The lovely Gina, one of our regular ladies in the restaurant, has been giving me a hand with getting the joint more energy efficient. One of her ideas was to begin a maintenance program for the refrigeration compressors (in a commercial setting, the motors that cool the fridges are external to the fridge ‘cabinet’. The compressors are these external motors).
So, the fridge tech came out and gave the motors a good clean and mentioned we should save a bit on our energy bill. Gina and the fridgy were bang on to the tune of about $60 for a month! The financial cost was about $120 for the work and I think we’ll do this every 6 months. So for a couple of hundred dollars a year, we could save about $700 plus the saving on potential breakdown costs that the regular servicing will help protect against. So, high fives to Gina for this initiative – it is always nice when helping the environment is also financially beneficial!

As we provide a completely meatless menu, we often get asked about the products we use. More specifically we are asked about our eggs and our cheeses. I’ve tended to avoid blogging about this stuff for fear of sounding preachy – I for one hate being told what to do and how to eat and hypocrisy is a credibility crusher. So this is simply meant to be an answer to a couple of FAQs.
The egg question is related to the living conditions of the chooks that provide our eggs. We source our eggs from Egganics who have an organic free-range farm in Orange. If you’ve visited the Everleigh markets, you are likely to know Jacqui, Jim and the girls from Egganics who have a commitment to providing quality organic eggs in a humane way. The chickens are protected by dogs and are free to roam about the farm as they choose, to the point that they put themselves to bed! The Egganics website is being built as we speak and as soon as it is finished I will be sure to post the address.
Now for the cheese question… This question is about whether or not the cheeses we use contain animal rennet. Animal rennet is an agent used to separate the curds and whey in the cheese making process and is derived from calves’ stomach. So, through much research, we’ve managed to source cheeses of high quality that do not contain any animal rennet. As a general rule, Australian produced cheeses tend not to use animal rennet whereas European cheeses do.