Amuse Bouche #18 - Reflecting on Brats

Welcome back! This is Amose Boosh and I'm Bridget. Here you're getting a little bit of Bridget before our weekly release of Dinner Plus Drinks on Sunday. And this week I'm doing a little bit of reflecting. Did you guys think that I'm about to get all deep and reflective on you? Well, I'm not. I could do that, but we'll save that for Dinner Plus Drinks. Um, we are coming up on our 100th episode of Dinner Plus Drinks this weekend, so Nick and I have been reflecting a lot. Um, thinking about, oh, I won't give away the show, but listen to Dinner Plus Drinks, and we're doing a lot of uh looking back on our 100 episodes. So it got me to thinking and kind of made me giggle a lot. Um, and I thought, you know what? I'm going to reflect on something a little different. Um so here's a little backstory. So I've always dreamed of being a stylist, um, like specifically working on photosets in some faction. Um yes, just know that. It's like a dream job of mine. Um so one might say, I've become a stylist of brats. So one of the silly weekly things I do as part of my job at Lake Geneva Country Meets is photograph all of the fresh brat flavors that we have in the case each week. Um, that may sound silly to you if you are not familiar with our business, but uh the brats are a big part of who we are. Uh, we have an incredible mixture and array of flavors. Um, and typically, so every week uh, you know, we make a fresh batch of brats, and the public doesn't know what flavors they're going to be. So we always post what they are. Now, typically, this is a picture of white butchered paper with any number of brats laid out in either straight lines or in a random mix of ways, and you know, an arrow pointing to them saying, like, this is the cherry brat or fresh brat, whatever. So I took this over. Nick was doing this before I came along, and then at some point I took this task over, and I laugh about it every week uh in my head or with some coworkers. So I what I do, I don't often go behind the retail case, um, you know, because I don't know what I'm doing, and I don't want to have to tell a customer that I don't know how to help them. Um, but you've got to put a hat on, you know, cover my hair, uh, I get on some gloves and pull the brats out of the case, and then I go over to our uh like prep kitchen area and stage the photo. And so no matter what, this always garners a lot of attention from the staff. So this part of my week used to kind of be like, I don't want to say annoying because it's fun, but it was always like I had 10 other things I needed to do, but shoot, I gotta make sure I get the brats posted because no joke, if we don't post them on Thursday, people write us messages asking where the brat picture is, which is insane. But I suppose, hey, you want to know what fresh flavors we have. So um what I have found is that like this becomes now a really fun time for me to kind of hang out with the staff. Um, I don't I work from home mostly. Um I go in for meetings or or you know, brat pictures or various things. I'm in and out a lot, and so um some of them barely know me uh if they're newer, and you know, some of them it took a long time to get to know me, and and I always, you know, I know their names, but I don't work alongside them day by day, and I'm certainly not like in the trenches with them, even if I am in the office. So this has been a really fun way since I'm like behind the retail case, and then I'm in the prep kitchen where people are walking in and out. Um, it's it's a busy part of like the behind um like the back of house, I guess if you will. So anyway, um lately, I would say starting around Oktoberfest time, I started getting a little wily with pictures. Actually, I think it was right, it was before that. Um Nick was nearby when I was doing the brat photo, and I don't know what we had friends on the mind, and we did a whole we, Nick, did a whole Friends theory uh series, I'm sorry, theory. A whole Friends series of brat photos. So like with the um, you know, the Friends episodes are all called like the one with the turkey or the one with the fight. So we did the same thing, like the spicy ones was one of the brats, and it was like our four spiciest ones that week or whatnot. So so it started with a a Friends series, and it that must have been early fall. I want to say that was September. Um, but don't quote me on that. Then it got to be Oktoberfest, and we have three weeks at the store of Brattoberfest, where we have specialty brats that are only made um during Brattoberfest. So we gotta stock up, and I think Nick did the picture for me one of those weeks because I was gone or I had something. Um, and he like stepped the game up. He he did a oh, what is it called? A hat. Um, like the hat everyone wears at Oktoberfest, which now of course I can't think of the name of. An alpine hat. Um, it is called an alpine hat. I never would have thought of that. So Nick did an alpine hat. Um, and I was like, well, I gotta up my game and do a cool, some kind of cool Oktoberfest thing, right? So I then proceeded to make the shape of hot pretzels out of brats, and then I made a pint of beer. Um, so it got to be really fun. Or no, I'm sorry, I'm screwing you up here, guys. Um, Nick made a pretzel out of beer. I did not do that. So we started brainstorming these ideas, and obviously, as you can see, I'm I'm remembering ones that we brainstormed and not really sure of ones that we did, and so I'm I'm scrolling back, looking looking on our Instagram page now and seeing. Um, back in Fourth of July, oh man, this goes back further than I thought, guys. Fourth of July, we made a firework. Uh Father's Day, I spelled dad out of brats, you guys. That's right. That's when this really started. As far back as I can tell now, it started with spelling dad out of brats. Um, so anyway, the point is here, we've been having a lot of fun with these. And so now we we did the Brocktoberfest, then it was Thanksgiving time, um, or I'm sorry, Halloween, and I made a ghost. Uh, the pumpkin was the obvious route. Made a ghost, loved it. Um, one of our staff members, she and I joke about it all the time, like, what's the picture this week? And that one, she and I were saying was my finest work. Um has a ghost face and everything. Um, so lately, all right, it's Thanksgiving time, you know, what are we gonna do? Um, and I sat in our prep kitchen with our chef, who's also named Nick, and we talked through ideas for an embarrassing amount of time. And for a couple weeks prior to that, some of the other retail staff were like, Bridget, you gotta do a turkey. Like, I can't make, I can't draw a turkey. There's no way I can make a turkey out of brats. So, sure enough, guys, I made a turkey out of brats, and it is maybe my finest work yet. It was three separate photos I had to Photoshop together, and this task, this very simple task of just telling people what brats we have every week, has now become a ridiculous obsession. So um, after the turkey came the wish phone, and that's really what inspired me uh to to kind of do this episode was I knew this week's photo was gonna be the wish phone because it um was going to be up through Thanksgiving. So our this this batch of brats will last through Thanksgiving. So um our our chef, who's named Nick at work, he gave me the idea of the wishbone and said, you know, wishing everybody a happy Thanksgiving. So I just am here to say all your dreams can come true. If you want to be a stylist, you can be a brat stylist. Um, so I just got to reflect back on this fun part of my job that was uh something that honestly used to kind of annoy me because it like interrupted my day. Um, but now it's been a really cool way for me to connect with our staff and you guys, hopefully, because here I'm asking for your feedback. I've wrapped up my Thanksgiving brats because now next week we'll, you know, maybe I'll do a shopping bag next week. Small business Saturday, gotta shop. Um, locally, please. Um but after that we've got a whole bunch of Christmas time that I'm gonna need to make things for. And sure, sure, I can do a Christmas tree. Absolutely. I can make a present out of brats, but is there a crazy Christmas request that you want to see made out of brats? If you go out of your way and email us at hello at dinnerplusdrinks.com, I just may make your brat request. And it's a fun way to connect with you guys. So anyway, I've had a had a lot of fun reflecting about this little piece of my job, and I just wanted to get on here and hopefully make you guys giggle a little bit on your Friday morning when this is released. Um, and like reflect back on your job. Is there something hilarious that you can pick out of it? Because I try not to, we on the podcast definitely um don't, you know, we don't talk about the retail store at Lake Shima Country Meads a ton, but that is where Nick and I work. And so this week I I broke all the rules and talked through some of the fun relationships and ways that I've taken a job task and had a good time with it. So that's my reflection back down my brought memory lane. Tune into Dinner Plus Drinks on Sunday and hear much more structured, much more thorough reflection of our last 100 episodes. Hope to have you guys listen this weekend and hope you have an awesome rest of the weekend as well. Bye bye.