August 1, 2006   (Look for the subscribers-only discount!)

Hello again, folks, this is Jim (the Cook) with your monthly Rooster News .

The Dog Days of Summer

Hard to believe, but it's August already.  Traditionally, this is when it starts to get really hot around here.  I can't hardly wait.  The kitchen was only about 112° during that last run, I wonder what it will get up to this month?  But I believe in that old Harry Truman saying, "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!"  So, I get out of the kitchen and make my staff cooks do the work.

Kidding aside, we have been rather tight staffed this summer for various reasons so when there's chopping and frying to do, I don't get to the newsletter very much.  Many of you have come into the store saying "what happened to the newsletter?"  Even Brenda has been after me, saying things like "you STILL haven't gotten a newsletter done?  People are asking for a new phrase."  Well, even an old cook like me who spends too much time inhaling hickory smoke knows when he's in a corner, so I've finally gotten this done.  And it's not like we haven't had anything to tell you about:

Monthly Calendars Return

We have our monthly menu calendars again, starting with August.  Actually, we've had a July calendar on the web site for several weeks, but we just kept it a secret apparently (see failure to market business, above).  Assuming UPS does their thing we should have these in the store by 4:00 today.

They look cool, too.  It's still just Brenda and I running this little experiment in entrepreneurship, but we're trying to look bigger and slicker than we really are, so we fancied it up with pictures and colors and glossy printing and all that.  I had to learn about something called "CMYK" which, it turns out, does not only stand for "Children Make You Krazy".  Learn something every day I guess.

On a related note, if you haven't been in the store for a while (apparently there's something called "vacation", where people who are smart enough to not be self employed get to go places and do things, so I'm told), the dinner menu works a little differently now.  We have a set of entrees which we do every day hot, like our Chicken, Ribs, and Tri-Tip, and a set of entrees which we have every day chilled, like Lasagna, Pesto, and the Dinner Salads we serve at lunch.  Then we have the rotating daily dinner specials which you will see on the calendar.  So it may look, from the calendar, like we have fewer choices, but you can see that we actually have more choices for dinner than we used to (see our menu, below).

Saturday August 12:  Annual Downtown Street Festival & Ice Cream Cookie Sandwiches

The Hollister Downtown Association is putting on the Downtown Street Festival again this year and it sounds like it's going to be bigger and more fun than ever.  This is the 20th anniversary, and besides being a giant sidewalk sale for all the downtown merchants, there's a car show, live music, kids' jump houses, free watermelon, and unicorn rides!  Ok, no unicorns, but it'll be fun anyway.  The festival goes from 10 to 6.  We'll open at 11:00am and will extend our hours until 6:00pm for the occasion.

Of course, Running Rooster will be grilling burgers and what's more, we're bringing back Ice Cream Cookie Sandwiches that many of you still remember from the 2005 rally (the one that had motorcycles).  For those of you who don't remember, we take two of our great big Ghirardelli chocolate chip cookies and squish a big scoop of premium vanilla ice cream between.  It's bigger than this picture on the right, which we stole off the net somewhere.  Actually, that looks more like tuna salad between two Chips Ahoys.

This is probably a good opportunity to remind you that we are open every Saturday from 11 to 3, serving our daily lunch menu and grilling our giant gourmet hamburgers.  We also have some chilled dinner items on Saturdays, but no hot dinner items for now.

New lunch items:  Chicken Pesto on Focaccia, Heirloom Tomato Caprese

The last week or so we have started to make a new lunch sandwich called the Grilled Chicken Pesto on Focaccia.  The name is a mouthful (probably should have just called it "Bob") but so is the sandwich.  We take a freshly grilled and rosemary-marinated chicken breast, warm it up with some provolone cheese, and put it on a delicious just-baked focaccia bread that has been smeared with our own house-made pesto sauce. Top that with a little fire-roasted red pepper, locally grown vine-ripened tomatoes, and fresh-ground pepper, and this sandwich becomes moist, soft, full of great Italian flavors, and fully satisfying.  I think I'm starting to sound like J. Peterman.  It's still at the introductory price of $6.75 for the rest of this week.

The other new item, starting the 14th for a two week run, is an Heirloom Tomato Caprese Salad.  We get beautiful heirloom tomatoes from the Swanks, slice them onto a plate with fresh basil leaves, real mozzarella, and shaved red onion, and dress it with premium extra virgin olive oil from Pietra Santa and aged balsamic vinegar.  Summer on a plate, that's what it is.

Back-To-School Lunchboxes

August is also the time when kids start getting worried about how few days of freedom they have left and moms starting heading to the school supplies sales.  We have our kool metal lunch boxes for sale again this year in the store, starting Thursday.  Some have NASCAR, some have super heroes or cartoon characters, and some have pink heart designs.  There's a design for every kid's taste.  Take a look next time you're in.

Upcoming Dinner Menu

You can always see our menu by checking our website menu pages, or by downloading and printing our monthly menu, or by getting a copy of the monthly menu at the store.  Here are your choices for the next couple of weeks:

Regular Menu Choices:

• Hot Daily:  Wood-Roasted Garlic Rosemary Chicken, Memphis BBQ Baby Back Ribs, Marinated Grilled Tri-Tip (all available a la carte or as a dinner combo);
• Chilled Daily:  Old-fashioned Lasagna, fresh-made Pesto, and Dinner Salads (Chicken Walnut, Caesar, Cobb, and Shrimp Louie);
• Fridays and Saturdays:  1/2 pound Gourmet Hamburgers served fresh from the grill.

Daily Menu Specials:

• This Week:  Chicken Pot Pie (all week), Hickory BBQ Chicken (Mon-Wed), Tex-Mex Steak Fajitas (Wed-Fri);
• Next Week:  Chicken Enchiladas (all week), Roast Turkey & Gravy (Mon-Wed), BBQ Beef Brisket (Wed-Fri).

Subscribers Discount

I feel a little bad because the last trivia question I put out to you folks (about teaching the Rooster to not peck, remember?) was just too difficult.  Several people got part of it right, but no one got it totally.  That line was said by a character named Peach in "Lonesome Dove", after she wrung the neck of a Rooster that was bothering her while she was trying to talk to July.  I thought the clue about the pigs eating the snake on the front porch was a dead give-away.  Anyway, I'll be less obscure next time.

But on to the new discount phrase.  Just to bring this newsletter full circle, and in recognition of the fact that you have something better to do during the summer than cook dinner, your discount phrase for the next couple weeks is "It's too hot, get me out of the kitchen!"  Remember to use this phrase for a 10% discount on every order at Running Rooster (including lunch).

Mailing List Note:
You received this email because you either added yourself to the Running Rooster mail list on our Rooster News page, or you indicated that you wished to be added to the mail list via some other format, such as at the store. To be removed from the Running Rooster mail list, simply reply to this email with the subject line “REMOVE”. Please allow up to 3 days for removal, as I do it manually. After all, I cook chickens for a living.  This tech stuff is a pain.