Stuck

More than half the boxes leaving our warehouse in December contain a gift box. The gift boxes have stickers that, for the moment, we print in small batches ahead of time. This is the station where they reside. We make our boxes to order so, every time an order goes by—every ten seconds or so—the picker needs to find the right sticker for the box. When you work this station for hours you find your dreams are filled with product codes. 

Snow Day

Sunday. The weather finally came. This is the view through my windshield on the way to the warehouse. As far as weather goes, though, a Sunday snowstorm is just about as good as we can hope for in the mail order business. Nothing is scheduled to be delivered today so UPS can't delay boxes and claim Act of God—an unrefundable offense. 

 

Warehouses are always chilly.

 The view out our service center window.

On Pause

Saturday afternoon—one of those rare spaces during the holiday when the warehouse is almost empty, totally silent. Nothing ships today. This is our sixty foot pick line, completely still. One hundred people will arrive at ten tonight. They'll send a box of food out the door every ten seconds.

A Lot of Coffeecakes

We'll ship something like 14,000 cofffecakes this month. They're stacked up all over the place, ready to depart. This afternoon we got a huge delivery of gingerbread coffeecakes. You can smell the ginger and cloves from outside the building, through the snow.

Holiday Cover Winner

 

The winner of our catalog cover contest begins arriving in homes this week. This was the voters' favorite—and mine. Ryan let go and Saul Bass got a little bedazzled.

Courtney Love says don't melt your cheese

"If you're gonna eat cheese, take it out on a picnic,
cut it up carefully, and really taste it—with wine or something.
Don't melt it on shit."

Courtney Love

Olive Oil: Do Not Heat Before You Eat

 I've always thought it was good advice to save your best, most fragrant olive oil for the end of cooking, not to use it during sautéing or frying. Heat drives away aroma, which is what your paying for in a great oil. Harold McGee confirms the logic in this article where he heats different oils and holds a taste test.

McGee finds that all the oils pretty much end up tasting the same after heating. He doesn't talk about texture, though—better oils have a luscious, not greasy, texture—so I'm not sure if that changes. He also fails to clearly underline that olive oil's unsaturated fat is better for your health than the saturated fat in some of the other oils. You may want to stick with olive oil, just use a less expensive one for cooking.

> Read the article.

McGee's landmark book, On Food and Cooking, is one I recommend without hesitation. There is no better book on science in the kitchen that I know of.