Community eat at home and like it

nomoretogo.com

Stacey Stabenow amazed her friends with meal organization. The whiteboard in her kitchen always contained a menu for the week, and she only went grocery shopping once a week. “I’ve done it for years because it’s just something I do,” Stabenow says. “I like to cook, and going to the grocery store every day would make me crazy.” Eventually, a few of her friends offered to pay her if she would email them her meal plans and grocery lists. She thought it was crazy, but she agreed to put them on a blog. “I thought, ‘Oh, nobody will ever read this except my friends,’ ” she says. But 350 people signed up when she started offering free trial memberships this past August. Stabenow, who is president of the J.L. Long Middle School PTA, offers one free recipe a week at nomoretogo.com. She has about 70 paid subscribers now. They pay about $5 a month for the whole package meal plans, shopping lists and recipes. The recipes are healthy and varied. A sample menu includes steak tacos on Monday and pulled pork sandwiches on Thursday. “It’s something that I was doing for myself and my family anyway, and people really benefit from it,” Stabenow says. “I don’t do casseroles. I don’t do canned or boxed.” She tries all the recipes ahead of time to make sure they work, and she has a handful of fans who send pictures of their meals and carry on discussions about them on Facebook. “The only thing is, my 9-year-old gets tired of it because she’s like, ‘We never eat out!’ “

—Rachel Stone

Kenneth Hamburger II was a Lamborghini salesman in 2008, when the economy tanked.

He was laid off, and saw a chance to do something on his own. His future was born of a martini glass. Hamburger was drinking with friends one night when he realized it’s hard to make a good dirty martini at home, and even bartenders make them too salty. A dirty martini is vodka served straight up with olive juice. Hamburger started experimenting with olives in his M Streets kitchen. “I figured, if you can squeeze grapes, and you can squeeze oranges, why not do the same thing with olives?” he says. After some trials, he found a way to squeeze olives for juice, and it tasted better than any martini mix he had tried. A friend with a wine press helped him perfect the process on a large scale, and in March 2010, they produced the first bottle of 1888 Dirtiest Martini Mix. It is the only martini mix on the market that consists of pure olive juice, Hamburger says. All the others are olive brine. The 1888 mix now is widely available at liquor sores in Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona and New Mexico. Nick & Sam’s was Hamburger’s first client, and Kirby’s Woodfire Grill uses 1888 in its signature martini. Hamburger now is working on distribution deals in Missouri and Illinois. Next year, 1888 will launch two new flavors: bleu cheese and jalapeño. Hamburger sold all his stocks and cashed in his retirement to start the business. “It was a huge risk,” he says. But people always drink. Now Hamburger works fulltime for himself. Find 1888 Dirtiest Martini Mix at 1888olivepress.com. —Rachel Stone