Monkey Monday: odds and ends edition. 10 December 2007 2:41 pm
Posted by Tracy in : breakfast, travel, monkeys, pictures, friends, news, restaurants , 1 comment so farSo I seem to recall that back in the day, the original purpose of Monkey Monday was to give myself an excuse to post random short things like fun links and little stories that don’t quite add up to full-size entries all by themselves. Today I’m getting back to exactly those basics, only with a few pictures thrown into the mix, because that’s how I roll. Short summary: weird food label revelations, snarky commentary on recentish food-related New York Times articles, tales from my weekend road trip to Olympia, and (more…)
Fotos before Friday: in which I sing the praises of Halloumi cheese 6 December 2007 9:10 pm
Posted by Tracy in : work, salad, tea, cheese, sundance, eating, vegetarian, cooking , add a commentThis post is dedicated to Jonathan, who was a little grossed out upon overhearing Peter’s half of tonight’s dinner plan phone conversation, but I won’t hold it against him; he takes mighty fine pictures. Anyway…
It’s been more than a year since I resigned from running the Sundance cheese department, and that was a few months after the last (and fortunately first and only) time the walk-in cooler broke down on my watch. When this happened (and it happened at least twice during my time at Sundance), the cheesehead (I did love my title, though I also went by cheesebeast) would recruit a helper or two, and a few shopping carts, which would be used to take all the back stock out of the cheese cooler to the walk-in fridge in the warehouse. If the cooler hadn’t been broken for too long, all the cheese in the displays could be moved as well. That was the case when the cooler went down on my watch (because we checked it obsessively and moved quickly when the temperature had been in “the danger zone” of above 40 degrees F for more than an hour). However, the other time I was present at Sundance for a deli walk-in failure, someone came into the deli in the morning and discovered that the cooler was at 50 degrees F — and had no way of knowing how long it had been too warm. In this case, to be on the safe side (and because doing otherwise would be a health code violation), none of the cheese that had been in that cooler overnight could be sold. The cheese worker that day spent it weighing all the cheese that was deemed no good, writing a long list of product lost, and filling the cooler’s free food shelf, over and over again. All the cheese eaters at Sundance that day made out like bandits.
What does this have to do with Halloumi cheese, you may ask? (more…)
Nepal picture mania, part 2 4 December 2007 6:40 am
Posted by Tracy in : nepal, Kathmandu, travel, pictures, agriculture, eating , 1 comment so farSo last time I got a little distracted by the deliciousness of momos thanks to a random fast food place in Kathmandu, but today’s pictures are pretty straight-up travelogue. First, a few notes about flying in Nepal: it’s all about patience. A few days of uncooperative weather can wreak serious havoc, and we were pretty lucky in that regard — only a few hours worth of flights had been cancelled and rescheduled to October 14. Still, this was enough to overload pretty much the entire domestic terminal at Kathmandu airport: ticket counters, security, and above all the seating area where we waited our turn to check in. Behold the awesomeness of Kathmandu airport security theater:
Nepal picture mania, and a bit about momos. 3 December 2007 1:36 am
Posted by Tracy in : nepal, travel, pictures, Morning Glory , 1 comment so farSo my last Nepal picture post got cut a little short because I had to run off to Morning Glory to cover a shift, and then I didn’t post on Thursday and Friday, but this week I hope to make up for it with extra picture posts, which appropriately enough, continues last week’s theme. Over the weekend I managed to finish sorting through (and posting) the last few dozen pictures of our first day of not-quite trekking, so now I can post an illustrated version of the events of that day! Let’s start back in the garden on the roof of the Hotel Utse, where I spent some time taking pictures and journaling, first thing in the morning when I was too excited to sleep any more:
