow onset, with a lingering mild burn on the back of the tongue. Patricia is still cranking out plain cheddar crackers for our Study Buddy gift box, but has also been experimenting with bacon cheddar crackers, and now these. If you haven't yet, give our haus-baked crackers a taste. As long as they keep flying off the shelves, we'll presumably get more variations on the classic recipe.

5 Things: September 27th, 2019

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I'm ready for September to step aside and make way for October: the best time of the year. There's a whole lot of good things coming to Northern Waters Smokehaus in October. Let's take a look, shall we?

The G.O.A.T. arrives on October 2nd. Yes, next Wednesday you'll be able to feast upon this toasted bagel, dressed in creamy chèvre, toasted Smoked Andouille Sausage slices, local apple slices, and crispy lettuce for $9.50+tax. Catch me eating The G.O.A.T. during every one of my lunch breaks.

Enjoy these photographs of The G.O.A.T.

Next week, our new wine list hits the deli. Keep your eyes on our social media platforms for updates and product profiles.

Are you a creative, yet unpretentious eater? Or a college student on a budget with a knack for maximizing flavor? Do you enjoy zhuzhing-up a grocery store frozen pizza with special ingredients; instant ramen, with a little bit of extra love from the produce section? So do we. And we're glad to work at a place like Northern Waters Smokehaus, where there's plenty of potently flavorful ingredients to bring to our home kitchens.

That's why we're launching #NWSMadeItFancy — the hashtag dedicated to documenting your culinary ingenuity under the influence of Northern Waters Smokehaus. Playing the game is simple: grab some NWS ingredients, find creative uses for them in your favorite "un-fancy" foods—frozen pizza, instant ramen, macaroni and cheese, instant stuffing, cornbread mix, you name it—document it, and share it with the aforementioned hashtag, and...profit?

We'll be keeping an eye on the hashtag and sharing our favorites. Join in with our staff and followers to create a whole lot of fun community content, featuring your favorite items from our deli. Will you be famous? No promises. Will you make our followers feel happy and inspired? It's probable!

Glensheen gave us a ton of basil! Imagine a literal ton of basil. That would be a very large pile of basil. Back to business: At the end of the season, the folks at Glensheen have a ton of produce and not much to do with it, so they donate it to the community. Basil tastes great, but it doesn't exactly feed people, so it isn't high on the priority list for the handful of local organizations feeding the marginalized populations of our community. We're grateful to make use of this windfall, and look forward to providing you with the finest Glensheen-tinged Italiensks, Silence of the Lambwiches—that's how you pluralize it: you're welcome—and Spring Rolls.

A ton of Basil (Rathbone)

There's a ton of otherexciting Things™ coming up this Autumn at NWS, but I need to hold onto some content for future 5 Thingses—there's another useful pluralization for you. So I'll leave you with the best news I've heard all week—Our DM is returning from vacation, and D&D starts again this Monday! Back to Waterdeep, and into the Undermountain—home of the Mad Mage—we go. Will we return? Who could know? Prepare yourselves for session-recaps for which you never asked, and tidbits of the hijinks of the Midnight Axe, which will have doubled its ranks. That sounds like easily double the hijinks.

Before my words become

quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

This is the way the blog ends

Not with a bang but a whimper

5 Fish Sandwiches That Are Making Waves——5 Things: 9/20/19)

This week has been quite a ride, with Eric and a handful of others attending the Fortune Fish and Gourmet Expo on Monday, bringing back a whole heck of a lot of chocolate "samples," which made a great Tuesday morning "breakfast"; a ton of huge delivery and pickup orders throughout the week (on Thursday, they made 130 box lunches by 11am in the basement); and a number of us took sick days this week—hopefully the days off do the trick and the illness ends there—so we were playing with a smaller team this week. And the ride isn't over. This weekend, we'll be catering the wedding of a beloved former coworker. Who says all the fun has to stay in Summer?

Last week, I mentioned that five of the top seven bestselling sandwiches at our deli are fish sandwiches, and since I'm approaching this week's blog somewhat fatigued from making dozens of each of those fish sandwiches respectively this workweek, I have opted to tell you a little bit about each of them, in no particular order.

The Cajun Finn

The sandwich: Haus-baked ciabatta roll, scallion cream cheese, Cajun Smoked Atlantic Salmon, pepperoncini, roasted red pepper, lettuce.

There is not much to say about the Cajun Finn that hasn't already been said. As a sandwich that easily outpaces the combined sales of half of the other sandwiches on our menu, it doesn't really need any further advertising. I mean, our marketing department still occasionally invests some time into telling you about it—heck, I'm doing it right now—but the rolling snowball that became an avalanche that is this sandwich became that way primarily through word-of-mouth, both literally, and via its generous inclusion in peoples' blog posts and social media chatter. A large percentage of our online reviews contain its name, sometimes even the negative reviews leave space for a caveat about the Cajun Finn being our saving grace (apologies to those reviewers for whatever happened to go wrong—likely our wait time on a busy day—but we're glad you enjoyed the sandwich nonetheless).

The Cajun Finn is available as a sandwich kit.

The Sitka Sushi

The sandwich: Hero roll, wasabi mayo, sriracha, sliced cabbage, cucumber, gravlax, pickled ginger, cilantro, sesame oil & rice vinegar.

The Sitka Sushi: my first favorite Smokehaus sandwich and number-one recommendation. The name and contents are a nod to Eric's time in Sitka, Alaska. Formerly, we made it with ginger- and lemon-cured Alaskan Sockeye gravlax, which was deeply flavorful, but a little tough and unwieldy. Recently we have switched over to a softer, more buttery, traditional Scandinavian style of gravlax, made with Atlantic salmon, but the sandwich still packs a punch.

Imagine a rich musical chord, composed of interwoven consonances (cabbage and gravlax, bread and oil, cucumber) and dissonances (wasabi mayo and sriracha, cilantro and pickled ginger), rolled from the bass up the highest note, then sustained, with hidden, aleatoric melodies discovering themselves and chiming out all the while. Then, transpose that chord into a flavor pallet, and imagine every bite—thoroughly savored—as a new re-rolling of that chord.

That's how the Sitka Sushi hits.

The Slammin' Gordon

The sandwich: Naan, Smoked Salmon Pâté, diced tomatoes & cucumbers, cilantro, lettuce, olive oil & rice vinegar.

When I began working at Northern Waters Smokehaus, there was a sandwich called the Salmon Garden. Within days (it seemed), the sign for that sandwich had two vowels scribbled over, and became the Salmon Gordon. A few months passed, and then we had the Slammin' Gordon on our hands, and everyone just pretended like nothing happened. Here ends the very incomplete, abridged history of the sandwich formerly known as the Salmon Garden.

Smoked Salmon Pâté is delightful, due in part to the blend of our haus Salmon seasonings—dill, cajun, black pepper & coriander—working as a team to bring you this flavor, which is rounded out with garlic, lemon juice and horseradish. So if you spread it on our most decadent bread option—not only is the naan incredibly soft and pillowy, but also quite buttery—something good is bound to happen. The veggies and greens give enough of a nod to health-consciousness that it doesn't just feel like dessert.

The Northern Bagel

The sandwich: Lake Superior Bakehouse bagel, scallion cream cheese, Traditional Smoked Atlantic Salmon or gravlax.

This sandwich is great because it its simplicity of form belies its complexity of flavor. Lake Superior Bakehouse Bagels are so good you could probably just take a bite out of an uncut, un-toasted one and have a decent time. Add to that the sweetness and pungency of Traditional Smoked Atlantic Salmon, or buttery, spice-infused gravlax, and round it off with the earthy umami of scallion cream cheese, and your mouth and olfactory system have some serious flavors to sort out. Furthermore, it reads as a breakfast sandwich, eats like lunch, and isn't half bad at the end of the day either.

The Northern Bagel is also available as a Sandwich Kit.

The Great Summer Caper

The sandwich: Lake Superior Bakehouse bagel, scallion cream cheese, capers, Black Pepper & Coriander Smoked Atlantic Salmon, red onion, tomato, lettuce.

I have to say—delicious as this sandwich is, I still remain skeptical of it. For starters, it's a very seasonal name, and yet—it persists on our board, due to sales. Secondly, it is a very tall stack of ingredients, which are very delicious together, but once stacked and cut in half, like to fall over—which is fine if presentation is unimportant, but ultimately a challenge in the middle of a rush. Still, this is a fantastic stack of ingredients. It's the mature version of the Northern Bagel.

A final note:

Tomorrow (Saturday, September 21st) at the Friends of the Boundary Waters Fundraiser, they'll be auctioning off a special NWS prize: the rights to name a new smoked salmon sandwich on our menu, which will run through Spring 2020. I can't wait to see Fishy McFishface on the menu.