Gourmet News • June 2021 by OserCommunicationsGroup

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A Spicy Sauce with a Side of History BY LORRIE BAUMANN

This is a story about Colorado Green Chili, and you will be glad to know about it because it is a

product with a story that you can buy in a jar. But we are going to start somewhere else because my

daddy was a man who could spin a story about a dump truck and a bird into a 15-minute saga just so he could get to, “It’s a long way to tip a raree.” We’re going to get to Colorado Green Chili by pretty much the same route that dump truck took. You may be grateful that we are not going to be detouring into the whole history of the Santa Fe Railroad, the Fred Harvey Company and the Harvey Girls, even though they are related, because I know you are busy people, and your pa-

tience is limited. Route 66 will not be mentioned again, either. Instead, we are going to start with John Steinbeck. In his 1962 “Travels with Charley,” a story credibly alleged to be more fiction than non, John Steinbeck tells about meeting an aging thespian who mistakes him for a fellow member of the profession. In a roadside campsite somewhere outside Fargo, North Dakota, Steinbeck says he woke up to find that he had an unexpected neighbor, and over coffee and a conveniently stationed bottle of whisky, the actor explained that he’s just drifting from town to town putting on an occasional

that his grandparents switched their farm from onions to mint while his dad and his uncle were fighting in the Pacific campaign during World War II. A few farms in the region were already growing mint, and it was a crop they hoped to be able to make some money with and could farm without help from their sons. “Dad had spent a year

at the University of Washington studying electrical engineering when he got his draft notice and joined the Marines,” Seely said. “He was a radio man in the Marines and worked with a [Navajo] Wind Talker. Once he had the radio shot off his back.... When he came back, he started

Fourteen ciders across the nation were recognized in the 2021 Good Food Awards. Wise Bird Cider, in Lexington, Kentucky, makes two of them. Wise Bird won the award for its Hewe’s Crab and Pommeau. Its Ashmead’s Kernel was named a finalist. Hewe’s Crab is a famous cider variety of apple that’s a cross between an American wild crabapple and a European cultivated variety. It appeared in Virginia in the early 18th century, and cider made from it was a favorite of George Washington. Thomas Jefferson planted Hewe’s Crab apples on his Monticello estate, where the orchard became an important repository for the variety’s genetics after Prohibition destroyed the American cider industry in the 1920s and apples like the Hewe’s Crab that didn’t make good eating off the tree fell into disfavor. Today, though, the Hewe’s Crab Apple is enshrined in the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity Ark of Taste as a treasure worth saving, and Monticello is, among other distinctions, a preserve for the genes of these apples. Wise Bird’s Pommeau is a fortified dessert cider made with Wise

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ther, was a ferry boat captain shuttling customers across the James River between Surry County and Jamestown Island. By the 1920s, Jamestown, the site of the original 1607 settlement by the Virginia Company under a charter from King James I of England, was already a tourist attraction. Over the years, Jamestown had ceased to exist as a community, but late in the 19th century, it became the subject of renewed historical interest, and in 1893, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Barney, who owned the land at that time, donated 22.5 acres on Jamestown Island, including the

17th-century tower of the Jamestown Church, to the organization that is now known as Preservation Virginia. In 1926, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. committed himself to the restoration of colonial Williamsburg, about 5.5 miles away, and the area became the Colonial National Monument in 1930. On June 5, 1936, it was redesignated as a national historical park. Jamestown National Historic Site was designated on December 18, 1940. Ferry boat Captain Edwards boosted the popularity of his ferry

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Real Mint Flavor from a Farming Family BY LORRIE BAUMANN

• Novel Food System for a Nation of Desert Dwellers PAGE 6

• Featured Products PAGE 17

• Ready for Adventure PAGES 30 & 31

• Editor’s Picks PAGE 32

• Ad Index PAGE 34

Seely Mint Patties have a depth of flavor that’s unmatched by conventional varieties of the same confection. Hand-made in Oregon with Fair Trade-certified European dark chocolate and heirloom peppermint oil grown on one of the last remaining mint farms in the U.S., they’re the product of a fourth-generation farming family that’s been growing mint in the lower Columbia River basin since the middle of World War II. Mike Seely, today’s farmer, says

Wise Bird Cider Stakes a Claim on Excellence BY LORRIE BAUMANN

Reaching into the Past for Flavor BY LORRIE BAUMANN

When my father was teaching me to drive up the hills and across the one-lane bridges of Shawnee County, Kansas, he used to tell me, “Make sure you’re right, and

then go ahead.” That was his advice for how to get past stop signs, through unmarked intersections and onto busy interstate highways, and it’s worked all these years since then. Sam Edwards’ father used say something similar to him. He’s quoted on the Edwards Smokehouse website this way: “Times change and you’ve got to change with it, but once you know what’s right you adhere to it.” The Sam Edwards who runs the Edwards Smokehouse today is the third generation in a business that got started in 1926 when Samuel Wallace Edwards, Sam’s grandfa-

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JUNE 2021

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JUNE 2021

NovelforFood System a Nation of BY LORRIE BAUMANN

Desert Dwellers

Cherilyn Yazzie is a woman on a mission to improve the health of the people around her on the Navajo Nation by increasing food self-sufficiency and access to fresh produce in a very rural area that sits as a sovereign entity in the Four Corners region of the United States, spanning 27,000 square miles in New Mexico, Arizona and Utah – an area roughly the size of West Virginia. Almost the entire Navajo Nation is classified as a food desert by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and only 13 grocery stores were operating within the Nation as of November, 2019. Those small stores predominately offer highly processed foods with low nutritional value and little in the way of fresh fruits and vegetables. Navajo Nation's food insecurity rates are among the highest in the United States, at 76.7 percent. Household food insecurity is linked to risks of obesity, hypertension and type 2 diabetes. Yazzie was aware that people in her community who didn't have either easy access to a grocery store or homes served by an electrical grid and a municipal water system were heavily dependent on dried and canned foods that they got from either a conventional grocery store or from U.S. government food distributions. “With living off-grid, food storage is an issue that requires frequent trips to the grocery store and there are food safety issues,” she said. She'd become an expert in many of those issues because she has a background in public health, working on education programs to educate tribal members about nu-

trition. She'd talk to school children about nutrition and its effects on their health only to be told that it was useless for her students to learn how to prepare healthier food if their real problem was that their families had no access to those foods. As Yazzie explained in an application for a grant from OpenIDEO, an organization devoted to developing creative solutions to tough societal problems around the globe, “... what was once a community deeply connected to healthy cultural food practices, has now been displaced by a proliferation of unhealthy convenience foods in a community has been designated as a low income and low-supermarket access census tract by the United States Department of Agriculture.” According to Yazzie's June 2020 application, the current unemployment rate for the Navajo Nation is 48.5 percent, and the average household income is $8,240. “Many Diné [Navajo] families travel 20 miles or more to access the closest full-service grocery store,” she wrote. “The limited grocery store access and isolation is further exacerbated by high rates of chronic disease that disproportionately impact the Diné people.” Yazzie thought about the reality that her people had a long history in which they'd provided themselves with the food they needed to live healthy lives in the same desert landscape where they live today. “How come we don't have our own local farmers and ranchers?” she asked herself. “There are a lot of reasons that those things aren't happening, and they should be hap-

pening.... I just started thinking, What does that look like?” She decided she needed to do more, starting in 2016 with a garden at her own home and then eventually expanding that into Coffee Pot Farms, a one-acre plot in Dilkon, Arizona, where she now grows vegetables for market and shares resources and information with other small farmers in her neighborhood who share some of the same goals. Along the way, she has learned a lot about the vegetables that her neighbors wanted to eat, she made some decisions about which of them were feasible on the land she had available and she started acquiring farming tools. “It has taken us a while,” she said. “This year, we're a little more organized – we have a crop plan.” This was supposed to be the year that the farm was going to go big with a plan to set up multiple farm stands around the Nation where she and the other members of the Navajo Green Team, a collaboration with three other local farmers in the southwestern corner of the Navajo Nation, could sell the fresh produce they were raising. They had won a grant to pay for it, and they were thinking through locations and making plans to build. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. “We've had to pivot our strategy,” Yazzie said. With farmers markets and farm stands now a public health risk, Coffee Pot Farms and Yazzie's allies have had to figure out how they can get their lettuce, bok choy, tomatoes, chiles, bell peppers and broccoli into the hands of customers. Yazzie's new

plan echoes the strategies adopted by independent grocery retailers elsewhere in the country – she's organizing produce deliveries and developing a website for the operation with some funding from the Native Organizers Alliance, a training and organizing network dedicated to building the capacity of Native tribes, traditional societies and community groups to make transformational change. Like other grocery retailers who've been forced to adapt quickly to the demands of the pandemic, Yazzie's grappling with complicated logistics. On the Navajo Nation, the distances are great, and the population density isn't – the current population of that 27,000 square miles is about a quarter of a million people. Yazzie and her collaborators are still figuring out how far they can afford to deliver their produce. Until the website can be developed, customers for the service are placing orders for the farms' produce by phone and word of mouth as they get word about what produce is available and what it costs. “People are interested in it, but we're figuring it out,” Yazzie said. “I think next year if COVID-19 slowed down, we would probably do both [the delivery operation and the planned farm stands]. We would keep the online structure in place.” GN

GOURMET NEWS

JUNE 2021

sophisticated traditional spirit for a

palate

BY LORRIE BAUMANN

For Gaston Martinez, a sip of IZO Mezcal is a form of communion with the spirits of his ancestors in the Mexican state of Durango, where he was born and raised. An American resident for the past 15 years, Martinez is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of IZO Mezcal, which imports the spirit from Durango into the U.S., where it’s distributed in southern California, southern Arizona and in Texas from Houston to San Antonio and Dallas. “Slowly but steadily, we are reaching the bigger markets in the U.S.,” he said. “Our next target is the East Coast, but we’re putting that on hold until everything gets back to normal.” Another next step for the company is the launch of a new line of agave spirits that will be reaching the market over the next year, including a Mezcal Añejo aged 12 months in oak barrels and targeted for release to the market in 2021. “It is actually in the barrels as we speak. The magic is happening,” he said. “We’re looking forward to tasting it after 12 months of waiting, and I think it’s going to be spectacular. We’re expecting a seductively rich, smooth and lightly smoked product.” Mezcal has been gaining popularity in the U.S. over the past few years along with the rise in the craft cocktail movement. It’s been championed by bartenders who have become advocates for environmental and social justice and nurtured by the Mexican government, which protects mezcal with a protected designation of origin certification that’s required for mezcal that’s exported from the country. “Mezcal being part of our culture, our celebrations, it’s in our roots,” Martinez said. “I want to bring a piece of my hometown to the world.” IZO Mezcal is named for Cenizo agave, one of several varieties of agave that are used to

make mezcal. Tequila, which is made from blue agave, is another variety of mezcal, which is a generic term that’s roughly the agave equivalent of “moonshine.” Mezcal is known to have been made in northern Mexico for at least 400 years, and while its origins are murky, Martinez believes it was introduced in Durango by Jesuit missionaries during the Spanish colonization of Mexico. Other theorists suggest an indigenous origin in other Mexican states. For IZO Mezcal, the Cenizo agave is harvested from the wild in the hills and transported down the hill to a palenque, a traditional-style distilling operation, in Durango, where it’s roasted in a fire pit for four to five days. “We use burros to carry the agave down the hill to trucks that transport it to our distillery. It takes a week to bring enough agave to start the process,” Martinez said. “We throw the agave hearts on top of burning oak, in a fire pit lined with volcanic rock. The hearts are then covered with a burlap tarp and dirt. The agave roasts for four to five days, which is the ancestral, artisanal way and which is how the mezcal gets its smoky taste.” Although agaves are now being cultivated in Mexico as ingredients for massproduced tequilas, IZO uses only wild agaves, Martinez said. “We have this phenomenal wild agave. It’s like comparing a wild berry to a farmed one. The wild ones are full of joy, full of life – same thing with the agave.” During distillation, IZO collects only the heart of the distillation products for bottling, unlike some other makers who may

collect the tails of the process and blend that into the product as a way to control alcohol levels. That blending can introduce off flavors. The result of IZO’s meticulous process is a 94-proof spirit with a medium smoke that introduces itself with citrus notes followed by a lot of botanical presence and a long, earthy finish, Martinez said. “It’s a very smooth finish,” he said. “Even though it’s a high proof product, it’s not harsh.” Martinez recommends that the spirit be sipped, as is traditional, but he says it also works well in cocktails. “It is a spectacular experience for me,” he said. “Every time I have a sip of IZO Mezcal, it always reminds me of all the labor and love that went to make it.” The quality of that experience has been rewarded by medals from the judges of this year’s spirits competitions. IZO Mezcal has won a gold medal in San Diego, a silver medal in Los Angeles, a bronze in New York and a bronze in San Francisco. “These awards validate that we definitely have a wonderful mezcal that has been well received everywhere,” Martinez said. “It’s a great product to drink at any time. In the wintertime, you can have a little sip of a nice cocktail. In Mexico, some people add a splash to a cup of coffee. It’s pretty good. I like it.” Along with the Mezcal Añejo that’s due for release next year, IZO Mezcal has a few other products in development, including a Sotol, a spirit made similarly to mezcal but from a different plant that also grows wild in northern Mexico as well as

in New Mexico and Texas, where it is commonly known as Desert Spoon. “We’re making Sotol for the next member of the family,” Martinez said. He’s expecting that to be ready for the market in late July of this year. At the same time, IZO will be releasing Ensamble, a mezcal made by combining two different agaves, Cenizo and Lamparillo, in the cooking process. The company is also releasing Mezcal Reposado this year. That’s a mezcal that’s aged for 60 days in an

American oak barrel, to produce an amber color and vanilla, rich chocolate and apricot flavors. In addition, IZO is partnering with a tequila producer that will be making a tequila for the IZO label: IZO Extra Añejo Cristalino. This is a tequila made from 100 percent blue agave that’s been aged for three years in an American oak barrel for flavor and then filtered through activated charcoal to remove the color and make it crystal-clear. “This is an exquisite product,” Martinez said. “It’s so amazing and rich and sophisticated.” The IZO Extra Añejo Cristalino is also expected to be released in late July. For more information, email gaston@izo mezcal.com or visit www.izomezcal.com. GN

Seely Mint Patties Continued from PAGE 1 farming alongside his father, raising mint.” Mike’s dad expanded the farm from 35 acres to 115 acres, met a girl he liked at a dance hall and had five kids, including Mike, who started farming when he was six years old, raising pumpkins and selling them on the front porch for enough money to buy a $19.95 Timex watch. In following years, Mike expanded his farming operation to include other vegetables as well as the pumpkins for his front-porch farm stand. “That’s how I paid for college,” he said. Mike followed in his father’s footsteps by studying electrical engineering – he has a degree in electrical engineering as well as a master’s degree in business administration – before he went back to farming, this time with mint. Since there was no acreage right around his parents’ farm, he started his own farm 20 miles away. By this time, just about everyone in his family was raising mint and processing it for its oil, which found a ready market for the mint flavoring in candies, toothpaste and even tobacco. “William Wrigley from Wrigley Chewing Gum would come out to the farm in the ‘50s and grab the

hoe from Mom and hoe 100 yards down the row with Dad and say, ‘We’re buying your oil again this year.’” Mike said. “Wrigley used to have 11 or 12 flavorists. One of their main jobs was to sniff the oil that came in – every barrel, They knew, when it came in, which barrels of oil came from our farm – that was the difference.” The depth of the aroma – and the flavor – of the Seely peppermint oil is the result of the unique heritage of the plant from which the oil comes, Black Mitcham Peppermint. It originated near Mitcham in

GOURMET NEWS England after the Romans brought spearmint with them from the Middle East on their way to conquer England, Seely says. “It crossed with watermint somewhere along the way to produce peppermint.” Discovered in the 1600s, the Black Mitcham variety was named after the town in which it was grown and the black edge on its leaf. “It evolved along that latitude to produce a unique essential oil.” Seely said. That latitude isn’t far off the latitude where Seely’s farm is found today, and, as it grew in England, his peppermint grows in a rich peaty soil in a climate that’s very similar to that of Mitcham to produce an oil whose flavor is a delicate balance of more than 200 chemical compounds. “That’s what creates a very unique flavor profile that’s controlled by soil, climate and how you raise it,” Seely said. The scientists point out that peppermint oil has a composition that’s dominated by menthol, the chemical that produces the cool sensation when you breathe air into your mouth while you’re chewing a Seely Peppermint Patty, as well as menthone and a host of other chemicals that lend it antioxidant and antiradical properties. Seely preserves those delicate components by harvesting his mint just once a year, rather than the twiceyearly cuttings that are done by some of his neighbors in the Columbia River Valley, starting in the morning just when the plants have begun to bloom. “It really never evolved to be that kind of plant – to be harvested twice a year. It evolved to have a little bit of bloom to make the oil. Everybody else is focused on the yield rather than the flavor profile of the oil,” he said. “One harvest is enough for us. We want to harvest at that 3to 5-percent bloom where you really have that flavor profile that we want.” That flavor profile comes out in the Seely Peppermint Patties that are a flagship product for the Seely Family Farms brand. Those were invented by Mike’s wife, Candy, after the market for fine-quality peppermint crashed when a synthetic menthol oil took over after the patent on its manufacture expired in 1962 and manufacturers started looking at it as a “natural flavor” that was a cheaper alternative to real mint oil. “This was in the ‘90s, and it was no longer about the quality of the oil; it was about the price point,” Seely said. “They started to transition away from high-quality, clean ingredients.” Seely and his family of growing children started looking for another crop to raise on their farm, starting with a trip to the Portland, Oregon, farmers market to see what other farmers in their area were growing. “We thought we were done raising peppermint and spearmint,” Seely said. “On the way home, we realized that there was nobody selling mint at the farmers market. We talked our way in and got a booth. With no marketing

plan or anything, we started selling.” What Mike and Candy started taking to the farmers market was peppermint and

spearmint leaves for tea and bottles of the oil. They didn’t sell much. “We realized that people really had no clue about mint oil. They didn’t understand. They didn’t know if they wanted spearmint or peppermint or what,” Mike said. “They didn’t know what to do with it.” Candy decided that the best way to show farmers market shoppers the potential of the oil was to demonstrate with some of her peppermint patties, which she took to the market to offer as samples to potential customers. “The very first lady – from a very

JUNE 2021

wealthy area in the west hills of Portland said, ‘I don’t want to make these – I want to buy them,’” Mike recalls. “That’s literally how we got started.” That was a moment of destiny for Seely Family Farms, which today offers 17 SKUs of products that contain the Seelys’ real peppermint and spearmint oil grown and processed on their farm in northwest Oregon. They include Seely Peppermint Patties, Dark Mint Melts, Peppermint Bark, Ivory Mints that are made from premium Italian white chocolate and peppermint/spearmint oil and candy canes – red-striped ones made with peppermint, green ones made with spearmint and red and green-striped canes made with a blend of peppermint and spearmint. The range also includes mint teas: Oregon Heirloom Peppermint Tea; Oregon Mint, made with a blend of peppermint and spearmint; Oregon Native Spearmint; and Oregon Peppermint & Green Tea. “We are destined to grow our business. One pint of peppermint flavors 55,000 sticks of peppermint chewing gum. It goes a long way, so we have a long ways to go to use all of our mint oil in all of our products,” Seely said. “It’s really all about clean ingredients, being sustainable, being Non-GMO Verified, using peppermint oil instead of synthetic.” For more information, visit www.seelymint.com. GN

Spicy Sauce Continued from PAGE 1 one-man show for an audience that doesn’t recognize him. “You know when show people come into what they call the sticks they have contempt for the yokels,” he tells Steinbeck. “It took me a little time, but when I learned that there aren’t any yokels I began to get on fine.” Then, according to Steinbeck, the itinerant actor pulled an aluminum foil-wrapped letter of encouragement from John Gielgud out of his wallet, showed it to Steinbeck and made his exit, leaving the writer with more questions than answers. “Keep them asking,” he’d advised, “and exit clean and sharp.” By the time that Steinbeck was making his way across the country with a green camper truck he’d named Rocinante and a full-sized standard French poodle with a roar like a lion and not much bite to him so he could figure out what America was all about and whether he had another novel left in him, the King’s Chef Diner had been serving customers in Colorado Springs, Colorado, for half a dozen years, although none of them apparently went on to win a Nobel Prize for Literature. The King’s Chef, built in the shape of a castle, was a custombuilt Valentine Diner manufactured in Wichita, Kansas, where Arthur Valentine had figured out sometime in the 1920s that, like Fred Harvey, he could make a living with lunchrooms that served hot food fast to working men who needed to eat and be on their way. Following the Great Depression, Valentine teamed up with a succession of manufacturers who built mobile diners designed to be carried onto a lot on a flat-bed truck or on their own wheels, each decorated with the Valentine logo somewhere it couldn’t fail to be noticed. When Arthur Valentine died in 1954, there were thousands of his prefab diners that were scattered around the country’s heartland dishing up short-order breakfasts and no-nonsense lunches to local working men as well as the travelers who’d hit the highways after World War II gas and rubber shortages had eased and Dwight D. Eisenhower had declared the country’s highway system to be essential infrastructure. Gary Geiser first saw The King’s Chef in 1997. Custom built in the shape of a castle in 1956, it had seen better days, but like that old bum romancing his way across the country with Charley the blue poodle, it still had a story to tell. Geiser wasn’t long out of Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, and although he’d managed to pick up some work here and there, he didn’t have much in the way of prospects. He’d been thinking about going back to Durango to see what he could scratch up there when a friend suggested that he go and look at the decrepit old purple castle on Costilla Street. “I think what they saw was, and this was something I didn’t understand at the time, was that my attitude would be perfect for the diner cul-

GOURMET NEWS ture,” Geiser says. A Colorado historical landmark, The King’s Chef stood out on its street like a Gloucester Old Spot in a chorus line. Geiser had never operated a diner – didn’t even know how to cook – and the building definitely needed work. But when Geiser saw that purple castle, he fell for it fast and he fell hard. Also, he noted, “It was extremely cheap.” Although Geiser didn’t know the first thing about slinging hash, he had a buddy who’d cooked his way through college and was willing to come to Colorado Springs for a while. “He came in with me and helped me out for the first six months,” Geiser said. “Then he matriculated on his way, and I went on with my path.” One of the first things Geiser did after he’d sunk his future into the diner was to ask his new customers what he had to do about the food. “You gotta fix the green chili,” they told him. “It did have a green chili sauce at the time. It was extremely different from what ours is today,” Geiser says. “I would make a batch, and they would say, ‘Yeah, that’s not it. Try again.’” Geiser won their approval with a classic New Mexico-style chile verde with a flour roux, pork and the local Mirasol chile peppers. Although chile verde is frequently eaten throughout the West on its own as a supper or as a breakfast that’ll soothe a hangover and jump-start a Monday, Geiser’s customers also liked it poured over their eggs like gravy so they could sop it up with their Texas toast. The Food Network came to town for the first season of “Outrageous Food,” and Big Daddy Aaron McCargo, Jr. made The King’s

Colorado Green Chili. It entitled those who managed to finish it to a membership in the diner’s Clean Plate Club.

Chef famous for a breakfast called “The Thing,” a six-inch stack that featured a choice of meat along with eggs, hash browns, that Texas toast, and of course,

out of the sauce. We started taking it from New Mexico-style to Colorado – nothing but great vegetables, a little bit of salt and pepper, and then we get out of the way,”

A couple of years in, a posse of Whole Foods associates came in to try the food and told Geiser they’d sell his Colorado Green Chili on a local program if he’d jar it up for them. To make that work, Geiser

took the meat out of his sauce so it wouldn’t require U.S. Department of Agriculture certification, and then he took it into Whole Foods and demonstrated it for a whole new fan base. By 2008, Geiser was ready to spin off Colorado Green Chili from The King’s Chef. Geiser is still operating the diner, although now as a take-out only operation that complies with pandemic-era indoor dining bans, but Colorado Green Chili now operates out of its own Food and Drug Administration- and USDA-certified packing plant in Colorado Springs, where Geiser is also co-packing private label products for other manufacturers. The sauce is also now gluten free. “As the customers were talking to us, we made a decision to remove the flour roux

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he says. The Colorado Green Chili sauce is made with local Mirasol peppers, that are a little bit spicier than the poblano peppers often used to make similar sauces and not as hot as the average jalapeño. They’re grown widely in Colorado, where the hot days and the cool nights give them a little zippier flavor and a thicker skin than the same peppers get when they’re grown farther south in New Mexico, Geiser says. The Mirasol pepper is also grown throughout Latin America. It’s green when young and ripens into a yellow-red. When dried, it’s known as a guajillo, which is widely used in Central and South American cuisine. Its name translates as “looking at the sun,” because the peppers grow with the pointy end up, all grouped together on their stems like a circle of Rockettes kicking their sparkly red tap shoes up into the air. Both the green and red Mirasol chiles have a very rounded spiciness that doesn’t need any sugar added to the sauce to smooth out the flavor, according to Geiser. “We let the natural sweet and heat from the plant from those hot summer days and cool nights come through,” he said. Colorado Green Chili is available in widemouth 16-ounce glass jars that retail for $6.99. The company makes both Hot and Medium versions of the Colorado Green Chili Sauce as well as a Fire Roasted Autumn Salsa that features the Mirasol peppers picked in autumn and blended with fire-roasted tomatoes, cilantro, lime juice and some habañero peppers for what Geiser calls a “nice little creeper burn.” “If you don’t like spicy stuff, our products might not be right for you,” he says. The entire line is certified by the Non-GMO Project and is currently being sold in more than 300 stores in the Rocky Mountain region. Over the next year, Geiser is planning to expand that reach to more than 600 stores throughout the Intermountain West through direct-tostore distribution. “We work with our partner farms in southern Colorado. We have to be cognizant not to outsell our forecasted growth,” Geiser said. “We are ready to go beyond the Rocky Mountain region in 2021.” Currently in development are red and green enchilada sauces and salad and sandwich dressings that also feature the Mirasol peppers. The line extensions will be launching into the market in 2021 and 2022. For more information about Colorado Green Chili, visit www.cogrn.com. GN

Into the Past Continued from PAGE 1 service and made a little extra cash by serving sandwiches made with his home-cured ham to his passengers on their way to spend a day touring Jamestown Island and its artifacts. It turned out that there were a good many of those customers who wanted to wrap their lips around a succulent bite of ham more often than they wanted to traipse around the ruins of a colonial settlement, however historic it undoubtedly was, and they created such a demand for Edwards’ hams that he ended up deciding to chuck the ferry boat business and just cure pork for a living. He eventually passed his smokehouse he’d built in the early 1880s down to his son, S. Wallace Edwards, Jr. It was S. Wallace Edwards, Jr., quoted on the company

website, who changed with the times as he presided over the company as U.S. Department of Agriculture food safety regulations and meat inspection practices evolved, and the meat inspector went from being a semiannual visitor to a plant fixture. “That was an interesting time for him,” Sam says. “During my time, it’s always been like that – having a meat inspector in the plant every day was normal.” S. Wallace Edwards, Jr., in turn, passed along the secrets of making those country hams, the family sausage recipe and the smokehouse to his son, who formally has a “III” after his name but mostly calls himself Sam. Sam started out following his father’s advice that times change and he needed to change with them, and he did his best, but as the times changed, he started noticing that the hams he was making just weren’t as good as the hams that his grandfather and his father had made. He didn’t have to ask himself too much about the why of that – while the way he made his hams might have changed a little bit from his grandfather’s day, what had changed even more was the pork Sam was buying. Health Concerns Change Pork Over the 1970s, nutrition scientists started

GOURMET NEWS piecing together studies that linked diet to cardiovascular disease, and in 1977, after years of debate, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs released “Dietary Goals for the United States.” Loosely summarized, the report suggested that fewer men would drop dead from heart attacks if they started eating more whole grains and fruit and less red meat. Specifically, the guidelines recommended that saturated fat consumption should be reduced to about 10 percent of total calorie intake. After any number of groups started questioning whether those recommendations were actually backed up by the science, the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services went to work on the question of what advice to give Americans about their daily food choices, and in 1980 released “Nutrition and Your Health: Dietary Guidelines for Americans.”

that would produce lighter colored, leaner meat with a nutrition profile that was closer to what fat-fearing Americans who’d been convinced that pork was supposed to be a white meat were willing to consume. Compared with pigs from the 1950s, pigs now have about 75 percent less fat, and most of the females used in modern breeding systems come from the white breeds – Yorkshire (also known as Large White), Landrace and Chester White, docile breeds known for producing large litters.

With all this new advice to limit fats in their diets – advice that more recent research has shown to have been deeply flawed – pork came to be widely regarded as a proximate cause of cardiovascular disease. The nutritional value of pork was being compared to that of chicken and turkey, and pork was losing out. The National Pork Board sprang into action, fighting back with a rebranding campaign that named pork “the other white meat” in 1987. Though “Pork. The Other White Meat” wasn’t as successful at driving sales as “You Meet the Nicest People on a Honda” and didn’t have quite the punch of “Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner,” it did its job, holding per capita pork consumption steady at around 50 pounds per person despite all the yammering about dietary fat and the price difference at the supermarket between factory-raised pork and factory-raised chicken. Per capita pork expenditure bumped from $92.66 in 1987 to $112.56 by 1991, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Livestock Marketing Information Center. Along the way, pork producers started breeding a different kind of pig – a leaner animal with a longer body that could be raised efficiently on an industrial scale and

developed by 13 to 15 weeks. Specialized receptor cells in our mouths are known to respond to sugars, the building blocks of carbohydrates; to amino acids that are the building blocks of proteins; and to lipids, the building blocks of fats. While scientists thought until recently that our appreciation for fats comes from their aromas and their mouthfeel, recent research has found that we actually can taste fatty acids and that both taste and mouthfeel contribute to our enjoyment of fatty foods. Since our taste buds also respond to amino acids, fats aren’t the only contributor to savory flavors, but they’re one reason that the very pale pork that’s billed as a white meat doesn’t have the eating quality of the darker meat of pigs not bred for commercial success.

Why Fat Equals Flavor What got lost along with the fat was a lot of pork’s flavor. The ability to taste food is inborn in us, and human beings really can taste the difference between foods that are rich in fats and those that aren’t. Specialized taste cells first appear in the human fetus at around the seventh or eighth week of gestation, and mature taste buds have

A Quest for Flavor Sam could taste the difference for himself. If he was going to make better hams, he needed better pork. To find it, he went looking for pigs that were raised the way they were in his grandfather’s day. He had to leave Virginia to do it, since along the way, American pork production had moved from the American South to the Midwestern Corn Belt, but he

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found them on the pastures at small farms where the farmers who’d chosen not to invest in large-scale swine production facilities were raising the same kind of yard pigs that their own grandfathers had raised – pigs from breeds with names like Berkshire, Tamworth, Duroc, Gloucester Old Spot and Mulefoot, sturdy breeds known for eating whatever their farm families could spare in the way of table scraps and grubbing for the rest of their food out on the land. “Most of the Midwest farms are raising 500 hogs on a farm or less – usually 200 or 250 at a time. In Virginia, that was kind of common, but it’s not much anymore,” Sam says. “When pigs come running to the farmer, that’s a good sign. It’s a good indication of how the farmer treats the livestock.” Consumers Catch on to What’s Happened to Food Over the last 30 years, the Slow Food movement has changed the way many people think about food. The movement started in Italy when its founders took deep offense at an announcement that McDonald’s was planning to build a restaurant next to Rome’s Spanish Steps. Their “Slow Food Manifesto” called for a return to gastronomic pleasure and historical food culture freed from the shackles of industrial food production. Since then, that philosophy that food ought to be nourishment for the soul as well as nutrition for the body has spread to the United States under the influence of pioneering chefs, and Slow Food USA has 150 chapters in a movement with chapters in more than 160 countries around the world. The Slow Food philosophy has helped change attitudes about what makes a quality piece of pork, creating the market that helps keep the small farmers who supply the pork for Edwards Smokehouse in business, according to Patrick Martins, Founder of Heritage Foods, which grew out of Martins’ participation in the Slow Food movement. Creating the Market for Heritage Livestock Breeds As a Slow Food disciple, Martins regards the farming of animals bred for the needs of the commodity market as fundamentally inhumane. “Essentially, a cardinal principle – the number-one or number-two factor in humanely raising animals for consumption is genetics, the healthy genetics of the animal,” he said. “Confinement is not as important as genetics. Organic feed is not as important as the genetics. Great genetics is the ultimate compliment.” Continued on PAGE 16

Into the Past Continued from PAGE 14 Offended by turkeys bred for the mass market to have breasts so gigantic that they could no longer breed naturally and their legs could no longer carry their bodies, Martins started Heritage Foods with the intention to save turkeys from that fate. He figured that people who shared the philosophy that fast food isn’t the best food might also agree that the best turkey isn’t one bred for the needs of the mass market, but he also knew that without a market for heritage breeds, farmers couldn’t afford to raise them, and those breeds would die out, in a livestock-related application of Gresham’s Law, an economic principle usually stated as, “Bad money drives out good.” What that means with respect to turkeys is that if the only thing you value about a turkey is the quantity of its breast meat, then whoever can produce turkeys with the biggest breasts cheaper than anyone else has an edge in the market that farmers raising old-fashioned breeds of turkeys in the old-fashioned way can’t compete with. The way to get past that is to find customers who value a turkey for reasons other than the size of its breast and the cheapness of its price. Martins set out to create that market for better turkeys. He bought heritage-breed turkeys from farmers more interested in growing turkeys that ultimately tasted better than in raising birds bred to convert poultry feed into white meat as quickly as possible, and then he sold them to likeminded customers through his annual mail-order catalog and to New York chefs whose customers weren’t looking for the cheapest meal in the city. That worked, but then he found that the farmers from whom he was buying couldn’t quite make a go of it on one Thanksgiving turkey paycheck a year. So Martins asked the New York chefs who were buying his turkeys what else they’d be interested in buying from him. Then he went back to his turkey farmers. “They were all raising turkeys, rare breeds of turkeys,” Martins said. “They said they could get access to rare breeds of pigs.” “The pig was the perfect livestock to produce cash flow,” he added. “We promised that we would buy them….. The restaurants, true to their word, were there for us. They started to buy all the parts. Our challenge was to sell all the pork, nose to tail.” With Sam Edwards, Martins found a happy customer for the uncured hams, which provided cash flow to help Heritage Foods take off on its new mission to save more than just turkeys. “Everything we sell is heritage. Back in 2004, no one cared at all about that issue,” Martins said. Sam Edwards did care. “He provided an anchor for about 50 farms that had risked everything to abandon commodity. I find that remarkable,” Martins said. “He was taking thousands of pounds a week from heritage breeds, having no idea if there would be a market for it.” Since its early days as a once-yearly purveyor of Thanksgiving turkeys, Heritage Foods has grown into a year-round business fueled by the development of e-commerce directly to consumers as well as the restaurant sales that helped Martins get

GOURMET NEWS started. The company buys and resells many of the hams that Edwards Smokehouse produces for wholesale and retail trade, and it’s now supporting about 80 families, counting the farmers who raise the livestock as well as those who pack and ship 300 to 800 orders a week. “Now, if you look at our site, Heritage Foods, we have everything. A family of two can buy just two chops,” Martins said. “It started with the Slow Food members. Then we would get a lot of press, and chefs would spread the word about us, and now we do all the things necessary for mail-order success.” “Sam started that,” he added. “Sam was the guy who gave us that first nationally recognized product. And it was delicious, and it showed us what heritage breeds could do, which was stand up to 400 days of aging.” Curing Hams the Old-Fashioned Way Though Sam doesn’t slaughter pigs in the oak trees in the neighbor’s yard or smoke hams and bacon in the same old smokehouse his grandfather used, the hams that are sold under the Edwards Smokehouse label today are still made with his grandfather’s recipes. “The process is the same as when my grandfather was curing meat,” he says. “We put the hams in salt. We leave them in salt the least amount of time we can to be sure they get cured.” The hams are then washed off and hung in a 50-degree room for 21 days before the temperature is raised to 85 degrees and the hams are smoked over hickory. “Everything we do, we use hickory,” Sam says. Hickory logs or chopped hickory goes into a smoke generator to burn slowly. “You don’t want a lot of heat; you just want the smoke,” Sam says. After the hams have smoked to a dark mahogany color, they’re taken to an aging room where they hang until they’re ready to go to market. Hams to be sold with a milder flavor profile are aged for about four or five months. Hams to be sold under Edwards’ Wigwam brand, Sam’s grandfather’s flagship hams, are aged for about 11 to 14 months to produce the intense flavors that would have been expected of a Virginia country ham in the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s. Sam’s own flagship ham, the Surryano, is aged for a minimum of 400 days. They’re all taken off their hooks to be cooked, deboned or sliced only when they smell just right when an ice pick is stuck into them. “The aroma is solely the nose. That is a trained process. We have a handful of people that we rely on,” Sam says. “I will walk into an aging room and test a lot…. I’ll randomly walk through and stick the ice pick into it…. Another person will then stick every ham before they’re released. Occasionally in a batch of hams, you will get one where something happened. This catches that.” Edwards Smokehouse’s most recent product introduction is a ham called the Surryano Iberico. It’s made using Sam’s Surryano technique with Texas Iberico™ pork from pigs descended from Spanish Iberico

swine and raised by Ashly Martin at Trails End Ranch and the Harris family in Menard, Texas, where they forage for acorns, mesquite beans and prickly pear fruit on a 1,500-acre ranch. For bacon, the pork is dry-cured for about seven days, washed and then smoked for 24 hours. “We do temper it, or age it, for about a week and then slice it,” Sam says. “Most people would think our bacon has more of that country smoky flavor than most because it’s dry-cured.” Edwards’ best-selling sausage is a recipe his grandfather developed back in the 1920s when he was grinding the meat in his garage after he’d backed out the family flivver. The meat inspector came around twice a year, and the garage with its welldrained concrete floor was okay with him.

“It was a wooden garage,” Sam says. “There was nothing spectacular about this garage, but it had one of the nicest floors in a garage that you’ve ever seen.” That recipe that’s been passed down through the family is heavy on the sage and includes white pepper, red pepper and black pepper. It’s made from fresh pork that’s about 75 percent lean and stuffed into a natural casing. “When we first started making sausage years ago, we just sold it fresh,” Sam says. “Whatever was left over, we just put it in the smokehouse. We were always running out of smoked.” Nowadays the company is selling about 10 times as much smoked sausage as fresh, so a good deal of it goes right to the smokehouse without waiting to be left over after the day’s sales. Flavor Serves a Greater Purpose While the market for heritage livestock breeds is founded on their superior flavors, the strength of that gourmet market also contributes to another important goal – preserving the planet’s biological diversity. If those ancient breeds go extinct, the flavors encoded in their genes will be extinguished as well, said Jeannette Beranger, Senior Program Manager for the Livestock Conservancy, which keeps a long list of rare

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farm animals whose breeds are either threatened or endangered. “Not every breed is the same, and everyone’s got their own preferences,” she said. “Mulefoot hogs mature very slowly, but you can be struck senseless from the aroma of a well-cooked, well-aged Mulefoot. You eat it, and you just want to bathe in it – it’s so good. You’re just not going to get that in a commercial pig.” Those animals’ genetic endowment includes more than the flavors encoded into their meat – it also includes the instructions for the traits that determine the chances that their species will survive changing conditions in their environment. “Long-term survival depends on diversity. Not every breed was meant to live in every kind of environment,” Beranger said. “Commercial pigs live indoors in controlled environments, and that’s what they’re bred to survive in. A pink pig will get sunburned in the Southwest. All the commercial pigs are white.” “With livestock, it’s not as simple as putting it in the freezer. These animals need to continue to live in the fields and evolve and be what they are. They need to grow up in the natural environment, which is changing. Lab animals aren’t going to survive in challenging environments. Commercial animals are not going to be able to manage that for very long,” she continued. “Hardier, rustic breeds – they can handle it. Heritage breeds are meant to be on pasture and roaming along. Yes, they don’t grow as fast as the commercial kinds, but if you put them side by side, there’s a big difference on flavor. The extra time roaming in the fields and eating bugs and grass translates into a flavor profile that’s vastly different from commercial pork.” This is not just about climate change – just as the COVID-19 pandemic seemed to have come out of nowhere to create a change in our thinking about how we might survive the disaster, there could very well be other risks out there that make intense survival demands for an entire species. The key to the survival of a livestock species that we depend on as an essential food source could be encoded into the genes of a breed that’s on the Livestock Conservancy’s endangered list. “There are a number of things we know we will lose, and there are a great many more that we don’t know we’ll lose,” Beranger said. “We have yet to discover things in their biology that could be important, like disease resistance or mothering skills. The risk we run with the commercial work with domestic breeds is that they continue to make them bigger and better – there’s very little diversity within the animals they’re working with.” “The only way to get that diversity back is with these rare breeds. If these breeds are gone, there’s no place to go for that diversity. You could be shooting yourself in the foot with getting rid of that diversity,” she continued. “It’s like looking into a crystal ball, but we don’t have that for livestock. You don’t know what you could be losing.” GN

June 2021

Indianapolis

AN INDEPENDENT PUBLICATION NOT AFFILIATED WITH SWEETS AND SNACKS

Plant-Based Tomato Jerky from Mooney Farms

Holiday Classics Reimagined

Mooney Farms and the Bella Sun Luci brand are founded on using premium ingredients to create a line of goodfor-you, Mediterraneaninspired products. As a women-owned company with more than 35 years of dedication, Mooney Farms has emerged into the plant-based food industry with no less than a satisfying Plant-Based Tomato Jerky. “We believe bringing sun-dried tomatoes to the snack market, in this new and innovative plant-based jerky, meets

In the world of nostalgic hard candy brands, Quality Candy Company is a leading manufacturer and distributor in the marketplace. With over thirty years of experience, this family owned and privately held business has had King Leo and Gilliam under its umbrella of old-fashioned brands for several decades. Quality Candy Company felt fortunate that last year brought the acquisition of both Sevigny Ribbon and Washburn Hard Candy to the organization – two iconic brands that are synonymous with the holidays.

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Darrell Lea Announces Move to 100% Palm Oil Free

Abdallah Candies Announces New Cinnamon Churro Toffee

Darrell Lea has announced that it is now 100 percent palm oil free. The iconic company is the first major licorice brand in the U.S. to achieve this significant milestone. Darrell Lea has been listening to its customers and knows that more ethically sourced ingredients matter. Removing palm oil is just one of the many steps the company is taking to create candy that is better for customers, consumers, and the environment. After extensive testing, Darrell Lea

One hundred and twelve year old, fifth generation, familyowned Abdallah Candy company proudly introduces Cinnamon Churro toffee, a carefully crafted toffee that evokes the feelings of warm cinnamon and sugar with a slight buttery crunch. Manufactured to meet the standards of Abdallah’s amazing butter toffee, the Cinnamon Churro toffee is available in both bulk and prepackaged. The cinnamon-infused toffee is topped with cinnamon sugar and covered with the

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Fannie May Celebrates with New Innovations

By Richard Fossali, Vice President and General Manager, Fannie May Confections Brands, Inc.

For over a century, Fannie May® has made experiences special with handcrafted, high-quality chocolates. We source the finest ingredients to give our loyal and growing new fanbase unparalleled tasting experiences that are meant to make moments memorable. From our home-grown Chicago roots, to unique Continued on Page 20

Delicious New Products from Warrell Creations

By Annette WarrellJones, Marketing Manager, Warrell Creations

New Products from Las Olas

An interview with Lauren DiSanza, Brand Manager, Las Olas Confections and Snacks.

GN: Tell our readers about Las Olas Confections and Snacks.

LD: Las Olas Confections and Snacks is a manufacturer of nationally recognized brands that have been delighting consumers for decades. United with the common goal of driving growth for our customers and bringing joy to the lives of Continued on Page 6

Coffee on the Go from 40 Below Joe

Snacking on nuts as part of a ketofriendly plan is nothing new. However, keto-friendly nuts with a sweet, crackly glaze are! Now, Warrell Creations can produce artisan, fire-roasted nuts that are sugar free and sweetened with monk fruit. The nuts start in a batch process to get coated with a thin, delicious, sweet glaze. Next, they can get flavored and seasoned to create a wide variety of

40 Below Joe features a new approach to coffee with an extraordinary product line that includes coffee lovers’ favorite coffees and dairy-free creamers flash frozen to ensure a delicious, fresh and easy cup of Joe that’s meant to be eaten. The 40 Below Joe process brews the highest quality Arabica beans and cryogenically (quick) freezes the ultra-fresh coffee into little beads using liquid nitrogen at -320 degrees Fahrenheit. Mixing

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SWEETS & TREATS SHOW EXTRA

REAL FOOD FROM THE GROUND UP Unveils Two New Cauliflower Product Lines

REAL FOOD FROM THE GROUND UP®, Snacks with a Plant-Based Twist, is upping its game in 2021 with the expansion of its cauliflower offerings and entry into new salty snack subcategories. The brand is excited to announce the launch of Cauliflower Chips and Cauliflower Snacking Crackers, which will be available at retailers and online nationwide this year. REAL FOOD FROM THE GROUND UP has been giving classic snacks a plant-based twist since its launch in 2018. The brand won over consumer taste buds with cauliflower-based versions of Crackers, Pretzels, Tortilla Chips and Stalks (puffed snacks), with delicious offerings that have all the flavor without the junk. With a product void in potato chip and snacking cracker categories, REAL FOOD FROM THE GROUND UP quickly developed cauliflower versions for each. Cauliflower Chips are a cauliflower-

based version of the classic potato chip, available in four timeless flavors: Sea Salt, Salt & Vinegar, Sour Cream & Onion, and Buffalo. Suggested retail price is $3.99 for a 3.5-ounce bag. The Cauliflower Snacking Cracker is what your charcuterie board has been missing. These tasty crackers are available in Sea Salt and Everything flavors. Suggested retail price is $3.99 for a 3.5-ounce stand-up pouch. “We see cauliflower as our lead vegetable base and will keep innovating until there is a plant-based, cauliflower offering for each salty snack subcategory,” said Deb Holt, CMO of REAL FOOD FROM THE GROUND UP. “That said, we’re really excited about dipping into the potato chip category with a cauliflower-based version, as America’s favorite chip needed an update. And our new Cauliflower Snacking Cracker is a two-three bite cracker that makes the perfect vehicle for your favorite pairings and

Mooney Farms Bella Sun Luci Named Progressive Grocer’s 2020 Editors’ Picks Best New Product Winner

Mooney Farms Bella Sun Luci Plant-Based Tomato Jerky was awarded Progressive Grocer’s 2020 Editors’ Picks Best New Product Winner. The first of its kind plantbased tomato jerky seamlessly found its way though over hundreds of products. There is no doubt why, with it holding fiber and protein content of 6 grams per serving. It is handcrafted, non-GMO, Certified Kosher, and vegan. Fancy Food magazines have also recognized the flavorful snack on the list of “Top Ten Trends” of 2020. The plant-based snack allows for mindful snacking with zero cholesterol and zero fat, making it a healthy addition to any lifestyle. It is gluten free and only 80 calories per serv-

ing. With the travel seeker in mind, each snack pack has a resealable zipper pouch that allows for the tomato jerky to be enjoyed anywhere. From the golf course, to a hike, or enjoyed as a quick snack at work, this plant-based jerky is perfect for everyone. “As a result of the many accolades we have received since launching the tomato jerky less than a year ago, we have begun focusing our product development into a variety of products that appeals to a wide range of diversified markets. We want to provide all communities an assortment of goods to shop from,” explains Mooney Farms President and Chief Executive Officer, Mary

Navigating Explosive Growth During a Pandemic

By Ed Stockton, President, Country Fresh Food & Confections, Inc.

Looking back at just a year ago, experiencing growth for 2021 would have seemed like a pipe dream. But fast forward to 2nd quarter of this year and that’s exactly where Country Fresh Food & Confections, Inc. finds itself today. The challenges have been many. The first challenge has been trying to get enough people hired and trained. We have used multiple employment agencies as well as the traditional hiring methods such as ads and personal recruiting, and yet we still find ourselves short of having enough people to do everything we want to do, especially when it comes to new projects. Another challenge has been dealing

with supply issues. Our suppliers find themselves in the same boat as us when it comes to employees. They simply cannot hire enough people to make the products needed. Items that we use, such as Isomalt, which is needed to produce our very popular, keto-friendly, Sugar-free Fudge, is imported from Europe. The orders of Isomalt are being held on ships for weeks waiting to be unloaded as the ports are jammed up. Often, when supplies are available, there are shipping delays due to the truck driver shortage. For example, we use to keep 10 or 12 pallets of sugar on hand. We now keep over two truckloads in stock in order to not run short. We do everything in our power to keep from letting our customers down as we know how important every sale is to them right now.

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entertaining,” she continued. Holt went on to say, “We’re proud to say that both natural and conventional retailers, regionally and nationally are expanding product facings of each day. Consumers see snacking as an important source of comfort, connection and community, especially during the past year. We will continue to be the leader in connection and plant-based snacks through product offerings both on retail shelves and online.” REAL FOOD FROM THE GROUND UP snacks are always made with real veggies, which are at the top of the ingredient lists, and never include artificial flavors, colors, or preservatives. All products are also certified vegan, certified gluten-free and Non-GMO Project Verified, so you can feel good about what you are snacking on. For more information, call 888.989.9055 or go to www.fromthegroundupsnacks.com.

Mooney. The new PlantBased Tomato Jerky Line is available in three different flavors, including Sriracha, Teriyaki and Cracked Pepper, and Hickory Smoked. Each exceptional flavor is so delicious that one is not enough. This original Tomato Jerky appeals to the health-conscious and ethical consumer without having to sacrifice flavor. The snack is spicy and sweet minus the meat. Bella Sun Luci is a line of premium Mediterranean-inspired products created from authentic family recipes. The line includes a variety of deliciously sweet sundried tomatoes in olive oil, sun-dried tomato chipotle sauce, pasta sauces, bruschetta spreads, estate-grown premium olive oil, risotto, marinades, and new vegan jerky. Trying to complete a new facility during a pandemic has caused many delays. It seems we’ve had one issue after another that has taken an inordinate amount of time to resolve. Once an issue has been fixed, and we can move on to the next step, we find ourselves further delayed because the next contractor doesn’t have enough help. Layouts of the building have also been revised on the fly because of the triple digit growth. Although the new facility has approximately 25,000 square feet, expansion plans are already being formulated. While both bulk fudge and fudge mix have had significant growth, sales of packaged fudge have grown tremendously because retailers are wanting contactless packaging and are also having a hard time finding help. Private

JUNE 2021

GOURMET NEWS

AN INDEPENDENT PUBLICATION NOT AFFILIATED WITH SWEETS & SNACKS Publisher Kimberly Oser Vice President of Sales Anthony Socci Production Manager/Art Director Yasmine Brown Associate Editor Jeanie Catron Account Manager Alisha Dicochea Director of Operations Tara Neal Customer Service Manager Susan Stein Show Logistics & Distribution Hannah Stefanovich European Sales Enrico Cecchi Sweets & Treats Show Extra is published by Oser Communications Group ©2021 All rights reserved. Publishing office: 1877 N. Kolb Road, Tucson, AZ 85715 520.721.1300/Fax: 520.721.6300 Subscriber services: Gourmet News P.O. Box 30520 Tucson, AZ 85751 www.gourmetnews.com Founder Lee M. Oser

Bella Sun Luci is produced by Mooney Farms, a third generation, family-owned company that is based in Chico, California, and rooted in quality, integrity, and family values. Mooney Farms is the premier producer of sundried tomatoes in the United States, and a proud member of the WBENC, California Olive Oil Council, and the Mediterranean Foods Alliance.

Visit Mooney Farms at booth #20103. For more information, go to www.bella sunluci.com. Follow the company on social media at @BellaSunLuci on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.

labeled packages often solve those issues for them. More new equipment has been bought and ordered to handle packaged items, but equipment manufacturers are experiencing 90-to-120-day lead times because of employee shortages. While 2020 certainly did not come with an instruction manual, there have been many valuable lessons learned. We are extremely thankful for the problems that have come with the growth as it will make us a better company, but more importantly, a better partner for our many customers. Visit Country Fresh Food & Confections, Inc. at booth #21255. For more information, email info@countryfreshfood.com.

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SWEETS & TREATS SHOW EXTRA

Annabelle’s Introduces Almond Big Hunk

Annabelle Candy Company is launching an Almond Big Hunk nougat bar. The new treat lives up to the “big hunk” name by delighting consumers with sizeable almond pieces engulfed in the brand’s signature sweet nougat. Annabelle Candy Company President, Victor Moreno, describes the Almond Big Hunk bar as “a new way to enjoy the bold taste of whole dark roasted almonds with the chewy texture of honey-based nougat. It is a perfect flavor combination for anyone who

enjoys a sweet and nutty flavor profile.” Consumer demand remains high for products containing almonds because they pair well with a variety of ingredients, both sweet and savory. Moreno adds, “the Almond Big Hunk will be a great addition to our ever-popular Big Hunk product line. We are excited to introduce a time-tested proven flavor combination that everyone will enjoy.” The Almond Big Hunk bar rounds out the Big Hunk brand

J&M Foods Introduces Organic Wafers and Cookies

Food equals love. That’s the straightforward equation that compelled Jamie Parham to enlist the help of her two daughters, Janis & Melanie, and start J&M Foods in her kitchen, thirty years ago. The foundation: obsess over simple ingredients with consistent quality across every batch. No cutting corners with colors, artificial flavors or trans fats. Baking the way Jamie’s Grandmother taught her. Never ones to rest on their laurels, Janis & Melanie are constantly

testing, tasting and tinkering with new recipes. Most recently, they’ve created a captivating line of organic wafers and cookies sure to gain attention from even the most discerning eaters. It sounds simple enough, but those who eat organic demand a lot from food. They don’t care for synthetic or bioengineered ingredients. They like to keep it simple, and they like their food to taste great. Janis & Melanie organics does just that. Made with simple ingredients like rich chocolates, caramel, sea salt, lemon,

MarDona: Quality Products with Quality Ingredients

MarDona, Wild Forest and La Truffe are all about great taste, great prices, convenience and consistency. They import the finest olive oil and truffle essence from Italy to create highly regarded and sought after truffle products. Italian olive oil blended with truffle essence from Italy creates the signature Black & White Truffle Olive Oils. Using this same essence along with truffle pieces, MarDona creates greattasting and aromatic Truffle Honey made Las Olas (Cont’d. from p. 1)

consumers, our portfolio of brands (including Anastasia Confections, Coconut Island, Money on Honey, Williams & Bennett and Hoffman’s Chocolates and IT’SUGAR) provides a diverse offering to the specialty and mass confectionery market. Las Olas is committed to growing our great brands and developing ‘waves’ of innovative new products, like our 2017 sofi™ Product of Year and 2017 MINPA award-winning Coconut Cashew Crunch – Chocolate Drizzle and our 2016 & 2018 sofi award winning Money on Honey Dark Chocolate French Sea Salt and Toasted Coconut Almond Varieties. GN: What are some of your most popular products?

LD: By far, our most popular product is our Anastasia Confections Coconut

with Acacia Honey. By combining the best sea salt from Sicily with truffle pieces and flavor, MarDona creates its highly preferred Black and White Truffle Sea Salts. One of MarDona’s goals is to bring truffles into an every day dining experience, and it is constantly adding new products to the line. Some recent additions include the new Truffle Rub and Porcini Salt, as well as new Truffle Tapenade and Truffle Carpaccio.

Patties, a moist open-faced coconut confection. We have been manufacturing this Florida staple for over 30 years, and it has developed a cult-like following. A close tie for second would be our Original Coconut Island Coconut Cashew Crunch, a tropical, thin twist on a classic brittle, filled with cashews and coconut, and Money on Honey Dark Chocolate French Sea Salt, a unique clean caramel made with wildflower honey instead of corn syrup. GN: What other products do you manufacture?

LD: Currently we produce salt water taffy, molded chocolate, chocolate enrobed classic snacks (like Oreo® cookies, pretzels, and grahams), caramel, toffee, brittle, bark, truffles, and fudge. In addition to supporting our own brands, we offer private label manufacturing as

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line-up that currently includes an original honey-sweetened nougat bar with whole roasted peanuts and a chocolate-covered version of the original bar. Annabelle Candy Company is known for sweet nostalgia and delicious new innovation. Annabelle’s has a mouth-watering roster of legendary candy bars, including Abba-Zaba ®, Rocky Road®, Big Hunk®, U-NO®, and Look!®. Annabelle’s is a third-generation family owned and operated candy manufacturer whose heritage candy bars deliver sweet nostalgia to longginger and vanilla, Janis & Melanie have married indulgent and organic together into a line of simply great tasting wafers and cookies. J&M Foods enjoys being flexible enough to handle all its customers’ needs. Located in a 32,000 square foot facility residing on 21 acres, the company has room to grow along with its customers. Centrally located and nationally recognized, J&M Foods is an award-winning market leader within the specialty foods

MarDona has received high praise for its imported Balsamic Condimenti from Modena. The company proudly imports its Extra Virgin Olive Oil from Apulia. This is an exquisite olive oil, great for cooking and especially as a finishing olive oil. For the porcini lovers, MarDona has a wonderful Porcini Olive Oil. Then there is the Garlic Infused pure Italian Olive Oil, a perfect blend of garlic and pure olive oil. MarDona is proud to say that its garlic oil is very strong and bold and tastes like garlic. well as co-packing.

GN: Are you introducing any new products this year?

LD: We are launching several new products across our brands this year. From Anastasia, we are introducing our Florida Collection Chocolate Box featuring the Art of Guy Harvey. This new chocolate box includes our World-Famous Coconut Patties, sea salt caramels, buttercreams, meltaways, and signature Guy Harvey chocolate pieces. A portion of the proceeds from each box sold will benefit the marine conservation research and education work of the Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation. From Hoffman’s Chocolates, we are launching Milk and Dark Chocolate Gourmet Double Dipped Pretzels, as well as Milk and Dark Chocolate Gourmet Pretzel Bites. These decadent treats have kept Hoffman’s fans flocking to our chocolate shops for

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time customers while unique flavor innovations attract new generations of candy lovers. The 1.8ounce Almond Big Hunk bar will launch this Spring. It joins Annabelle’s list of recent innovation which includes the Abba-Zaba Mystery Flavor taffy bar and the newly formulated “s’morsier” Rocky Road S’Mores candy bar.

more information, email For info@annabellecandy.com, go to www.annabellecandy.com or call 510.783.2900.

industry. For more information about the new line of Janis & Melanie organic wafers and cookies, call 800.264.2278. J&M Foods will be happy to send you sample packs of the new products and let you be the judge. J&M Foods is also available to discuss any private label needs and welcomes additional questions you may have about J&M Foods or the Janis & Melanie line of products.

For more information, call 800.264.2278 or email sales@jm-foods.com.

MarDona believes in making a quality product with quality ingredients. Its mission is to bring to the American people the best in quality truffle and non-truffle products at the most reasonable prices possible. You can find its products in some of the finest gourmet shops, as well as quality restaurants.

For more information, go to www .mardonaspecialtyfoods.com.

decades. From Coconut Island, we are introducing Coco Bites Bare, a line of bite-sized coconut treats made with the same time-tested recipe as our Coconut Patties, perfect for snacking on all year long. GN: What is your favorite Las Olas Confections and Snacks product?

LD: We manufacture so many great products and I love each in its own way. I’m a bit omnivorous when it comes to confections. Thankfully, we produce such a diversified set of products so I can indulge all my candy cravings, from fruity chewy taffy to buttery-rich, crunchy toffee, and of course, an occasional Coconut Patty.

Visit Las Olas Confections and Snacks at booth #11430. For more information, go to www.lasolasbrands.com or call 800.329.7100.

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Divine Chocolate Unveils Crispy Thins

Divine Chocolate, the only Fairtrade chocolate company in the world coowned by cocoa farmers, has unveiled new Crispy Thins – a surprisingly light, irresistibly crispy, and truly snackable treat. Crispy Thins are made with an exquisite blend of rich, silky Fairtrade chocolate and air-popped rice which is then expertly crafted into a thin, waferlike chip. At less than 20 calories per Thin, the Crispy Thins offer a lighter snacking alternative to any other offering in the chocolate aisle with their unique shape and texture. The line is made with

Divine’s best selling flavors – Dark Chocolate, Dark Chocolate with Mint, Milk Chocolate, and Milk Chocolate with Caramel and Sea Salt. Crispy Thins are made with all natural ingredients and pure cocoa butter with all flavors certified Fairtrade and dark chocolate versions suitable for vegans. “We are elated about this new addition to our product mix,” said Morgan McKenna, Senior Marketing Manager at Divine Chocolate. “The Crispy Thins have the decadence and quality consistent with all Divine products, but what makes this product unique is the light-

REAL FOOD FROM THE GROUND UP Adds Purple Carrot Crackers

REAL FOOD FROM THE GROUND UP®, Snacks with a Plant-Based Twist, is upping its game just in time for spring, with the launch of a new vegetable base and cracker innovation. Purple Carrot Crackers will be available at retailers nationwide, including Whole Foods Market and online at FromTheGroundUpSnacks.com and on Amazon this May. Purple Carrot is the newest veggie to the REAL FOOD FROM THE GROUND UP crew and one that has been growing roots for a while. Just as

crunchy and tasty as the orange version, but made with real purple carrot – it’s the No. 1 ingredient. Purple is the new orange! These crackers are certified vegan, Non-GMO Project Verified and certified gluten-free. The perfectly purple squares are baked into light and crispy crackers that you can feel good about eating, so go ahead, have a handful (or two) – a serving size is 50 crackers. Flavors include Sea Salt and Ranch. Suggested retail price is $3.99 for a 4-ounce box. “We’re excited about Purple Carrot

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ness and texture. Each Thin packs a tasty experience that engages the senses in a new way.” Divine Chocolate is driven by a social mission: to bring people together using the amazing power of chocolate to delight and engage, creating dignified trading relations that empower both producers and consumers. All Divine products carry the Fairtrade Mark. Divine Chocolate is also a Certified B Corporation. B Corps meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency joining Cauliflower and Butternut Squash vegetable bases for our growing snack brand,” said Deb Holt, CMO of REAL FOOD FROM THE GROUND UP. “We love being able to offer plantbased versions of classic snacks and our Purple Carrot Crackers, a nod to the original orange squares, are as good as they look!” REAL FOOD FROM THE GROUND UP has been giving classic snacks a plant-based twist since its launch in 2018. The brand won over consumer taste buds with cauliflower-based versions of Crackers, Pretzels, Tortilla

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and legal accountability, and aspire to use the power of markets to solve social and environmental problems. Inspire the timeless enjoyment of premium quality chocolate with a crunch with Crispy Thins. Crispy Thins are perfect for casual gifting, enjoying on your own, or sharing with friends.The suggested retail price for the 2.8-ounce package of Crispy Thins is $3.50.

For more information, sales@divinechocolateusa.com.

Chips, Stalks (puffed snacks), and most recently with Chips and Snacking Crackers. The company branched out in 2019 with the launch of Butternut Squash-based Crackers, Pretzels, Tortilla Chips and Stalks. Now with Purple Carrot taking root, there is a veggie variety and format for every snack lover with more flavor, more crunch, and more bites per serving.

For more information on REAL FOOD FROM THE GROUND UP, call 888.989.9055 or visit www.from thegroundupsnacks.com.

Once Again Nut Butter Cashew Butter with Sea Salt Caramel

Decadently rich and beautifully buttery, this premium product is crafted from carefully selected, organically grown cashews that are dry roasted for color and flavor and milled creamy with natural caramel flavor, high-quality sea salt and organic sunflower oil. The U.S. Department of Agriculture-certified organic product features 5 grams of plant-based protein per serving and is

free of sodium, preservatives, cholesterol and trans-fat. It’s also Non-GMO Project Verified, gluten-free certified, vegan, paleo-friendly, keto, kosher, and part of the brand’s Honest in Trade program. It’s made in a dedicated, peanutfree facility with no sugar added.

For more information, call 888.800.8075 or go to www.onceagainnutbutter.com.

Tillamook Creamery Collection Yogurts Tillamook County Creamery Association, the 112-year-old farmerowned dairy co-op, is expanding its offering of high-quality snacks to now include Tillamook® Creamery Collection yogurt. The innovative new line includes six unique side-by-side flavor combinations served in a reusable cup – a first-of-its-kind offering for the cultured category – and is ideal for breakfast or a satisfying snack any time of day. With flavors that range between 13-14 grams of protein and 9-10 grams of sugar, as well as no artificial sweeteners, flavors or preservatives,

Tillamook Creamery Collection is made with high-quality ingredients. Each Creamery Collection Yogurt cup contains two side-by-side flavors that can be enjoyed one by one or swirled together. Flavor combinations include: Oregon Strawberry paired with Plain, Northwest Raspberry paired with Blackberry, Oregon Blueberry paired with Vanilla, California Peach paired with Plain, Dark Cherry paired with Plain and Vanilla Bean paired with Plain.

For more information, go to www .tillamook.com/creamery-collection.

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Growing with the Plant-Based Future

Mooney Farms and the Bella Sun Luci brand, which pioneered the sun-dried tomato category over 35 years ago, have once again brought innovation to the category. The new line-up of plant-based jerky appeals to today’s consumer looking for healthier, more diverse options. Bella Sun Luci products align with the plant-based food movement and the company values food that is made with real, simple ingredients. All of the jerky flavors are not only plant-based but vegan. In addition to the delicious taste of this new product, the Plant-Based Tomato Jerky has the healthy goodness of a tomato. There is zero cholesterol, zero fat, 6 grams of protein, 6 grams of

fiber, and in two of the flavors there are no added sugars. Sun-dried tomatoes are also great sources of lycopene, a powerful antioxidant. Mary Mooney, owner of Mooney Farms, stated, “As with all of our products, we’re only using the highest quality ingredients to create a snack that customers will crave without any guilt,” and at only 80 calories per serving, these bite-sized morsels truly are the perfect guilt-free snack. According to Mooney, “The vegan population is growing and with it, we are bringing forward-thinking foods that appeal to both vegans and non-vegans alike. We believe bringing sun-dried tomatoes to the snack market in this new

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and innovative plantbased jerky marks the start of a health trend that’s here to stay.” Bella Sun Luci is a line of premium Mediterranean-inspired products created from authentic family recipes. The line includes a variety of deliciously sweet sundried tomatoes in olive oil, sun-dried tomato chipotle sauce, pasta sauces, bruschetta spreads, estate-grown premium olive oil, risotto, marinades and new vegan jerky. Bella Sun Luci is produced by Mooney Farms, a third generation, fami-

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ly-owned company that is based in Chico, California, and rooted in quality, integrity, and family values. Mooney Farms is the premier producer of sundried tomatoes in the United States, and a proud member of the WBENC, Olive Oil California Council, and the Mediterranean Foods Alliance.

Visit Mooney Farms at booth #20103. For more information, go to www.bella sunluci.com. Follow the company on social media at @BellaSunLuci on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Mel’s Toffee in New Packaging

Mel’s Toffee’s array of flavors is like a rainbow, with some of the flavors brighter and more vibrant than others. This fall, the company is introducing new, show-stopping packaging in vibrant colors reminiscent of a rainbow when they’re lined up on the shelves.

For more information, michelle@melstoffee.com or www.melstoffee.com.

email go to

Darrell Lea (Cont’d. from p. 1)

landed on sunflower oil as a preferred replacement. It is the best choice from an environmental, health-related and manufacturing perspective. Tim Stanford, Global Marketing Director, said, “The mammoth task has taken the business two years to complete, with more than 200 individual ingredients reviewed and 100 products changed in the process.” All products departing Australia from September 2020 onwards will be 100 percent palm oil free. Darrell Lea will also redesign packaging with a stand-out new Palm Oil Free logo and clear ingredient listing. For more information, www.dlmakesitbetter.com.au.

40 Below Joe (Cont’d. from p. 1)

the coffee beads with 40 Below Joe nondairy creamer beads makes for a fun, unique, caffeinated treat that is gluten free, dairy free and vegan. Wholesalers can now offer this innovative treat to their consumers with the 40 Below Joe retail program, which includes prepackaged, 75g grab-and-go cups. 40 Below will provide the wrapped freezer and marketing materials at no cost; the only thing you pay for is the product. Flavors include French Vanilla, Hazelnut, Vanilla, Salted Caramel, Mocha and House Blend.

For more information, www.40belowjoe.com.

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Mooney Farms (Cont’d. from p. 1)

the consumer desire for diversity,” said Mary Mooney, the Owner of Mooney Farms. “As with all of our products, we are only using the highest quality ingredients to create a snack that our consumers will crave without any guilt.” This on-the-go chewy bite includes bold and savory flavors to satisfy. It is handcrafted, non-GMO, Certified Kosher, and vegan, and in addition to providing 6 grams of protein and fiber, there is also zero cholesterol and zero fat, making it a healthy addition to any lifestyle. It is gluten free and at only 80 Fannie May (Cont’d. from p. 1)

flavor profiles and even the visual appeal of our packaging – every aspect of the brand showcases deep commitment to tradition, quality and community. While we’re proud of our storied heritage, everything we do is only possible through the work of our dedicated team members and the support of our loyal customers. We’d like to thank everyone for their boundless love, care and generosity. We’re proud to be celebrating over a century together, and we look forward to hundreds more! Every company is known for its classics. Fannie May fans are already familiar with ours: refreshing Mint Meltaways®, caramel pecan Pixies®, and deliciously creamy peanut butter Buckeyes. While these premium chocolate offerings will always be Fannie May Abdallah Candies (Cont’d. from p. 1)

smoothest white confection. The bulk pieces are available in two sizes: a large 3-inch by 3-inch size and a smaller 1inch by 2-inch size. The prepackaged options include a 7.5-ounce bag, a 3ounce Retreat (bite-sized, resealable) and an individually wrapped single-serve Holiday Classics (Cont’d. from p. 1)

Following the acquisition, Eric Holler, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, who also leads new product development within the organization knew, “that to capture value – you need to create value,” and tasked his team to develop “new items from ideation to commercialization for 2021 around both brands. No small task but one I knew my team was capable of and ready to tackle.” Leila Kaufman, Director of Sales and New Business Development, shared that, “at the start – we needed to ask ourselves – how do we continue to honor the iconic nature of these two brands that are so intimately tied together as we reimagine Warrell Creations (Cont’d. from p. 1)

flavor profiles. Limitations are defined only by the imagination. These nuts can be sweet, spicy, fruity or savory depending on the combination of inclusions, flavorings and seasonings. Warrell offers sugar-free, glazed, fire-roasted peanuts, almonds, cashews, pecans, seeds and more. Contact Warrell Creations to create your custom combination. Warrell is also introducing sugar-

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calories per serving, these bite-sized morsels truly are the perfect guilt-free snack. Be sure to try all three irresistible flavors: Hickory Smoked, Sriracha, and Teriyaki and Cracked Pepper. According to market research group, The Nielsen Company, just 6 percent of Americans eat vegetarian and only 3 percent eat vegan, but almost 40 percent now make an effort to eat more plantbased foods. A growing reason why consumers choose to eat plant-based foods are the health benefits. With the goal in mind to live life more tastefully, the new line of Bella Sun Luci Tomato Jerky appeals to the health-

conscious and ethical consumer without having to sacrifice flavor. With the rate of consumers introducing or entirely replacing their diets with plant-based options, Mooney Farms saw the desire for a product that focuses on health and wellness, ethics, and diversity in protein sourcing. Bella Sun Luci is a line of premium Mediterranean-inspired products created from authentic family recipes. The line includes a variety of deliciously sweet sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil, sun-dried tomato chipotle sauce, pasta sauces, bruschetta spreads, estate-grown premium olive oil, risotto, marinades and new vegan jerky.

staples, our vision is a future filled with new innovations, and we’re excited to share how we’ll continue to surprise and delight chocolate lovers to come.

takes enjoying s’mores to a whole new level. We’ve also recently introduced a delicious Peanut Butter Pretzel Snack Mix. This sweet and savory combination features crunchy peanut-butter filled pretzels coated in premium milk chocolate. Looking ahead, this holiday season we will be debuting a brand-new Dark Chocolate Peppermint S’mores Snack Mix, which puts a holiday twist on our indulgent original S’mores Snack Mix. This festive offering features crunchy grahams and fluffy pink peppermint marshmallows coated in rich dark chocolate and is sprinkled with peppermint candy bits. From road trips to watching movies or study breaks, our premium snack mixes can be enjoyed anytime, anywhere! S’mores Snack Mix and Peanut Butter Pretzel Snack Mix are available in

Premium Snack Mixes When our Master Chocolatier ideates new products in the test kitchen, they’re made with you in mind. That is why we’re excited to share more about our snack mixes that launched over the past year, and were inspired by a desire for sophisticated snacking, and feature original recipes that evoke happy and familiar connections. Our S’mores Snack Mix is a premium twist on an American classic that will immediately transport you back to carefree days spent snacking around the campfire. Featuring crunchy graham cereal and fluffy marshmallows coated in milk chocolate, this delicious recipe

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Visit Mooney Farms at booth #20103. For more information, go to www.bella sunluci.com. Follow the company on social media at @BellaSunLuci on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.

5-ounce sharing size bags, and 2-ounce single serve pouches for portion control or on-the-go indulgent snacking moments. Larger sized bags are also available at Fannie May retail stores, Club and eComm channels (S’mores 18oz/PB Pretzel 22oz.). Likewise, Dark Chocolate Peppermint S’mores Snack Mix will be available in 5-ounce as well as 18-ounce sizes. In answer to consumer demand for more transparent ingredients, each snack mix is made with zero artificial preservatives and zero artificial flavors.

Visit Fannie May at booth #11706. For more information, go to www .fanniemay.com or call 330.494.0833. Follow on social media @fanniemay chocolates on Instagram, @Fannie MayChocolates on Facebook or @fmchocolate on Twitter.

sized piece. Abdallah Candies has been manufacturing traditional chocolates and candies in Minnesota since 1909. This new Cinnamon Churro is now a standard and ranks among the very best in the 300-plus varieties of Abdallah confections. The new Cinnamon Churro has been embraced as not only being on trend, but

as simple and nostalgic enough to become an age-old favorite for generations to come. Stop by Abdallah Candies booth #20217 at the Sweets & Snacks Expo for a delicious sample of the Cinnamon Churro toffee, and to explore the many offerings available. Also sample the famous traditional milk chocolate, dark

chocolate and white almond toffee, cashew toffee and English toffee. Abdallah Candies has a rich history and tradition of creating the very best chocolates, toffees, and caramels, and welcomes the opportunity to partner with you to increase your daily sales.

them on a premium level for new consumers?” For Quality Candy, the answers resided in a variety of areas that helped the company develop a line that is all about inspired gift giving for the holidays and year-round. Quality Candy Company focused on elevated packaging, an elegant color palette, flavor development and innovation, and premium ingredients as it reimagined the collection. Quality Candy has a strong production team of skilled candy makers and a state-of-the-art test kitchen at its facility that allows the company to be nimble and quick to market as it walks through product ideation. The artisanal small batch approach Quality Candy took to its Premium Collection of both Sevigny and

Washburn candy resulted in an inspired, unique and beautiful collection of candy gifting opportunities. “Gift giving is often about how you want people to feel. Giving and opening a beautiful box of Sevigny’s handcrafted delicately thin ribbon candy is nothing less than decadent. Our 14 ounce holiday celebration box is filled with pieces of Pink Prosecco with a hint of raspberry, Champagne with rich strawberries and a Dark Chocolate Peppermint Truffle,” said Leila Kaufman. The premium Washburn collection received the same attention to detail as Quality Candy looked to create a new experience for consumers with flavor and filling. The filled hard candy collections

include three 15.5 ounce giftable canisters to include a Citrus, Raspberry and a Holiday Mix. Each candy piece is filled with delicate Belgian chocolate and inspired flavors like Pink Grapefruit, Blood Orange Hibiscus, Kiwi Lime, Black Raspberry and a Crème Raspberry. Vice President Eric Holler is “excited that Quality Candy will be bringing premium gift giving to retailers and consumers this holiday season with both Sevigny Ribbon and Washburn Belgian Filled Candy. 2021 will be a year to embrace and celebrate the holidays with beloved holiday classics that have an added twist.”

free chocolate, sweetened with monk fruit, into our cold panning process for covering nuts, pretzel rounds, protein puffs, fruits, seeds and grains. Inclusions such as cocoa, probiotics, chia, quinoa and protein powders can be mixed into the chocolate, too. If desired, we can also polish and glaze the chocolate for a traditional shiny, more protective coating. This offering meets consumers’ needs for low- or zero-added sugar snacks.

These new processing capabilities add great excitement to our traditional offerings and complement our breadth of classic strengths: enrobing, cold panning, fire roasting, nut clusters and brittles. With 55 years of experience producing high quality candies and snacks for some of the most famous brands in the world, Warrell Creations has earned its right to call itself, “Your Partner of Choice®” for private label

Visit Abdallah Candies at booth #20217.

For more information, go to www .qcandy.com.

and contract manufacturing solutions. A competitively advantaged Quality Management System, a breadth of manufacturing capabilities, a team of R&D professionals and dedicated project managers invite brands of all sizes to experience how, “We Innovate for You®.” For more information, go to www.warrell corp.com, email sales@warrellcorp.com or call 717.761.5440.

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Bella Sun Luci Plant-Based Tomato Jerky Bella Sun Luci Plant-Based Tomato Jerky has seen high increased media and buyer attention within the past year since launching the new snack. The plant-based chewy bite holds a fiber and protein content of 6 grams per serving. It is handcrafted, non-GMO, certified kosher, and vegan. The plant-based snack allows for mindful snacking with zero cholesterol and zero fat, making it a healthy addition to any lifestyle. It is gluten free, with little to no sugar added, and only 80 calories per serving. Additionally, all of the tomato jerky flavors have recognizable ingredients and contain an easy-to-read nutrition label. Bella Sun Luci is at the forefront of healthy

and convenient meat substitute snacks. Offering exciting flavor combinations, the tasty snacks are made using California grown and sun dried tomatoes with authentic herbs and spices. The new PlantBased Tomato Jerky Line is available in three different flavors, including Sriracha, Teriyaki and Cracked Pepper, and Hickory Smoked. Each exceptional flavor is so delicious that one is not enough. The snack is spicy and sweet, minus the meat. Bella Sun Luci acknowledges the consumer demand for diverse products in the marketplace. Consumers want products with honest and premium ingredients that meet the needs of people who are looking for convenient, plant-based options.

Country Fresh Food & Confections Inc. Navigates Explosive Growth During Pandemic Looking back at just a year ago, experiencing growth for 2021 would have seemed like a pipe dream. But fast forward to 2nd quarter of this year and that’s exactly where Country Fresh Food & Confections, Inc. finds itself. According to Ed Stockton, President, the challenges have been many. The first challenge has been trying to get enough people hired and trained. “We have used multiple employment agencies as well as the traditional hiring methods such as ads and personal recruiting, and yet we still find ourselves short of having

enough people to do everything we want to do, especially when it comes to new projects,” said Stockton. Another challenge has been dealing with supply issues. “Our suppliers find themselves in the same boat as us when it comes to employees,” said Stockton. “They simply cannot hire enough people to make the products needed. Items that we use, such as Isomalt, which is needed to produce our very popular, keto-friendly, sugar-free fudge, is imported from Europe. The orders of Isomalt are being held on ships for weeks waiting to be unloaded as

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Foodies seek to introduce clean label products and product awareness to their diets. This original tomato jerky appeals to the healthconscious and ethical consumer without having to sacrifice flavor. Bella Sun Luci Plant-Based Tomato Jerky doesn’t just meet the needs of today’s consumer; it propels the sun-dried tomato category to new heights. Bella Sun Luci is a line of premium Mediterranean-inspired products created from authentic family recipes. The line includes a variety of deliciously sweet sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil, sun-dried tomato chipotle sauce, pasta sauces, br-

uschetta spreads, estategrown premium olive oil, risotto, marinades and new vegan jerky. Bella Sun Luci is produced by Mooney Farms, a third generation, women-owned company that is based in Chico, California, and rooted in quality, integrity, and family values. Mooney Farms is the premier producer of sundried tomatoes in the United States, and a proud member of the WBENC, California Olive Oil Council, and the Mediterranean Foods Alliance.

the ports are jammed up.” Often, when supplies are available, there are shipping delays due to the truck driver shortage. “For example, we use to keep 10 or 12 pallets of sugar on hand. We now keep over two truckloads in stock in order not run short,” said Stockton. “We do everything in our power to keep from letting our customers down as we know how important every sale is to them right now.” Trying to complete a new facility during a pandemic has caused many delays. “It seems we’ve had one issue after another that has taken an inordinate amount of time to resolve. Once an issue has been fixed, and we can move on to the next step, we find ourselves further delayed because the next contractor doesn’t have enough help,” said Stockton. Layouts of the building have also been revised on the fly because of the triple digit growth. Although the new facility has approximately 25,000 square feet, expansion plans are already being formulated.

While both bulk fudge and fudge mix have had significant growth, sales of packaged fudge have grown tremendously because retailers are wanting contactless packaging and are also having a hard time finding help. Private labeled packages often solve those issues for them. More new equipment has been bought and ordered to handle packaged items, but equipment manufacturers are experiencing 90-to-120-day lead times because of employee shortages. While 2020 certainly did not come with an instruction manual, there have been many valuable lessons learned. “We are extremely thankful for the problems that has come with the growth as it will make as a better company, but more importantly, a better partner for our many customers,” said Stockton.

Mooney Farms www.bellasunluci.com

Country Fresh Food & Confections Inc. www.countryfreshfood.com

North Coast Organic Reduced Sugar Apple Juice With more and more consumers looking for beverages following the lower sugar and better-for-you trends, North Coast Organic is announcing the release of its new reduced sugar apple juice drink in a 128ounce family friendly jug. With 45 percent less sugar than regular apple juice and only 60 calories per serving, North Coast is taking refreshment to a whole new level, all without altering the pure and refreshing taste that has always come first. Preserving heritage and craft traditions since 1922, North Coast specializes in producing superior quality apple juices, apple sauces, and apple cider vinegars that are unlike any other. Water, earth, and air, free

of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, combined with the skill of responsible organic farmers, is the recipe for producing fruit of exceptional quality and flavor. With the belief that all products should taste just like the fruit that goes into them, North Coast recipes are minimally processed and don’t contain any added sugars, preservatives, colorings, or flavorings. With U.S. grown fruit fresh from the orchard and never from concentrate, the artful blend of different apple varietals is key to producing the best tasting products.

North Coast Organic 707.329.6304 www.northcoast.organic

Colby Cheese from Widmer’s Cheese Cellars Perfect for shredding, melting or slicing, Widmer’s Colby complements apples or pears as well as burgers or chili. It’s available in four flavors: Plain, Jalapeño, Caraway Seed and Vegetable and Herb. Widmer’s Cheese can be purchased

in 5-pound pieces, 2.5pound pieces, 1-pound pieces or 8-ounce pieces.

Widmer’s Cheese Cellars 888.878.1107 www.widmerscheese.com

GOURMET NEWS

Ariston CBD Infused Olive Oil

Legal Sea Foods House Cocktail Sauce

Ariston Specialties announced in spring this year the launch of its CBD Infused Olive Oil. This product combines allnatural and high-quality hemp-derived CBD produced in Massachusetts with the Ariston family's own production of extra virgin olive oil from Southwest Greece, resulting in a delicious and healthy elixir. It combines the health benefits and flavors of both the nutty, earthy CBD oil and the grassy flavor profile of Ariston's Koroneiki extra virgin

The most sought-after ocean fare is best served with the perfect sauce on the side. By using Legal Sea Foods’ famous inhouse recipes as inspiration, the specialty food makers at Stonewall Kitchen have crafted this Legal Sea Foods House Cocktail Sauce from quality ingredients for an unbeatable taste that’s sure to make waves. A longstanding classic, cocktail sauce is all about big, zesty flavor. Made with tangy tomatoes, spices and a healthy dose of horseradish for heat, this tasty version has achieved the perfect balance of zip and zing and is sure to leave all others in its wake.

olive oil. This combination is ideal for salads, savory dressings, and even homemade pestos. It can be combined with Ariston's vinegar, lemon juice, garlic, and mustard to make an incredible salad dressing.

Ariston Specialties 860.263.8498 www.aristonspecialties.com

Increase Sales With New Plant-Based Tomato Jerky Shipper Entice customers to purchase the new Bella Sun Luci Plant-Based Tomato Jerky with a stand alone 72-unit shipper. This shipper comes preassembled with eyecatching graphics on each of the six shelves. For added merchandising flexibility, the shipper has the capability to be single or double sided for additional shelf space as needed. Forbes Magazine says this tomato jerky is “perfect right out of the bag.” With a fiber and protein content of 6 grams per serving, it is handcrafted, nonGMO, certified kosher, and vegan. The plant-based snack allows for mindful snacking with zero cholesterol and zero fat, making it a healthy addition to any lifestyle. It is gluten free, has no sugar added, and only 80 calories per serving. Bella Sun Luci is produced by Mooney

Farms, a third genwomeneration, owned company that is based in Chico, California, and rooted in quality, integrity, and family values. Mooney Farms is the premier producer of sun dried tomatoes in the United States, and a proud member of the WBENC, California Olive Oil Council, and the Mediterranean Foods Alliance.

Mooney Farms www.bellasunluci.com

JUNE 2021

With a cocktail sauce as splendid as this one, the options aren’t limited to shrimp and oysters alone. Your customers will enjoy it spooned onto crispy crab cakes, served as a dip for fries and mozzarella sticks and even mixed into Bloody Marys.

Stonewall Kitchen 888.326.5678 www.stonewallkitchen.com

Wax-It-All Food-Grade Paste Wax Howard Wax-It-All is a food-grade paste wax that is safe for any surface where food contact may occur. This thick, smooth blend of beeswax, carnauba wax, and food-grade mineral oil helps to revive, seal and protect surfaces in and around your home. Use Wax-ItAll on butcher block, concrete, stainless steel, granite, marble, soapstone, slate, and laminate countertop surfaces, metal, plastic furniture, and painted cabinets. Wax-It-All enhances beauty and protects surfaces to make them look better and last longer. It's easy to use - simply rub the wax on, let it absorb and buff off any excess. It's safe for indoor and outdoor countertop surfaces, helps delay tar-

nishing and oxidation of bronze, copper, brass, and even wrought iron, and gives finishes a soft sheen and a smooth feel. Use Wax-It-All to lock in the oils and waxes after using Howard's other food-grade products. It's great for woodworkers who need a hard, carnauba wax finish. Howard Wax-It-All is made in the USA with food-grade ingredients under strict quality controls. Start selling Howard Wax-It-All today. Minimum wholesale orders are only six cases.

Howard Products 800.266.9545 www.howardproducts.com

Buholzer Brothers Gouda Cheese Klondike Cheese Company’s new Buholzer Brothers® Gouda cheese is crafted by Wisconsin Cheesemakers, at a family owned plant that has been making cheese at the same location since 1925. The new variety of Gouda cheese is available in 6oz retail chunks, 6# loaves and 15# long johns. Adding this savory option extends the family of the other Buholzer Brothers varieties of cheese, which include Muenster, Brick, Havarti, Dill Havarti, Jalapeño Havarti and Horseradish Havarti. Now you can have a full line of Buholzer Brothers Brand in your deli and dairy cheese cases. Gouda is a great melting cheese with its creamy, rich, nutty and mellow flavor, great for a quick charcuterie board or your next sandwich. You can bet it has an appetite appeal to a wide range of consumers as it

is a mild and delicious snacking cheese, great for kids and adults of all ages. The secret to Klondike’s exceptional quality is the combination of using state-ofthe art equipment, proprietary recipes, and time-honored traditions of cheesemaking. Sourcing local cow’s milk and high quality ingredients, made in Wisconsin, so you know it can only be the best.

Klondike Cheese Company www.buholzerbrothers.com

Plant-Based, Versatile Noodles NakaNoodle is a tasty, gluten-free, lowercalorie, lower-carbohydrate, zero-guilt alternative to conventional pasta, noodles or rice. The Vertullo imports line includes three different varieties: Fettuccine, Rice Style and Ramen. Each item is plant-based, vegan, non-GMO and keto friendly. This is the

only brand in this category with products that, through a proprietary process, have a superior texture profile, do not need to be drained before use and are ready to heat simply by tearing a notch in the bag and microwaving for 90 seconds.

Vertullo Imports LLC www.nakanoodles.com

GOURMET NEWS

Fall River Wild Rice: New Ways with America's Native Grain Interest in plants and grains is soaring, as shoppers look for new ways to eat healthy. High in protein and fiber, nutty and with a striking visual appeal, wild rice is one of the healthiest grains available. It was a staple food of several Native American tribes, who called it “manoomin,” or “precious grain.” Fall River Wild Rice brings this culinary gem to your store shelf. This naturally cultivated wild rice is great in salads, soups, and stir-fries. However, it also works well in mixes for pancakes and muffins and even in chocolate and desserts. Fall River's Fully Cooked Wild Rice is high-protein goodness in sec-

onds. The only cereal grain native to North America, wild rice is not even a rice at all. It is the seed of Zizania plustris, a tall, blooming water grass that prospers in the Great Lakes region, as well as in the fruitful valley in the shadows of the Sierra Nevadas and the Rockies. Fall River Wild Rice is a small grower-owned cooperative in the Fall River Valley, a rural mountain valley nestled between the Cascade and Sierra Nevada ranges.

Fall River Wild Rice 800.626.4366 www.fallriverwildrice.com

Tortuga Launches Southern Trio Range Tortuga is a world-renowned brand that continues to lead the gourmet and spirit cakes category by heavily focusing on innovation and ensuring that its consumers are presented with fresh, innovative, and new options. Tortuga has been doing business with the cruise channel, major big box retailers in North America, department and grocery stores and the gifting sector for 37 years. Given the company’s recent success with evolving from its world-famous rum cakes and creating a new cake with bourbon, the Kentucky Bourbon Butter Cake, continuing to explore the spirits world seemed like the natural next step.

Tortuga just launched the highly anticipated Southern Trio range, which consists of Kentucky Bourbon Butter Cake, Moonshine Apple Pie Cake, and the newest addition, Tennessee Whiskey Spice Cake. All three flavors are available in the standard sizes – 4-oz., 16-oz. and 32-oz. Consumers are now able to indulge in Tortuga’s new selection of spirit cakes, inspired by America’s oldest and traditional delectable recipes, and can expect to experience unique flavors characterized by bold notes and magnificent richness.

Tortuga Rum Cake Company www.tortugarumcakes.com

MarDona: Quality Products, Quality Ingredients MarDona, Wild Forest & La Truffe are all about great taste, great prices, convenience, and consistency. They import the finest olive oil and truffle essence from Italy to create highly regarded and sought after truffle products. Italian olive oil blended with truffle essence from Italy creates the signature Black & White Truffle Olive Oils. Using this same essence along with truffle pieces, MarDona creates its great-tasting and aromatic Truffle Honey made with Acacia Honey. By combining the best sea salt from Sicily with truffle pieces and flavor, MarDona creates its highly preferred Black and White Truffle Sea Salts. One of MarDona's goals is to bring truffles into an every day dining experience, and it is constantly adding new products to the line. Some recent additions include the new Truffle Rub and Porcini Salt, as well as new Truffle Tapenade and Truffle Carpaccio. MarDona has received high praise for its

imported Balsamic Condimenti from Modena. MarDona proudly imports its Extra Virgin Olive Oil from Apulia. This is an exquisite olive oil, great for cooking and especially as a finishing olive oil. For the porcini lovers, MarDona has a wonderful Porcini Olive Oil. Then there is Garlic Infused pure Italian Olive Oil, a perfect blend of garlic and pure olive oil. MarDona is proud to say that its garlic oil is very strong and bold and tastes like garlic. MarDona believes in making a quality product with quality ingredients. Its mission is to bring to the American people the best in quality truffle and non-truffle products at the most reasonable prices possible. You can find its products in some of the finest gourmet shops, as well as quality restaurants, and on the web.

MarDona Specialty Foods www.mardonaspecialtyfoods.com

JUNE 2021

Jake’s Nut Roasters Hatch Chile Almonds Jake, a fourth-generation member of the Jasper family, is proud to continue the farming traditions of his great-grandfather that have been passed down for over 70 years. Jake’s Nut Roasters is pleased to showcase a fan favorite, Fire Roasted Hatch Chile Almonds, in the line of bold and unique flavors. Jake’s Hatch Chile Almonds share the perfect blend of heat and spice, using New Mexico Hatch Chile. They go hand in hand with a cold beverage, especially snacking on a warm summer day. These almonds are in fact “Straight from Jake’s Orchard,” showcasing the company’s vertical integration and commitment to sustainable growing practices. Jake’s almonds provide an unparalleled snacking experience and make eating this healthy snack both fun and satisfying.

Produced in a dedicated peanut-free facility, these premium California almonds are dry roasted and seasoned in small batches to deliver exceptional quality. Jake’s Nut Roasters 7-ounce cans have a cool, classic appearance that looks great on store shelves, kitchen counters, and table centerpieces. They also make the perfect gift. Since 1948, a commitment to quality and innovation has propelled many fine Jasper Specialty Foods products into the hands of health-conscious almond lovers around the world.

Jasper Specialty Foods 800.255.1641 info@jasperspecialtyfoods.com www.jasperspecialtyfoods.com www.jakesnutroasters.com

Smokey Blue Cheese: An American Original Since its debut, Rogue Creamery’s Smokey Blue Cheese has rocketed to success – winning a devoted following of fans across the country. This cheese is referred to as Rogue’s “Gateway Blue.” Its moderate blue character and complex, savorysweet flavors make it appealing to even the most resolute blue cheese skeptics. The first smoked blue cheese to be offered on the market, Smokey Blue is a true American Original. This groundbreaking recipe was recognized with the prestigious SIAL Product Innovation Award in Paris, France, following its release in 2006. Rogue Creamery cave-ages its Smokey Blue wheels for at least 90 days to achieve

perfect maturation. After aging, the wheels undergo a long, gentle cold-smoking using Oregon hazelnut shells. This infuses the cheese with nutty, caramelly aromas and notes of vanilla, bread pudding, and candied bacon – all of which find harmony with the cheese’s sweet cream flavors and mild blue spice. Smokey Blue is available in 5lb wheel format, crumble pouches for chefs, as well as a in new exact-weight 4.2oz prepackaged wedge for the grab-and-go retail cheese case.

Rogue Creamery 866.396.4704 ext. 4 www.roguecreamery.com

Legal Sea Foods House Tartar Sauce For years, Legal Sea Foods has been delighting guests with its ocean-fresh fare and New England-inspired menu. Today, Stonewall Kitchen is proud to lend its specialty food expertise to bring some of Legal Sea Foods’ signature in-house recipes right to your customers’ home. Crafted from quality ingredients for a mouthwatering taste, the Legal Sea Foods House Tartar Sauce pairs herbaceous dill and course-cut pickle relish with a creamy, aioli-like base to deliver wonderfully tangy flavor in each bite. When it comes to the perfect condiment for serving with fried seafood, tartar sauce wins every time. Your customers won’t want to stop at fish ’n’ chips when it comes to this super savory sauce. Always delicious slathered

on a haddock sandwich, it can also be enjoyed as a dip for bar food staples like fries and onion rings, dolloped onto a baked potato or spread on a surf and turf-style burger. With endless possibilities and can’t-resist flavor, this sauce is sure to be the catch of the day.

Stonewall Kitchen 888.326.5678 www.stonewallkitchen.com

Bone Suckin’ Garlic & Honey Wing Sauce Bone Suckin’ Garlic & Honey Wing Sauce will quickly become a favorite for families who enjoy the aroma of garlic and the sweet taste of honey as they devour their chicken wings. This wing sauce is gluten free, non-GMO and

kosher and contains no high fructose corn syrup.

Ford’s Gourmet Foods 800.446.0947 www.bonesuckin.com

adventure GOURMET NEWS

JUNE 2021

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Hot Sauces Flavor Ambitions

Co-Op Sauce is a company that got its start as a fundraiser for a Chicago, Illinois, non-profit youth program that taught high-risk youth how to apply their talents in entrepreneurship to a business that could lead to a career. Young people participating in the program were making a cooking show as a way to learn video production skills, and the project evolved into a take-over of a plot in the community garden so the youths could grow the produce they needed for their recipes. Once they had crops coming in, the teens started selling the produce at farmers markets to raise money to continue their program. Once they figured out that they were having a hard time competing on the open market with the other farmers who were bringing produce to the market, they started making hot sauces. The hot sauce company split off from the non-profit youth program and is now a for-profit venture that directs a portion of its revenue into the youth program and continues to employ graduates of the youth program in the cafe that shares its manufacturing facility. The sauces are packaged in 5fluid ounce bottles that feature gold foil-trimmed labels and bold graphics. They retail for $4.99. For more information, visit www.coopsauce.com.

Fresh Meat to Save the Planet from Extinction

Force of Nature is attempting to show that ruminant livestock can be part of the solution to climate change rather than part of the problem. The key to that is in raising bison, beef, elk and venison in ways that contribute to the soil’s ability to sequester carbon – a livestock management process known as regenerative agriculture – and Force of Nature sources its raw meat products only from growers who are practicing that kind of agriculture. While conventional livestock-raising is frequently blamed for its effects on global warming – the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change pointed out that livestock on managed pastures and rangelands were an important contributor to the agriculture industry’s greenhouse gas emissions – it’s also been recognized that “Sustainable land management can contribute to reducing the negative impacts of multiple stressors, including climate change, on ecosystems and societies,” according to the IPCC’s 2019 report. Force of Nature Meats offers a limited selection of regeneratively raised meats from Texas and New Zealand. For more information, visit www.forceofnaturemeats.com.

Soft and Sweet Caramels that Don’t Stick to Teeth

Jeri Vasquez packages up her Kindred Caramels in colorful polka-dotted cellophane bags tied up with a ribbon bow, so that the melt-in-your-mouth caramels in a variety of gourmet flavors are ready to give as a gift. They don’t always last long enough for that to happen. That gift packaging is a deliberate choice as well as a natural outcome of the products’ history, since they originated, as so many specialty products do, in the generous tradition of sharing home-made treats with friends at Christmas. For Vasquez, the question of exactly which candy she’d make to share with her friends was one with an easy answer – she just made a batch of the traditional caramels from the recipe handed down to her by Miyako Kano, a friend of her mother’s. With the recipe in hand, she started experimenting with the ingredients to perfect the recipe for a caramel that was soft but not so sticky that dental work could be endangered by the chew and with a taste that amazed her friends. The best selling flavor is always Sea Salt. Spicy Hot Bacon and Lavender and Meyer Lemon are the two originals that are best-sellers. They’re sold in polka dot cellophane bags that contain 4 ounces – about 20 pieces, which retail for a suggested price of $10. Kindred also offers 1-ounce squares that are generally sold next to the cash registers in specialty grocers, gift shops and wineries as an impulse buy for $2 to $2.50. For more information, visit www.kindredcooks.com.

GOURMET NEWS

JUNE 2021

Condiments with Fermented Zing and Umami Bang

Janet Smith invented Miso Mayo as a condiment for the food truck she was operating in Los Angeles, California, in the early 1990s. “I started with a food truck to help people eat good food if they can’t get away from their desks,” she said. Smith’s Four Wheel Cafe grew a business that expanded from lunch-time catering outside local businesses to serving lunches five days a week for high schools and middle schools that didn’t have onsite kitchens. Her miso-based condiment came into frequent use as a sandwich dressing then, and after she retired from the food truck, she decided to bottle it up and offer it to retail grocers. She started selling to Mrs. Gooch’s Natural Foods Market, which became part of Whole Foods Market in 1993. Miso Mayo is based on fermented soybean paste, so it offers the probiotic benefits that go along with that. It’s also vegan and keto-friendly. It’s offered in four flavors: the Original flavor from food truck days; Garlic ‘N’ Dill to deliver tang to roasted potatoes or a broiled salmon fillet; Spicy Red Pepper, delightful on a fish taco; and Sweet Black Garlic, which won a Good Food Award in 2020. Miso Mayo is offered in 9-ounce plastic squeeze bottles. The Sweet Black Garlic variety retails for $7.49 while the other flavors usually retail for $6.49. All are certified non-GMO, and distribution is available nationally. For more information, visit www.misomayo.com.

A Taste of Mona Ahmad’s Heritage

Mona Ahmad knows what it’s like to come home from a demanding job to find a family looking at her and asking about dinner. She wanted to provide for her family the same kind of traditional meals that her mother had provided for her family through the years that the family had traveled from country to country as her father’s job as a United Nations diplomat required. The solution she came up with was her own version of a meal kit – she put together packages of food with all the ingredients prepared for cooking and froze them. The Mona’s Curryations line now consists of Chicken Tikka Masala, Palak Paneer, Chickpea Tikka Masala and Tandoori Chicken. They’re made with fresh, natural ingredients, and the meats are halal. The Chickpea Tikka Masala is vegan, and the Tandoori Chicken is dairy free. The 22-ounce packages are intended to serve two with full meal servings, and they include the naan. They retail for about $9.99. For more information, visit www.monascurryations.com.

The Food Container for the On-the-Go Life

RIGWA is an insulated food container designed for active families. The RIGWA bowl features vacuum insulation, a leakproof top and the style that makes it work even when the site for adventure is the backyard patio or the picnic table at the park. The basis of the current product line is the RIGWA 1.5 Steel Insulated Bowl, which contains 48 ounces of food. It's constructed with a patented airtight lid, and its double-wall steel construction keeps hot food hot for up to four hours and cold food cold for up to eight hours. The RIGWA Divide & Conquer inserts are sold separately in a set of two inserts. One divides the container into three sections, while the other is a 28-ounce bowl with a silicone lid that fits snugly down into the 1.5 bowl. The inserts are safe in the microwave oven, freezer and the top rack of the dishwasher. The RIGWA 1.5 Bowl retails for $39.95, while the Divide & Conquer Inserts retail for $19.95. Colors available for the Bowl include Sea Foam, Coral, Black Sand, Blue Dusk, Snowbird, Slate, Sunrise, Stainless and Sullivans Sand. For more information, visit www.rigwalife.com or email support@rigwalife.com.

Eco-Friendly Envirocooler

LifeMade's Envirocooler is an eco-friendly cooler to take along for an outing in the park or to bring out for casual entertaining in the backyard. The white soft-sided foam cooler holds about 20 quarts and is made from an additive-infused insulation product that breaks down in a landfill in less than four years, leaving behind no microplastics. LifeMade is a market leader in sustainable disposables, and the Envirocooler is designed to perform while it's also good to the planet. For more information, visit www.lifemadeproducts.com/envirocooler.

Charcoal Grills for the Grilling Enthusiast

The IG Stainless Steel Charcoal BBQ and IG Matte Black Edition Barbeque are a pair of charcoal grills designed to solve some of the frustrations that backyard chefs experience in their culinary endeavors, according to Designer/Inventor David Illulian. The grills that Illulian invented share several features: stainless steel construction, a mechanism that raises and lowers the charcoal bed to control heat, folding side trays and a bottom rack for extra storage. The cooking surface measures 34 inches by 16 inches. They also feature four wheels to make the grill easy to move from one location to another, a large cooking surface for grilling skewers – a favorite of Illulian's – and a removable, retractable ash tray. Assembly requires no tools: even the screws provided with the grill are butterfly screws, so that they can be finger-tightened, so one person can assemble the grill in about half an hour to 40 minutes. Retail price is $499 for both the black and stainless steel models. For more information, visit www.igbbq.com.

EDITOR’S PICKS Popper Duos Offer Variety

Harvest Snaps Popper Duos are a puffed crisp that pairs two tasty flavors in one irresistibly crunchy bite. Made with green peas as the first ingredient and featuring a fun, pop-able round shape, the baked snacks come in three unique, two-in-one flavor combos: Salsa & Cheddar, BBQ & Ranch and Yellow & White Cheddar. Real vegetables with no potato or corn fillers provide plant-based protein and fiber in every serving of these better-for-you green pea crisps, which contain less sodium than traditional cheese balls or puffed snacks. The lineup is also certified gluten free, vegetarian friendly, and completely free of palm oil, artificial flavors and colors, plus the common allergens: soy, nuts, peanuts, wheat, and eggs. Calbee Inc. www.harvestsnaps.com/popper-duos

New Hard Seltzer from Sparkling Ice

Sparkling Ice SPIKED™ is Sparkling Ice’s entry into the burgeoning alcoholic bubbly beverages category. The new full-flavored spiked seltzer is offered in four flavors: Cherry Lime Cooler, Lemonade Refresher, Ruby Fizz and Strawberry Citrus Smash, each with 4 percent alcohol, zero sugar and only 80 calories. It’s offered in slim 12-ounce cans in a 12-can variety pack. Sparkling Ice www.sparklingicespiked.com

Rougette Bonfire Grilling Cheeses

Champignon North America, importers of Käserei Champignon cheeses, is introducing two new Rougette Bonfire Grilling Cheeses just in time for grilling season. Mild and Creamy Grilling Cheese is made to be heated directly on the grill – just like a burger! This soft ripened cheese can withstand the direct heat without melting or sticking to the grill. Marinated Grilling Cheese is a savory and creamy semi-soft cheese pre-marinated in herbs and oil. It comes in a convenient aluminum pan for easy preparation and grilling. Both cheese selections are lactose-free, RBST-free, gluten free and all natural. The cheeses will be available in the U.S. through October.

GOURMET NEWS

Carbone, a brand best known as a New York City restaurant, just unveiled a line of restaurant quality pasta sauces, expanding the Carbone name to grocery shelves for the first time. Developed by Mario Carbone and Rich Torrisi, Chefs and co-Founders of Carbone and the Major Food Group, the sauces will be available in three varieties: Marinara, Arrabbiata and Tomato Basil. They’re launching in the New York City area for $8.99 per jar. Using the same time and care that’s applied in a Carbone kitchen, these packaged sauces are made in small batches utilizing only fresh ingredients, including Italian-grown tomatoes, whole onion and garlic, allowing consumers to bring the taste of the famous Carbone dining experience into their homes. Major Food Group www.majorfood.com

JUNE 2021

Elephant-Friendly Teas from Republic of Tea

Republic of Tea has a pair of teas certified as Elephant Friendly, with its Bold Black Chai Tea and Bold Green Chai Tea. The Bold Black Chai Tea, inspired by traditional masala chai, has a base of strong black Biodynamic® Assam leaves infused with warming spices: cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, clove, and a hint of black pepper. It’s also available as part of Republic of Tea’s Chai Teas Stackable Tin, which also includes the Bold Green Chai Tea as well as Mushroom Cacao Chai Tea. The stackable tin contains 12 round unbleached tea bags for each of the three varieties and retails for $15.25 per tin. The tin of Bold Black Chai Tea alone retails for $12.25. Republic of Tea www.republicoftea.com

Bubbies

Bubbies individually wrapped Vegan Chocolate and Vegan Strawberry Mochi are decadent, non-dairy frozen desserts surrounded by sweetened mochi dough for a delicious, plant-based twist on a classic Japanese novelty. Perfectly portioned in new individually-wrapped packaging, this rice-dough based treat is made with real, non-GMO ingredients. It’s also gluten-free for a mindful indulgence that anyone can love. Bubbies Homemade Ice Cream & Desserts Inc. www.bubbiesicecream.com

Laura Chenel Goat Cheese Logs

Laura Chenel has launched its Goat Cheese Logs in a new 4-ounce size and in several flavors, including Original, Orange Blossom Honey, Garlic & Chive, Kalamata Olive, Black Truffle, Fig & Grapefruit, Cranberry and Sun-Dried Tomato & Basil. Except for the Black Truffle variety, which retails for a suggested $5.99, they retail for a suggested $5.49. Laura Chenel www.laurachenel.com

Champignon North America www.thisisfinecheese.com

Carbone Pasta Sauces

Perfectly Cordial Cocktail Mixers

Created with handpicked fresh fruits and a blend of spices, Perfectly Cordial brings nononsense cocktail mixers to the home bar, making craft cocktails and mocktails accessible for both the novice and enthusiast bartender. Each Perfectly Cordial premium craft mixer is made from a variety of fresh squeezed juices, a unique global spice blend and pure cane sugar, and do not contain artificial colors, flavors or preservatives. Simply mix with your favorite spirit for the perfect cocktail, or combine with sparkling water or tonic for a refreshing mocktail. Seasonal flavors and holiday gift packs are available. Perfectly Cordial www.perfectlycordial.com

GOURMET NEWS

SMORGASBORD Wise Bird Cider Continued from PAGE 1 Bird’s York Imperial cider double-distilled by Barrel House Distilling Company, also located in Lexington, and blended with heirloom apple varietals and aged in oak barrels. It’s a nod to the Pommeau made today and historically in Normandy, France, which has an ancient cider tradition that shares its roots with French winemaking. There, Pommeau is made by blending Calvados with fresh apple juice and served as a digestif. The Wise Bird Ashmead’s Kernel that was named as a Good Food Award finalist is made from an English apple revered as one of the first cider apples in existence. Ashmead’s Kernel makes a cider with pronounced floral notes on the nose rounding out to a lush fruitiness on the back. The Wise Bird Ashmead’s Kernel’s sweetness and the hints of pear make a spectacular pairing with Rogue River Blue Cheese that reveals the cheese’s savory notes and an intense umami. These ciders are made by Cidermaker Tim Wright, who founded Wise Bird along with his wife, Greta, in 2019 after the two of them, who were living at the time in Washington, D.C., took up cider making as a hobby. “For us, a hobby had turned into an obsession,” he said. “Suddenly we were planning family vacations around cider.” Weekend excursions into Virginia to taste cider and participate in the culture of craft cider led to making their own. They won a couple of awards in the non-commercial category of the Great Lakes Cider and Perry Competition, one of the largest in the world.

“That was the realization that quitting our jobs, selling our house and putting every dollar we had into making this dream a reality maybe wasn’t completely crazy,” Wright said with a wry grin that came through in his voice over the phone. The couple had family in Lexington, so when they decided to take leave of their careers and plunge into cider, Lexington was where they went to find a location in the Distillery District where they could establish a cidery and tasting room where visitors can sit and enjoy a glass of cider while they watch the cidermakers at work. Their location is the site of the original James Pepper Distillery, which operated from the late 1800s to around 1950, Wright said. The cidery is located in the former distillery’s rick house, with 4,000 square feet of space divided by a waist-high wall between the tasting room and the production area. Wright makes cider five to seven days a week, year-round, although August through January is the peak production season. The apples are pressed at the orchards, and Wright receives the juice in white 275-gal-

ADVERTISER INDEX ADVERTISER

PAGE

WEBSITE

Andrew & Everett

www.andrewandeverett.com

Certiﬁed Origins

www.certiﬁedorigins.com

DeBrand Fine Chocolates

www.debrand.com

Fiorucci Foods Inc.

www.ﬁoruccifoods.com

Fords Gourmet Foods

www.bonesuckin.com

Great River Organic Milling

www.greatrivermilling.com

Jasper Specialty Foods

www.jakesnutroasters.com

Klondike Cheese Co.

www.buholzerbrothers.com

L&S Packing Co.

www.paesana.com

MarDona Specialty Foods

www.mardonaspecialtyfoods.com

Mighty Sesame Co.

www.mightysesame.com

Mooney Farms

www.bellasunluci.com

Olivia's Croutons

www.oliviascroutons.com

Once Again Nut Butter

www.oanb.com

Parmacotto LLC

www.parmacottousa.com

Rogue Creamery

www.roguecreamery.com

Spicin Foods

www.spicinfoods.com

Stonewall Kitchen

www.stonewallkitchen.com

The French Farm

www.thefrenchfarm.com

The Spice Lab

www.spices.com

Tortuga Rum Cake Company

www.tortugarumcakes.com

Wally's Natural Inc.

www.wallysnatural.com

lon food grade plastic totes – usually one variety of apple per tote, although occasionally apples are blended at the press for specific ciders. The juice is fermented in stainless steel tanks, then bottled and pasteurized – a process that takes three to six months from start to finish, depending on the apples themselves, how the fermenting goes and what’s planned to happen to the cider after fermentation. The Wrights’ decision to establish their business in Lexington was helped along by the fact that the city hasn’t had a lot of competition for them: there’s one other business that makes some cider in addition to its craft beers and specializes in modern ciders, which are ciders that are often made from commercial dessert apples like those sold in supermarkets, sometimes including juice from other fruits and occasionally flavored by herbs or spices. The Wrights wanted to make traditional ciders from the juice from cider-specific apple varietals – and only from apples. “We think of ourselves as winemakers. We’re of the school of thought that apples should be treated the way grapes are treated for making wines,” Wright said. “You want to use specific varietals of apples that have distinct combinations of acids and tannins.” The acids in a cider confer balance and zest, while the tannins provide body and spicy aroma as well as clarity. Although contemporary cider-making is generally considered an outgrowth of the craft beer movement that celebrates the creativity and skill of the brewer with variations on a few basic ingredients, resulting in a style of cider that is uniquely American, traditional cider makers like the Wrights trace the lineage of their craft to the French winemaking traditions through the region of Normandy and to the West Country of England, where the Roman armies commanded by Julius Caesar are thought to have brought their own knowledge of the craft of fermenting apple juice with them when Caesar came, saw and conquered first Gaul and then England. The Romans were eventually driven back out of England and France, but the people who watched the Roman soldiers retire after defeat continued making cider. As with wine, a craft cider is an expression of the skills and the aesthetic of the cidermaker and the characteristics of the fruit that went into it. The flavors contributed by

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the apples depend on the traits of the apple variety and the terroir of the particular orchard where they were grown. “It changes from year to year, and that is part of the traditional orchard style of cider that we make. We could have a vintage of a Harrison single varietal cider that presents different from what we made the year before because of changes in the weather conditions. We aim to showcase the character of the specific apple or blend of apples in our ciders,” he said. “With modern cider, the apple is used as a sugar base that you’re going to add other fruit flavors into, so the nuances of the apple are no longer the centerpiece.” “We make cider from the best apples that we can get our hands on,” Wright said. About a third of the apples that go into his ciders come from Evans Orchard in Georgetown, Kentucky, including the Gold Rush apples that are the only modern apple that Wright currently uses in Wise Bird ciders. The Gold Rush apple, so named for its golden color and bronze blush combined with its rush of flavor, is a dual-purpose apple characterized by a rich, spicy flavor. It makes excellent cider straight from the tree but develops sweetness as it’s stored and matures into a crisp dessert apple with a spritely flavor and firm texture after a few months of cold storage. The cultivar is a cross between Golden Delicious and an experimental apple grown at the Purdue Horticulture Research Farm in West Lafayette, Indiana, from a cross made in 1972 at Ur-

bana, Illinois, through a collaborative breeding program of the Indiana, Illinois and New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Stations. It was introduced to the market in 1992. Wright uses Gold Rush in his Commonwealth Gold Cider and in Pomme Pomme, which won a platinum award in the 2020 Cidercraft magazine awards’ modern cider category. Pomme Pomme is what Wright describes as a gateway cider for people who’ve been used to thinking of ciders more as the sweet, fruity beverages frequently produced by ciderers who view the beverage as an offshoot of the craft beer movement rather than the drier ciders, often with higher alcohol content, made by the ciderers who compare themselves with winemakers. “It’s meant to be the cheerleader of our ciders – an entry point,” Wright said. “This is the first time we’d won an award at this level and we’re honored to be compared alongside a handful of ciders and cider makers that we revere.” For more information, visit www .wisebirdcider.com or email tim@wise birdcider.com. GN