For God's Sake ... We Need To Reorder Pepper RIGHT NOW ... !!!

I really like pepper.

And I really love fresh ground pepper.

Fresh cracked pepper on a turkey or a tuna sandwich, good stuff.  Pepper, along with other condiments, makes the omelet for me.  Fresh, fruity pepper on a perfectly cooked steak ... nothing better.

The smell of it, the pungent aroma of it when its newly ground from a mill, gets the 'ole taste buds salivating.  Goes without saying I use it in a majority of my recipes. And liberally.

Regular table pepper (when I can't get the freshly ground stuff) is a necessity at a meal.  Even in a fast food joint, I pepper where it's appropriate.  French fries, for example.  Curiously (or, maybe, not so much) I might use more pepper on my fries than I do salt.

Which is exactly the case while dining at The Melt in Folsom recently.  I nabbed a couple packets of pepper to spread on my order of fries and happily began partaking.

In front of me were a couple of unused packets of pepper and I looked them over while eating ... and noticed something rather curious ...

See the photo above?  Take a look at the top packet and, in particular, the following wording printed on it: "reorder #4043295."

Odd, I thought.  I mean ... think about it a moment:  When Melt needs more pepper, think they pick up the errant packlet out of a box of many and look for the order number on it in order to acquire more?  Or do you think they already have some sort of form available to resupply more?  Don't you think that's a bit odd?

You don't have a reorder number on the bottom of your favorite shoes so when they begin to wear out you can easily requisition another pair, right?  You don't find any sort of identification anywhere in you car stating "To get another, here's the send off number to make it easier for you! You're welcome!"  There's nothing on the side of the pen barrel you're using for fill out that report indicating "At some point you're going to run out of ink ... so you better get to gettin' and put a request in for this, your very favoritest pen."  How 'bout an imprint on a banana stem saying:  "Is this your last banana?  Avoid the annoyance of running out by accessing this code right now!"

Or ... maybe I'm just thinking about the imprint on the pepper packet a bit too much ...

 

.......... Ruprecht ( STOP thinking so much ...)

Again With The 5 Personal Things

Greetings, People of Earth!

It's November 20th! You know what time it is, don't you? It's Michael facts and fodder time - five personality traits (or quirks) about me you don't yet (or maybe you do, I don't know) know! I've done this twice already (here and here) you'll recall and here's the third iteration!

Let's dig in!

#1: I subsist on 5 hours' sleep and have for years. Once in a while (it averages about every other month) I'll need to crash and get a good 8 - 10 hours slumber under my belt which resets things. Yes, I know it's killing me but it is what it is.

#2: I've continually found the need to give names to people and things other than what they're named or what they are: My kids had the nicknames "Gut," "Gak" and "Goof" (the youngest one still has that moniker, I call coffee creamer "coffee stuff," I use the word "hoochamuhwaggit" often to call out particular items ("Do me a favor and hand me that hoochamuhwaggit") and when I refer to items in conversation I often call out "the thing" ("Hey ... where's 'the thing'?").

Image not indicative of Michael's personal set up

as he prefers salt and pepper grinders.

#3: The dining room table isn't complete without three items: Salt, pepper and napkins.

#4: I've never had an "eyeFone" (my mocking term for Apple's product) and I don't see that fact ever changing.

#5: For years as a kid, in the summertime I used lemon to bleach my hair blondish so I could run around in summer as the blond god of beach parties.

Wow! Another successful listing! The hits just keep on coming, don't they?

The 25th of the month and 5 more things will be here before you know it.

.......... Ruprecht ( STOP )

Safety First They Say ...

Some things? I just don't understand.

This, for instance, found inside a cupboard in the hotel room I stayed at:

Hokay ... let me back up a bit: I get it. Really, I do. I've simply never seen it previously. 

I suppose it's a good way to protect the salt and the pepper, keeping it fresh for others to use, all the while knowing there's no monkey business or funny stuff going on with it with come the arrival of a fresh set of people to the room.

.......... Ruprecht ( STOP )