The National Mustard Museum, Brennan’s Market, Sand Hill Cranes,and A Thief at Costco

Yesterday, Anne-Marie and I didn’t have a busy day, but we did want to visit the National Mustard Museum, and Brennan’s Market with the super produce section, and meat counter.

The National Mustard Museum is a store on the ground level, and a museum in the basement.  The store sells all known types and flavors of mustard, that are in production today.  This picture of the displays, show how the flavors are separated by type flavor or from what location.  There are fruit flavors, cheese flavors, vegetable flavored (garlic and onion are popular) and any grind from whole seed to the finest grind, and color from yellow to brown.  All flavors in the store are available for tasting, just go to the tasting counter, and the staff have a large cooler with all flavors, and will provide small spoons of any flavor.  If you wanted, the staff would provide samples all day, until your taste buds became a bit numb.  Anne-Marie is at the tasting counter, deciding  between two flavors, the one she likes the best.

The store even has a gift shop area, T-shirts and hats.  The museum has many hundreds of mustards on display from all around the world, even a movie theater showing the history of mustards through the ages.

We visited Brennan’s Market, as Anne-Marie has a favorite smoked cheese, that we have only found here in Madison.  Brennan’s store has a meat market that is like the Midwestern states small town meat markets, with their special flavored brats and sausage.  We bought four of the flavors.

Sand Hill Cranes, this pair have a half grown youngster between them, on the ground and colored a light brown.  This group has about twenty of them, feeding at the edge of the pond.  The other side of the pond had over twenty of the sand hill cranes milling about. 

Today when we were at Costco, while I was walking down the tool isle, I saw a female on the adjacent isle walking briskly, and holding a bottle of rum with both hands.  I thought she might be a employee, but then she twisted the cap off, and still walking, took a long drink from it while still walking.  She put the cap back on, and stashed the bottle in between the displays, and then continued walking briskly.  I was shocked, as I have never seen any behavior of this type, eating or drinking something, and hiding it in the store.  I hurried down my isle, so to keep track of her, and she just seemed to walk in large circles in the bakery section, not looking at or for anything.  I was looking for a store employee, and trying to keep track of the female that took that big drink of rum, and she stopped at the meat counter, and I found a employee to report her to.  I overheard her speech and she was talking so fast, it was almost gibberish.  I took a manager to the area where she stashed the bottle, and she drank or spilled nearly a cup from it.  The store management thanked me for the information, and had five or six employees watching her, and I don’t know the outcome.  I have difficulty with not reporting theft of any type, I don’t look for it, and when I witness someone stealing anything, I am shocked.