Resolutions: A 5 Things™ New Year's Special

New year, new blog formatting. My New Year's Resolutions are to incrementally upgrade my blogging skills, and 1080p.

The Intro

Welcome to 2019! There are many exciting announcements ahead this month alone, but we’ve been working so hard lately, that I’m just going to hit you with some fluff. I present to you: New Year’s Resolutions. With my commentary, of course, for clarification and jokes.

The Body

1. Joe — Joe has been a perennial seasonal employee of the Smokehaus for many years. This was offered to me at the end of his last NWS shift for the season: “I want to learn ‘Never Going Back Again’ on guitar. Oh, and run a marathon.” Joe presented a reasonable, goal-oriented approach to the topic, which is nothing less than I expected of him. We could all learn from Joe. However, I will never run a marathon.

2. Mary — “Complete the cookbook.” With the Winter product catalog under our belts, she is referring to the as of yet unwritten Northern Waters Smokehaus cookbook that has been haunting our dreams for years. This is very exciting news for me, since it means I’ll have a bunch of writing projects ahead of me and it effortlessly keeps this blog’s deeper marketing purpose on point. When I informed Mary of the latter detail, she seemed reasonably bummed that I wasn’t just concerned about her life and wellbeing. It’s a cold world we live in, Mary.

3. Greg — “Do more stuff with music. Instead of nothing.” Greg is a local music legend*, so there’s likely a bunch of people hoping he keeps up with this resolution. *command+f conley

4. Nic — “Wake up every day at six a.m.”Have you? “No. I’m kind of working up to it. Yesterday, I woke up at six-thirty. Today, seven-thirty. So I’m kind of regressing, but I’m trying. The alarm went off at six and I turned it off.” This sort of rambling, rollercoaster ride crash of an answer that toes the line between honest assessment of the shortcomings of such exercises and blatant off-the-cuff lie designed to entertain is precisely the reason I included Nic in my interviews.

5. Lucy — “What’s the context? What did the others say?” I let her know some of the other responses. She considered: “Consistently produce music: Now that I have the means to, I have no excuse.” This resolution was challenging to punctuate, but I am pleased with my work, and I’m always pleased to hear about people making time for art. What I’m trying to say here is I am pleased.

A Conclusion

So there’s my top five, in no particular order, and based on who happened to be around and open to answering my question.Here’s some honorable mentions.

1. Olivia — “I don’t do those.” Hey, I'm in the same boat. Maybe drink more water, but that's sort of an every day resolution.

2. Sam — “I don’t really do those. I’m perfect how I am.”That's the attitude (~*almost*~) all of us should take into 2019!

5 Things: End of 2018 Edition

Here we are, at the final 5 Things™ of 2018. Due to intense holiday exhaustion and an increasing desire to fall deeply into sleep and live off my fat reserves for a few months, I was just going to list our mail-order bestsellers and wax slightly poetic about each, but I remembered that we had an exciting year at Northern Waters Smokehaus, and perhaps this blog would be a perfectly suitable place to talk about it.

So because I am very tired and don’t want to choose between the two, here’s my compromise: For each bestseller, I’ll share an unrelated anecdote about our eventful year.

#5 — Salmon pâté. In the Spring of 2018, Casey Webb and the crew of the Travel Channel’s Man v. Food stopped by our deli for a day. As an employee, I really enjoyed the experience, because it reinvigorated my sense of pride in my work, but mostly because the spectacle distracted our customers and made for a very relaxed shift with a distinct lack of bad vibes (or, for the optimists out there, an abundance of good vibes). Leif made a Cajun Finn so beautiful it probably brought a tear to the camera operator’s eye, but it was at 6am, so I was not awake to verify that claim. I witnessed a minimum of eight takes of Casey popping up into the frame jiggling a whitefish side-to-side. Movie magic in action. The episode aired in June.

Leif!

#4 — Lake Superior lake trout. In August, we had the great honor of being selected to cater the Glensheen Gala. I’m going from memory here, but the gala’s theme was a sort of low-fantasy English garden party, and we brought down the house with lamb hand-pies, boursin endive boats, watercress & butter sandwiches, and an assortment of cheese and desserts. I spent most of the night making tiny dessert pies with chocolate, a whipped cream topping, and raspberry jam, but as the night died down, those of us staffing the gig got to stroll around the mansion grounds to carouse and enjoy the sights. 10/10 would love to do this again.

#3 — Traditional salmon piece. Eric started Northern Waters Smokehaus in 1998, which means we are doing what we do well enough to have celebrated the business’s twentieth anniversary this year. We did so in style with a double-header celebration which began at Hoops Brewing (featuring a line to the free food that wrapped around most of the bar and didn’t slow down) and ended at Rex Bar (featuring a lineup composed entirely of Smokehaus-affiliated bands). We are grateful for our community, which embraces us, supports us, and parties with us.

#2 — Salamini. The first official NWS product catalog is out, and it is sexy. The design team did such a great job that people think we must have outsourced our work, but the Smokehaus is packed so full of talented individuals that it was just bound to be good. Now that we’ve crossed this threshold, it won’t be long until a cookbook hits the shelves.

Cake by Lake Superior Bakehouse

(I said these were going to be unrelated anecdotes, but you should know that the holiday season completely cleared out our salumi stock, so we’ll be out until mid- to late-January. We offer our apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.)

#1 — Whitefish. Our 2nd-annual Sandwich Lab was such a rousing success that we will be sharing nine new sandwiches and a new vegetarian (optionally vegan) salad with you throughout 2019. Sandwich Lab is a time to relearn and polish our sandwich making skills and to share our personal flavor creations. There will be more announcements coming very soon and plenty of social media content to absorb over the year, but I will say that the new salad changed my life, and while the sandwiches will be monthlong specials beginning in January, the salad is a new permanent fixture on our menu.

This is how we make decisions.

It has been a pleasure writing for you today. I hope you have enjoyed yourself, and I hope your resolutions for the new year are reasonably attainable, and that you attain them all.

See you next year!

5 Things™

Welcome back to my blog of many things.

I didn't quite make it to the research phase of writing this blog this week. Things are busy, so some things take a sideline. Here's some things off the top of my head.

1. The special that started it all!I acquired this bit of information recently, and it has to be one of my favorites: During preliminary research for a piece about the history of our daily specials, I learned that the first NWS daily special was a polish sausage braised with Frostop root beer and “some [okay] sauerkraut we didn’t make.” I haven't tried this yet, but when I get to it, I'll share my findings.
2. New sandwiches!Don’t we have enough sandwiches on our menu already? I don’t know. Probably not. In 2018, our Sandwich Lab was too good, so in 2019, we’re adding 9 sandwiches (and a salad) to our menu, for a limited time only. Sandwiches with names like “The Breakfast Club,” “The Spinderella,” and “The Bloody Mary” will be making their NWS debuts as month-long specials throughout the year. The salad (which I have eaten my last ten shift breaks) will have a permanent slot on the menu. There may be some sort of voting at the end of the year to find a new permanent addition to the menu. Again, I don’t know. We’re kind of playing this by ear and trying to have fun with it. Keep your eyes peeled for upcoming promotion for this year-long event.
3. The recipes are being gathered!We have barely come down from our catalog release high, and we’re already plotting another major endeavor into the printed medium. I cannot say too much, nor would I like to create any unnecessary expectations, but the near future (at the very least geologically speaking) holds an official Northern Waters Smokehaus cookbook. If you can’t hold in your excitement and need something like this in your life now, stop by our shop, pick up some of our complimentary recipe cards, write a few notecards of your own musings, observations, and anecdotes, then cleverly bind the stack with string to create your own Unofficial Northern Waters Smokehaus Cookbook.
4. Bison is back!It’s been back for a while—both as our corned meat of choice (the ’06 with corned bison is unreal), and alongside our beef pastrami—albeit in limited quantities. We source our bison from North American Bison Cooperative. For our pastrami, we’ve switched from the eye of round cut to chuck roll, and in my humble opinion, it was a wonderful decision. The fat marbling and flavor in that large hunk of muscle is phenomenal, and is well-complemented by our haus-baked Prince Myshkin rye.
5. Something smells fishy!If you have noticed that something seems to be afoot, or felt as though you may find a clue around our deli, it may be due to the Cedar Island Conservancy rainbow trout and brown trout we've had in our fish case. They're smoked whole (like we do with whitefish and ciscos) and they're beautiful to behold and delicious to taste.

Thanks for stopping in. Smell ya later.Oh, and don't forget that our new gift cards look awesome and for every $100 worth of gift cards you buy before the end of December, you'll receive a bonus $20 gift card.

5 Things December 7th

Today’s post will be a serious one. We’re already a week into December and there’s already been a post about “x things pertaining to mail order” on our blog, but the 5 Things™ this week are still going to pertain to mail ordering our products during the month of December. There’s so much to cover.

1. Cutoffs for holidays!
   This is all I want in my stocking this year. Full-length jeans that have been turned into short jeans. Free the calf. I am kidding, and apologetic. This was supposed to be a serious post.What I’m really talking about is cutoffs for shipping our products based on holidays which affect shipping or might be your reason for ordering in the first place.
   Here are some relevant dates & times and how they pertain to shipping:Tuesday, December 18th @ noon: Cutoff for placing orders to be shipped nationwide before Christmas.
   Wednesday, December 19th @ noon: Cutoff for placing orders to be shipped within Minnesota before Christmas.Wednesday, December 19th: Last day of regular shipping before Christmas.
   Thursday, December 20th: Last day of MN-only shipping before Christmas. At this point, it is overnight shipping (not flat-rate) only for any last-minute nationwide orders.

   Wednesday, December 26th: Last day of regular shipping nationwide before the end of the year.
   Thursday, December 27th: Last day of MN-only shipping before the end of the year. Last day of overnight shipping nationwide.

2. A note about receiving orders!
   Although “end of the day” for many businesses is somewhere around 5pm, for UPS deliveries, it is 9pm. How might this affect you? Let me break it down:•Orders placed with us before noon on a given day will be shipped out the next day.
   •Shipped orders arrive two shipping days later. (Orders shipped on Tuesday arrive on Thursday; orders shipped on Wednesday arrive on Friday).
   •Orders arrive based on UPS delivery schedules, which means anytime between X am and 9 pm. Unfortunately, we are unable to guarantee specific delivery times for our standard shipping orders.Say you want an All Season Fillet for your holiday party on Wednesday, December 19th, hypothetically speaking, at 7pm. If your order were shipped out on Monday, December 17th, it could arrive on Wednesday at 5pm, but it could also arrive as late as 9pm. Your party was probably still a hit, but the All Season Fillet arrived too late.The best way to circumvent this requires just a little bit of planning ahead: Have the order delivered the week prior.

   Imagine the same scenario, shipped ahead of time: You place your order at 11:55 am on Tuesday, December 11th. It is shipped on Wednesday, the 12th. It arrives Friday, the 14th—perhaps at a convenient time, but perhaps at 9 pm. You refrigerate your All Season all weekend, and into the next week. On the Wednesday, the 19th, at 6 pm, you lay out a gorgeous array of edible art, centered around our fillet and your party guests rave to their friends and family about the delicious food at the holiday party for months to come.

   TL;DR All of this more succinctly here.

3. Keep up with the latest deals!
   Sign up for our newsletter. Any online or mail order deals will be tied to a coupon code, and our newsletter is the first place to receive those codes.When you subscribe to our newsletter, you will immediately receive a code for 15% off any order. Active subscribers (those of you who regularly open those newsletter links) receive additional deal offers. There’s a form to sign up for our email newsletter located at the bottom of our website homepage.
   

4. A note about our staff!
   December is a hectic month around Northern Waters Smokehaus. The sheer volume of production that goes in our facilities, the sometimes Summerlike lines of patrons rounding out their holiday gift shopping, and the hundreds of orders that ship out each week between Monday and Wednesday. Sometimes it can all feel like a blur.If some error does occur with your order, or you aren’t totally satisfied with our product or service, let us know, be patient with us, and we’ll do what we can to make sure you are. We’re all in this together. Like High School Musical, but with more smoked fish.

5. We have been included in a number of holiday gift guides! Thank you, everyone who included us in their gift guides! Check them out below.

Twin Cities Business Magazine 2018 Corporate Gift Guide

Hemispheres Eat, Drink, & Be Merry

City Pages Ultimate Minnesota Gift Guide For Foodies

Happy Friday, friends. Until next time.