Nutritionally Dense Cooking Sauces with Global Flavors
By Lorrie Baumann
Mesa de Vida is a line of cooking sauces based on fruits and vegetables that are designed to inject flavor and convenience into meals prepared with the intention of catering to those concerned about maintaining their health. “My goal is to make products that make it easier for people to cook, to get to the table more often, and they don’t have to sacrifice flavor or health for a great meal,” said Kirsten Sandoval, the Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Chef behind Mesa de Vida. The line currently has five sauces: Smoky Latin, Creole, Caribbean, Mediterranean and North African. The next sauce to join the line is likely to be one based on an Asian flavor profile, Sandoval said.
She started making sauces while she was working as a personal chef catering to the performance needs of professional athletes. “They needed to be eating healthier foods. My players were like little boys – they didn’t like eating their vegetables,” Sandoval said. But while the athletes didn’t necessarily want to see vegetables on their plates, they still needed the nutrition that vegetables provide, so Sandoval responded by creating flavor bases from fruits and vegetables, herbs and spices that she could add to soups and stews. Her goal was a low-sodium flavor base with no added sugar that she could conveniently add to a wide variety of dishes to create the flavors that clients preferred along with the nutrition that allowed them to perform at their best. Each client had a customized flavor base that matched the flavors he preferred. “I began altering the flavor bases with food profiles from around the world that the athletes recognized as the flavors of their homes,” she said. “If I made them a chili, it had the flavor they were looking for…. They were getting the nutrition they needed, and they weren’t looking at a pile of vegetables.”
After a day of cooking for her high-profile clients, she’d come home to her family and cook dinner for them. It didn’t take her long to figure out that she could use at home the same idea that had served her to manage the nutritional needs and personal tastes of her clients, especially since her children had their own nutritional needs and personal tastes. She tried looking for some of those flavor bases in the spice aisles of her local grocers but found that the spice blends she was seeing there often contained the salt or sugar that she didn’t want to include in her food and realized that other home cooks were faced with the same problem for which she already had a solution – a range of global gourmet recipe starters and cooking sauces that are concentrated flavor bases common in professional kitchens, but made for the home cook.
She launched her business in 2017, while she was still working as a personal chef by selling the sauces online and at small specialty shops. “I would drag my kids around to farmers markets to start getting the word out about them,” she said. “You don’t have to buy every spice under the sun to have a meal with global flavors, and you don’t have to chop a whole basket of fruits and vegetables as well.”
How does it work? Improper blood supply inside male http://secretworldchronicle.com/2014/10/season-8-begins-ep-8-01-prologue/ generico cialis on line reproductive organ remains the prime reason for most of the disorders. On the off chance tadalafil pills that you feel tension about it and would prefer not to let your accomplice or yourself down. Drug and pharmaceutical companies are in fact keenly competing on the development of products bringing enhancers female libido solutions in various forms and methods. order generic cialis You can choose a compatible one for yourself is how secretworldchronicle.com levitra soft tabs to fly these kinds of helicopters. “I really designed these sauces for what I couldn’t find when I went to the store. I love to cook, I have lots of ingredients, but there are days when you’re just busy,” she added. “They also appeal to the health-conscious. I designed the jars to fit into the stores that do a really beautiful job of curating their shelves for the consumers.”
She notes that each of the sauces in the line can be used to flavor a wide variety of soups, stews and slow-cooker recipes, and each represents a region with a culinary tradition of gathering around the table every day. “I really hope that these sauces can have people here have that same inspiration and help them get to the table every day,” she said.
The Mediterranean sauce is the newest in the line. Its flavor profile is characteristic of Italy and Greece rather than the northern Africa area of the Mediterranean region. “It’s a fantastic base for a simple beef stew. Beef, a jar of sauce, some chickpeas and into the slow cooker,” she said. “It’s a really rich jar, so when you open the jar, it’s like cooking from scratch. It’s like having your personal chef do most of the work for you.”
The next sauce that’s in development is a response to consumer requests for an Asian-inspired sauce that’s free from gluten and is low in sodium, Sandoval said. “From there the sky’s the limit,” she added. “I would love to start developing more obscure regional flavors that people find new and also global hot sauces. I want it to be something that customers can’t find very easily and that also have the health profile they need. That’s the mission going forward.”
Each of the sauces is packaged in a 9-ounce jar that retails for $8.99 on Mesa de Vida’s website at www.mesadevida.com, which also offers additional information.
America’s Original Beer Cheese Spread
By Lorrie Baumann
Hall’s Beer Cheese is America’s original beer cheese, developed in the 1930s to be served at a riverside tavern in central Kentucky that’s been in operation since around the time of the American Revolution. “The tavern has been there since Daniel Boone’s time,” said Kit Crase, who owns the Hall’s Beer Cheese brand today. “The restaurant is right on the river. It was very close to Fort Boonesborough, so there’s been something there since about 1780 – continuously.”
The Hall’s Beer Cheese brand was spun off from the restaurant operation a few years ago and is now devoted to a range of products that includes Hall’s Original Snappy Blue Cheese, Hall’s Hot-n-Snappy Beer Cheese as well as a Benedictine Spread based on cucumber and cream cheese with some garlic notes that’s very popular in Kentucky, particularly around Kentucky Derby season, Crase said.
The company has additional products in the pipeline that will be introduced in advance of the holiday entertaining season. Those will include a line of cheese balls made from all natural ingredients. They’ll be offered in a wide range of flavors, including Bacon Jalapeno and about two dozen more. The company also makes Queso and Harissa Queso dips as well as a Pimento Cheese that has won kudos in blind taste tests, Crase said.
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Hall’s Beer Cheese is made in both Wisconsin, through a partnership with a cheesemaker there, and in Kentucky, so that it qualifies for the “Kentucky Proud” certification for locally produced products. It contains no oils or fillers, and the beer flavor isn’t overpowering, so it will be complemented by any beer that’s consumed along with it, Crase said. “Any beer goes with it. I personally like an IPA or a Guinness, but any beer goes with it,” she said.
While most Hall’s Beer Cheese fans are probably happy spreading it on crackers or inside sandwiches, Crase also likes to add it to her breakfast omelet filling, and she has an apple tart that she has made with it. Hall’s Beer Cheese also melts beautifully over chili or a burger, Crase said. “There’s no wrong way to do it,” she said.
Hall’s Beer Cheese is offered in 8-ounce, 24-ounce and 5-pound plastic tubs. Distribution is available nationally for wholesale, and the product has fans all over the U.S. who buy Hall’s Beer Cheese online through the company’s website.
A New Life for Grandma’s Shortbread Crescents
By Lorrie Baumann
Flathau’s Fine Foods is known to specialty food retailers mostly as a baker of cheese straws and shortbread cookies, but the company started out 25 years ago as a caterer for corporate events and weddings. The Flathau cheese straws, chocolate chip cookies and white chocolate macadamia cookies were big hits at those affairs, but when Founder Jeff Flathau decided to take a chance to expand his market with a trip to Atlanta’s gift market, he thought he might want to expand his product line as well. “I wanted to do shortbread,” he said. “We were humming along there, and had the catering, so I didn’t have to make a living out of the cookie business,… but I really wanted to get the business changed and get the packaged cookie business going.”
As he thought about shortbread, Flathau remembered the crescent cookies that his grandmother had made for him when he was a boy. After she’d passed along the recipe, Flathau baked the cookies and tasted them eagerly, only to realize that, while the cookies were good, what had made them really special was that his grandmother had baked them for him. That wasn’t an experience he could pass along in a package, so, regretfully, he continued his search for a great recipe.
Then, one day, he came home from work to find his wife, Heather, bashing away with a hammer on a bag of peppermint candy. “I thought she was off her rocker,” he said. “She’s in the carport with a hammer and a Ziploc bag, and she’s bashing at it to crush peppermint candy to put inside the shortbread.”
Then Heather took some of that crushed candy and mixed it a batch of cookie dough that had started with Jeff’s grandmother’s recipe for crescent cookies and been doctored on by Heather. And when she’d baked that off, there was the magical experience that Jeff had been hoping for when he’d asked his grandmother for that recipe. “That little bit of pulverized candy gives it a distinct flavor along with a little crunch from the candy inside the cookie,” he said. “They say necessity is the mother of invention. We needed something that would sell, and we needed something with a long shelf life.”
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Flathau’s now has seven different flavors of its shortbread cookies. The original Peppermint Snaps flavor was followed by Raspberry Snaps, then Key Lime Snaps. Butterscotch, Lemon and Cinnamon followed. The latest flavor was All-Natural Shortbread Cookies – a classic shortbread with no candy inside and no dusting of powdered sugar, which won a silver sofi Award in 2017 to add to the two previous sofi Awards on Flathau’s shelf – one for Butterscotch Snaps and one for Raspberry – along with a wide range of other awards from various food and gift shows.
The cookies are offered in several different package sizes. A 4-ounce carton retails for $4.95, a 6-ounce carton retails for $6.49. There’s a 7-ounce Maddy’s carton that retails for $6.95, and the 8-ounce Flathau’s carton retails for $7.95. Flathau’s also offers a 6-ounce can of cookies that retails for $11.95. The can is modeled after a paint can, but it’s made of plastic and it’s reusable. “People use it for putting pins in or collecting pennies,” Flathau said. “We get people calling us and telling us that they have cans that are seven or eight years old.”
A 16-ounce can in a design similar to the 6-ounce can retails for $21.95. “It’s great for holiday gifts,” Flathau said. “We have a Holiday Assortment in the large can that has Cheese Straws, Plain Shortbread, Key Lime and Peppermint Shortbread.” The assortment also retails for $21.95. “The Holiday Assortment is one of our top sellers during Christmas,” Flathau said. “People like the choice, and it’s 24 ounces of each in the can, so it’s a good assortment.”
The cookies have a 9-month shelf life and are all still made in Mississippi. Flathau’s Fine Foods is a founding member of Genuine MS, a Mississippi state program that recognizes products that are grown or made in the state. Flathau’s also offers private label products. For more information, call 601.606.3899 or email flathauj@aol.com. Visit on the web at www.flathausfinefoods.com.
