A Canadian Mom Changes Baby Food

By Sarah Pinneo

 

One of the best things about writing Julia's Child was interviewing all of the real life women who have started organic kids' food companies. I learned so much from them, and came to admire their risk taking and fortitude. Jennifer Broe of Baby Gourmet shared a taste of her story with me, and I gobbled up every word.

 

When her daughter was six months old, Jennifer Broe made all her food at home. She used simple ingredients of very high quality—and the results were heads above anything she could find in the store. “The food in the jars was sub-par. I would never eat it myself. How could I feel good about feeding it to my daughter?”

 

Broe quickly identified that there was a big hole in the market, but she needed to do her research. Her first step was to put in an application at a thriving Calgary farmers’ market. Even though there were 300 applicants ahead of her, Broe was quickly given a stall. “There wasn’t anyone making fresh baby food in Calgary.”

 

She spent three weeks putting the recipes together. Her original product was a frozen one. “I used ice cube trays,” she says.

 

Immediately business was so good that she couldn’t keep up with the demand. She rented space in a commercial kitchen, and put in special freezers. On the weekends, she sold food at the market. At the end of her two year stint, she was selling an eye popping $30,000 CAD in baby food each month. Sometimes, she sold baby food while her second child helped out from his infant carrier on her front.

 

Then Broe took a big risk. She discontinued her market sales. She did more research, and spent three years reformulating her product into a shelf stable pouch. She raised funding and hired an executive management team.

 

The risk paid off, and Baby Gourmet re-launched in Wal-Mart in Canada, and in February 2011 Broe’s sister Jill Vos became the VP of Product Development. There are now three different textures of Baby Gourmet for three different stages. For the youngest babies, there are simple purees such as “Juicy Pear and Garden Greens.” The oldest babies get Tasty Textures, including “Vanilla Banana Berry Risotto.”

 

Now U.S. babies can enjoy the product, too. Last fall, Baby Gourmet launched in Wal-Mart Super Centers on our side of the border.

 

Ingredients are still of utmost importance to Broe and Vos. While researching the business, they were appalled to find that the fruit that was commonly sold for baby food production was often not first quality. Baby Gourmet is made only from tasty organic produce. They taste every batch to make sure that it’s as good as the last. “Because taste matters,” says Broe. “Better tasting food means easier mealtimes.”

Meet Zak and Little Duck Organics

From time to time I post about entrepreneurs I met while researching Julia's Child. Meet Zak Normandin, "dadpreneur" of Little Duck Organics.

Normandin started his company, as many do, because in the baby and toddler aisle of the grocery store “there wasn’t anything appealing to me.” His premier product, Tiny Fruits, are just what the name describes: dehydrated fruit, with nothing added, cut small enough for babies and toddlers. 

He didn’t like the ingredient lists he saw on a lot of products. “I saw added cane sugar as the second ingredient on a lot of these products. Why does a six to eight month old need sweeteners?” Tiny fruits are verified to be non-GMO, and they’re completely organic, and gluten free. The package says “100% Fruit” because that’s all that’s in there.

“I started everything in my basement,” Normandin recalls. Like many other entrepreneurs, his funding was bootstrapped, too. “I leveraged every credit card that I had.”

The gamble paid off, and now Little Duck has gone national at Whole Foods stores. It is also available at Market Basket and Big Y.

Normandin makes starting a company look fun. He had never run a food company before, but had always been interested in branding, and it shows. This is my favorite tagline:

 

“I’ve always liked products with a story, something to root for,” he says. Well, Zak, I’m rooting for yours!

Locally Produced Gin? Come to Mama

You all know how much I like to write about local entrepreneurs, and to taste their wares. Could it be that I have a kind of localvore karma built up by now, after a steady diet of Vermont grass fed beef, naturally raised poultry and local cheeses? 

I think I must.

Imagine my pleasure at finding samples of Barr Hill Gin and Vodka at the so-called Discount Liquor store in tony Manchester Center, VT. I didn't actually taste the gin then as I was on my way to the delightful Northshire Bookstore for a reading and signing. It's not a great idea to turn up at ones' own bookstore events tipsy, even if tipsy on glorious local hooch.

The distillery's website describes the gin as: "a celebration of our special connection to the land. We use pure grain spirits as a canvas to showcase juniper berry and raw northern honey. Added just before bottling, the raw honey imparts unique floral qualities that vary with season and blossom."

The grain comes from Buttermilk Farms, which also grows the oats we like to use in our homemade granola. The bottles are sealed with (what else?) bees wax.

And the gin is wonderful. "Almost a shame to add tonic," my husband insists. 

It's a shame for him, perhaps. But I find it delightful.

The Freshest Thing Under the Sun: Petit Organics

My new novel, Julia's Child, will be released at the end of this month. It tells the story of a fictional mom and her comic efforts to launch an organic toddler food company. While doing research for the book, I met some truly amazing real-life moms who run organic food businesses. This is the first in a series of posts about the "mompreneurs" out there making it happen for real and for true.

Meet Michelle & Rehana of Petit Organics

File this under: where were they when my boys were babies?

Meet Rehana Zamfotis and Michelle Marinis, two New York City moms with five kids and one growing hyper-local business between them. Their unique company, Petit Organics, is the only one in New York to deliver homemade organic baby food right to New Yorkers’ apartment building doors. Never frozen and never canned, the fresh food they make includes recipes like Broccoli, Carrot & Quinoa and Pear, Oat & Cinnamon. For the youngest babies there is Simply Zucchini and Simply Apples, among others.

Before starting the company, Marinis was in the high-pressure commercial real estate business. She saw her child for about an hour each evening. And then, because she wanted him to have fresh baby food, “I spent four or five hours every Sunday in the kitchen steaming food for the week,” she said. By the time her second son came along, she was overwhelmed.

Marinis couldn’t believe that in New York City, there wasn’t a convenient fresh baby food option. When she mentioned her crazy idea of opening a baby food business to Zamfotis, her friend surprised her by saying “let’s do it.”

Zamfotis was willing to quit her marketing job to make the idea a reality. “I was so tired of the daily grind of pushing intangible products.” Along came something she believed in. “I wanted to be a part of it.”

Marinis and Zamfotis have made sure to allow their business to grow slowly. “We’re taking baby steps, if you will,” says Zamfotis. “We’re small right now,” she said “except for Michelle. She’s 38 weeks.”

Even as their families grow, the gentle pace of business growth keeps things under control. “We do it because we love it,” says Marinis.

And it shows. You can read more about the company here.

Veal as a "Conscious" Food

I did not eat veal for the first 37 years of my life. I've always eaten meat, but since childhood I've avoided what I'll call the "Disney Platter." In other words, I didn't eat foods that used to be really cute. Venison, lamb, rabbit or veal were just off the menu.

I'm not saying these choices stand up to logic. They're just the way I looked at life, especially prior to learning a lot about where food comes from.

In the last five years I've gone from knowing almost nothing about my food's origins to knowing an exquisite amount about it. (Note: moving to rural VT/NH makes acquiring this knowledge very easy. So does reading a lot of Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver.) Obviously my will-eat / won't-eat food logic was overdue for a reassessment.

I never thought about veal until I met farmer Lisa Kaiman of the Jersey Girls dairy in Chester, VT. Lisa is a dairy farmer. On her farm she sells raw milk (some of it to award winning cheesemakers) and in her store she sells a variety of other farm products, including veal. This is where I received my quick education.

Every glass of milk or crumb of cheese in the world produces some veal. That's because dairy farmers, by definition, have a fresh crop of calves on the farm each spring. Obviously the female calves can grow up to be milkers like their moms. The little boys, unfortunately, cannot. And since cattle breeds are specialized--milkers like Holsteins and Jerseys are not the sort that are grown for beef--often they're sold for veal. A dairy farmer can expect to be paid only $2 to $10 for her veal calves. 

Farmer Lisa didn't like selling them off, so now she goes to the trouble of raising them herself. They enjoy fresh milk and solid food in her roomy veal barn, and then spend some time outdoors too. When local families stop by the farm to buy milk, they often seek out the little fellows for a quick little pat on the head.

I buy and cook Lisa's veal, because if I were a bull calf, I'd want to live my early days there. The animals don't live a long life, but it is a happy one.

Birds Eye's Wonder of Vegetables Campaign

This image was part of the Birdseye email. But I've never seen anything like this in a frozen package...One of the fun things about being a food writer is receiving PR product pitches in my inbox. Today's gem comes from the Birds Eye company, the national maker of frozen vegetables.  PR pitches are nothing if not gushy, and this one is no exception.

"Birds Eye®, a portfolio brand of Pinnacle Foods Group, is on a mission to help America “Discover the Wonder of Vegetables™” and announced today the launch of its new campaign with a kick-off event in New York City’s Union Square, featuring an unexpected vegetable farm in the snow."

For people like me, who have angsty thoughts about nutrition every five minutes, this email is torture to read. There's so much about it that's so right, and yet it manages to miss its mark in several painful ways.

I commend Birds Eye for (further down the page) making a donation of "up to" 250,000 pounds of vegetables to Share our Strength's No Kid Hungry campaign. ("Up to?") And more importantly, I understand the temptation to resort to elaborate marketing gimmicks.  In my novel, the main character struggles mightily with the difficulty of marketing plain old vegetables. When you don't believe in magical nutritional additives, the ads are harder to write, aren't they? Julia bewails it like this:

"Because fresh broccoli is never new and improved, never reformulated." 

But when I take a closer look at Birds Eye and its parent Pinnacle Food Group, my sympathy evaporates. Pinnacle is the home of products like Armour Canned Meats (the cheapest kind of factory meat, with loads of salt for shelf stability) and Log Cabin Sugar Free Syrup (Water, sorbitol, maltitol, nutrasweet, cellulose gum, natural & artifical flavors, salt, sodium hexmetaphosphate, sodium benzoate, sorbic acid, sucralose... YUM!)  

Even the Birds Eye vegetable brand itself has some explaining to do. Birds Eye Voila Cheesy Ranch Chicken, a pasta dish, has 760 mg of sodium in a cup-and-a-half serving.  Yet they claim they're "on a mission to help America 'Discover the Wonder of Vegetables.™'" Really?

Beware of smoke and mirrors. And faux snowy vegetable farms in Union Square.

Dream Job Alert: King Arthur Flour

I recently had the pleasure to tour the King Arthur Flour mothership, in Norwich, Vermont.  This wonderful place is just a few miles from my home, but though I write professionally about food it had never occurred to me to knock on their door and ask for a tour.

Enter Erika Penzer Kerekes, food blogger from Southern California.  Not only does Erika write the scrumptious blog In Erika's Kitchen, but she is the warmest, most curious, ebulliant person I have met in months. It was Erika, on her annual trek through Vermont foodie sites, who had the good sense to call the PR people at King Arthur and ask for a tour.

I was more than happy to tag along.  And now I wish they'd adopt me. Where else would you be asked to please eat a brownie, because it's research?

King Arthur Flour makes the sort of high quality products that serious bakers request by name.  I can't call myself a serious baker (perhaps because I can't call myself serious) but I'm partial to several of their products.  Their 100% Organic All Purpose Flour, their Whole Wheat Pastry Flour and their White Whole Wheat Flour are always in my kitchen.  

The King Arthur mothership in Norwich, Vermont is many things to many people: a kick-ass bakery and coffee shop, a vendor of sandwiches and sweets, a world class baking education center and a catalog company for baking ingredients and gear. That special salt just the right grain for dusting hot pretzels? They have it. Lemon Juice Powder to make your lemon bars sing? Check. Professional dough rising buckets, tart pans, square ramekins? Check, check, check.

Our tour guide, the wonderful Terri Rosenstock, public relations coordinator, recently moved from 1000 miles away to take the job at King Arthur, and it's not hard to understand why.  What other workplace wants you to test brownies, and then brings pilates classes right into the company HQ in order to keep employees fit?

King Arthur is absolutely unique in that respect, and in so many others. I'm proud to live within waddling distance from their headquarters.

(P.S. This post was not compensated in any way, even if it sounds as though it was. I'm smitten. Can you tell?)

What's in an Ice Cream Cone?

I'm just the sort of nerd who wants to know who invented ice cream cones. A little research on the subject reveals that the first recognizeable ice cream cones were sold at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis. Several different fair vendors claim to have invented it. Whichever of them was first, the product took off immediately, with everyone suddenly in love with them. (Kind of like Twitter, but crispier.)

Cones were rolled only by hand until 1912 when a man named Frederick Bruckman patented a machine for rolling them. In 1928, he sold his business and rights to Nabisco.

Fast forward 85 years or so and step into a modern grocery store. The box of cones on the shelf you see in front of you is made by... Nabisco. (The box says "Comet" but that's a Nabisco brand.)

So I'd like to congratulate Nabisco on having the foresight to pony up for the 1928 rights.  Whatever you paid, Nabisco, it must have been worth it. Bruckman's heirs got the short straw on that one.

But don't get a swelled head, you mega food giant, because I have a question. Why on earth would you put transfats (partially hydrogenated oils) in an ice cream cone? Why? Surely the airy, slightly stale texture of a commercial wafer cone will not be irrevocably ruined by a healthier oil. You are really behind the curve on this one. Just fix it, will you? 

Pretty please?