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Culinary tours

OK, the Summer magazine is almost off to the printer and after a few hours of work this morning I was able to slip away between layout reviews. I had heard of a local creamery that specializes in blue cheese, down in Central Point, and we all love blue cheese, so …

Rogue Creamery.jpg

The creamery store is small and there’s no tour, which was disappointing, but the blues are very interesting. If you don’t like blue cheese there’s some cheddar and muenster, but nothing worth driving out of your way for. Blue is what this place is about. We tried them all and settled on the Oregonzola and a little of the Pesto Curds. We liked the Smokey Blue too but decided one blue was enough for now. They also have Oregon Blue, which is somewhat like a Stilton, and very sharp.

Rogue Creamery Oregon Blue.jpg

Thus primed for culinary adventure, we headed over to Harry & David’s headquarters to take the tour ($5 per adult, applicable to purchases over $35 after the tour.) They shuttle you from the Harry & David Country Store a couple of miles down to the facility. The tour is pretty good, especially since they hand out boxes of cookies and chocolate. It includes some of the bakery facilities (baclava, cookies, cakes, popcorn, etc), chocolate facility, call center, and their demonstration rose garden.

Harry David cookie line.jpg
The cookie line. Click for larger

The way they identify different classes of workers is by the colored hair nets. The lady pictured below is a supervisor. Supervisors have to be able to speak Spanish.

Harry David chocolate inspector.jpg

Of course, the tour ends back at the store and then it’s mandatory to buy a whole bunch of stuff … isn’t it? Eleanor had no trouble filling her basket with enough goodies to surpass the $35 minimum (to apply the $5 discount).

Harry David roses.jpg

Tomorrow we’ll pack up and head to Crater Lake. I am pretty sure we can’t get online from where we’ll be, but I’ll update as soon as possible afterward.

2 Responses to “Culinary tours”

  1. terrie Says:

    we do want to come to Salem..need some advice on our rear…thanks for adding our blog to your site…we love to share it…enjoy Crater Lake…see you soon…

  2. Andy Says:

    “Eleanor had no trouble filling *her* basket…”
    So what about YOUR basket? Did you just buy apples?
    🙂