I've stolen this line from Gordon Edgar's book "The Cheesemonger"! Do you know what motivates your local cheesemonger? Cheese is more than cheese to us. It's earth, sky, humans partnering with animals (not fighting with them for every small bit of territory)! And it's a good thing we are motivated by so many outside influences because inside the store, there are just times ....
Well, anyway, here this week's cheese 'tail':
We all have those weeks that start out normal, you know, just the same old stuff:Monday getting back in to the swing, looking forward, but a bit tired, but customers begin to show up and pretty soon you just get caught up in the routine.
Tuesday - Emergency trip to Milwaukee to pick up things we're running low on. Thank God Jennell is so capable! (Well, some lunches and cheese sales to people out enjoying the weather), even though it's very difficult to think Thanksgiving and Christmas with the weather like this, we are figuring out our holiday window decorations.
And, then BAM - Wednesday brings what appears to be a major crisis! Controller malfunction in the walk-in - temperatures reading 10 degrees when I arrive! Okay, flurries of phone calls, waiting on a couple customer at the same time. (Get Jennell in early to help sort everything out) check with the experts, postpone this and that, do some more research, check everything 14 times, documenting all the product, finding out it has been getting colder and I hadn't been paying close enough attention (even though we log temps every three hours on each of the deli cases)! Sometimes you just start seeing numbers and forget to make meaning! Another lesson learned!
Ok, take a breath, begin to realize we will probably be able to salvage all but the fragile and fresh fruit, vegies, etc. Well, I guess it wasn't as bad as I thought. Maybe the losses won't be so bad. Pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, hitch up my girdle and walk on, as someone's grandma used to say!
Thursday - consulting with Jennell, tasting cheese and checking textures after yesterday's mechanical failure. And while we're at it, better start thinking about open houses, getting
our cheeses lined up for Christmas shipping, find just the right boxes for shipments. Making a list for the holidays, checking it twice! Ruth McBride and her son, Bill McBride of Lake Geneva, join us for lunch for her 94th birthday.Doesn't she look lovely? We love these types of occasions! Thanks for sharing your day with us!
And for telling us of the next BAM - this time a good BAM - the Janesville Gazette gives us outstanding 5 - plate rating in all three areas of Food, Service, and Value (kind of like a star rating for fine restaurants. You can find it in the Kicks Section of the Thursday Gazette. Thanks to Tracy Douglas for the nice thoughts. )! What a bonus! And as much as I'd like to take credit, I couldn't do it without Jennell's finely tuned and very enthusiastic palate. She takes my suggestions in stride, we try things out, she tweaks it and makes a beautiful presentation out of it! The customers seem to love it!
The local florist stops in and asks when we'd like to be put on the schedule for holiday boughs, i put them off until after Thanksgiving. I'm afraid with the extreme warm weather, if the boughs go up now, all we'll have is pine needle dust by Christmas!
A very busy weekend, with a special benefit event for the Lakeland Animal Shelter here in Walworth County, so prep on Friday for cheese trays and gift boxes to be picked up! Looking ahead to next week with 2 big events (a wine dinner at Kirsch's French Country Inn, the Delavan Scholarship Foundation Benefit, and the Downtown Holiday Walk! Better go and print out a couple more planning sheets for the 'week of'!
You can just feel the excitement as the season is starting to kick into gear! I hope you come in to say hi the next time you're in Delavan!
Laura
