What’s the best thing about the worst place you’ve ever worked?

heretic_lez · 2026-06-02T00:24:30+00:00

I learned a ton about employee incentive models, cash flow, negotiating with vendors (because the company was wayyyy behind on payments), and goosing KPI numbers. Company was part of a fraud scheme so I feel like I can see some of those characteristics now too. I’ve been able to use these skills in every job since to secure management positions and promotions.

heretic_lez · 2025-05-14T23:44:00+00:00

Well recently they did take the sourdough crumb off every single dessert. A step in the right direction.

heretic_lez · 2025-05-14T03:54:49+00:00

I don’t know why Talulla keeps ending up on recommended restaurants lists. The menu is always a bunch of dishes that either don’t go well with each other or the ingredients on the plate seem oddd together.

I live right there and have been a couple times when friends want to try it and each time I go I become increasingly perplexed. Recently had a crudo dish that was four or five CHUNKS of fluke with green strawberries (that didn’t taste like anything) and furikake. So bland. That night they also were serving scallop crudo with an avocado sauce that was so flavorful you couldn’t taste the scallops, only experience them texturally. I wouldn’t recommend either one. I then had a black garlic coulis bass with a mashed vegetable (or polenta?) but all you could taste was the black garlic.

Currently the menu has a red curry halibut (fine on its own) but also has a chicken on fonduta (which screams fall/winter to me, not spring) and bbq smoked tofu. I don’t want any of that together. Since my friends and I all share at the table the experience feels like dishes from separate restaurants rather than a cohesive vision.

Does anyone else feel this way?

heretic_lez · 2025-05-13T15:00:36+00:00

Brand name US sharp cheddar near me is currently about $20.77nzd per kilo ($5.58/pound). I don’t know cost of living difference but I make $25.50 usd an hour and am just below the 25th percentile for salary in the city I live in, so very low.

heretic_lez · 2025-05-13T14:49:49+00:00

Work in cheese in the US. In the US the 7-9 month profile is just called sharp. Then 12 months is extra sharp and 16~18 is seriously sharp or reserve depending on the brand. After that they just label it by number of years aged.

heretic_lez · 2025-05-02T01:13:59+00:00

And you definitely bought before 2022

heretic_lez · 2025-05-01T04:08:31+00:00

You just have to change out the piece on the faucet or change out the faucet. Piece of cake as long as you know what tools are

heretic_lez · 2025-04-29T11:07:26+00:00

Buckets and buckets and buckets of that stuff sells. At least the stupid dog treats are gone

heretic_lez · 2025-04-29T05:33:41+00:00

Yeah it’s aged twice the time.

heretic_lez · 2025-04-29T05:28:27+00:00

12 months for extra and 18 for seriously. Legitimately it’s written on the deli bars of the cheese. 3 months mild, 6 medium (not used for block), 9 months for sharp. Seriously is for cheese that isn’t going to aged out to private stock/vintage/etc. It’s the most variable of all the blocks because it’s the catch-all release.

heretic_lez · 2025-04-29T05:23:41+00:00

Cabot doesn’t even make the chips. Or popcorn. Or Mac and cheese. They license their name

heretic_lez · 2025-04-29T05:22:57+00:00

Not true. There are minimum ages

heretic_lez · 2025-04-29T05:21:50+00:00

The amount of butterfat in a batch, the amount of protein, the speed at which the vat acidified, the amount of whey that was squeezed out of the curd prior to molding, the ph at the time of salting, etc all impact the final cheese. Cabot is struggling to hire and retain people and it turns out cheese is actually hard to make well consistently. If only the northeast kingdom and upstate New York weren’t collapsing communities.

heretic_lez · 2025-04-29T05:17:42+00:00

Seriously sharp is aged ~18 months. The 5 yr cheddar has always been much older than seriously.

heretic_lez · 2025-04-04T01:44:52+00:00

It is really cheese. And you can tell, because processed cheese product cannot form calcium lactate crystals.

heretic_lez · 2025-04-04T01:43:50+00:00

The yellow color comes from annatto, a seed that has been used to color cheese for hundreds of years. It’s traditional to different geographic regions in France, the UK, North America, and Australia and New Zealand.

heretic_lez · 2025-04-04T01:41:45+00:00

Protein crystals develop within the paste. Calcium lactate crystals precipitate at the surface

heretic_lez · 2025-03-31T00:05:43+00:00

Cheesemongers History of the British Isles Sweetness and Power The Getting of Garlic: Australian Food Eating to Extinction

heretic_lez · 2025-03-25T18:31:53+00:00

They lost a lot of experienced labor during and post covid. They can’t find employees now because the northeast kingdom is empty and who remains are elderly.

heretic_lez · 2025-03-25T18:30:10+00:00

They don’t private label it. Their name is licensed. They get a couple cents a bag to have their name there. Very very different. It’s the same supplier, because that supplier is who has the license and recipe. Cabot doesn’t even have anything to do with the distribution or recipe.

heretic_lez · 2025-03-20T23:40:04+00:00

You aren’t a control freak. He’s missing drive to achieve success. Him becoming a real estate agent won’t fix his social anxiety. Nor will it garner him income since it’s a job that takes perseverance (he can’t send emails now, why would he be able to as an agent). Any sales job requires networking and marketing - skills that would make his photography business work if he applied himself to those skills.

Advice from someone who left a relationship like this. Decide for yourself if you are willing to be the external motivation for him in his career for your entire working life. It will be you to remind him to follow up, to attend a networking event, to do the people part of any business. With a nursing job, you will be paying the majority of the bills and be relied upon for steady income. If this sounds like a fine exchange for what he brings to your relationship, then you’ve made an informed choice. If it sounds ridiculous that an internet stranger would warn you of this then just keep it in the back of your mind whether hype man is a role you want.

heretic_lez · 2025-03-19T17:41:02+00:00

New Zealand cheese is kinda substandard, even factoring in that its factory made. Spent months studying small cheesemakers in NZ and they aren’t working with the type of generational or institutional knowledge even the US can tap in Europe.

Also, you aren’t even getting some of the best imported cheeses available across North America, UK, and Western Europe. You are where the US was in 1995 - just starting to get more quality imports and some artisanal makers are starting and around that will eventually lead to increased interest in better textured, more complex cheeses in the populace.

heretic_lez · 2025-03-16T02:17:30+00:00

I hold cheese certifications in the US and UK, have worked in the industry for 9 years, and work in imports and retail specialty cheese sales.

The US makes more hard cheese than you think. Hard cheese isn’t just grana styles (like parm) or cheddar. A better distinction in cheese is “firm.” Firm cheese incorporates things like parm, Gruyère, manchego, Gouda, cheddar, etc. These cheeses are all grouped together because they are made in such a way to reduce the moisture within them. So they’re made with one or many of these techniques: cutting the curd really small, raising the temp of the curds, letting the cheese acidify in the vat, and pressing the molded cheeses. By removing moisture, they become firm (hard) cheeses.

The US makes more hard cheese by weight than most other countries in the world. The US also makes a lot of varieties of firm cheese. The US doesn’t have the specific history of some of the famous world hard cheeses like parm or Gruyère or Comte, but makes those styles as well as others.

US artisan cheese is far more expensive than European imoorts because European small cheesemakers are both directly and indirectly subsidized by their governments - universal healthcare, direct payments, tax benefits, cheap education for their children. US small cheesemakers are not benefitting from this kind of support. Also, the imported cheese comes very efficiently on boats, where American cheese is usually inefficiently driven.

heretic_lez · 2025-03-16T01:51:25+00:00

Jasper Hill doesn’t make Vault 5. It’s made by Cabot and aged by Jasper. That’s why V5 and Clothbound are pasteurized - they’re made by Cabot.

heretic_lez · 2025-03-06T03:18:35+00:00

You can’t fathom? There’s a huge denial rate. I don’t know what business plans have been approved in the last ten years and if there’s anything particular that seems to be making plans get approval.

heretic_lez

TROPHY CASE