Sell Gourmet vendor Desiree Guillory, owner of Blue Magnolia Products company from Lafayette, Louisiana who makes a wonderful bread pudding mix you bake at home was featured by the website Simple Daily Recipes as one of their top picks.

Jill McKeaver is a mother, wife, teacher, artist, creative genius, and writer. She works daily on her blog at SimpleDailyRecipes.com. When she is not home schooling her kids or writing for her blog, Jill likes to experiment in her kitchen to create new food delights.

I wasn’t a bread pudding fan until I ate Blue Magnolia’s Cinnamon Bread Pudding. Oh mercy, was it GOOD!
I was over shopping in my favorite little town of Winnsboro, Texas. Winnsboro is such a cool little place with great live music, awesome restaurants and fun shopping. Oh, and the spa! (pause for a moment of daydreaming)

ANYHOO! This bread pudding is AWESOME! EASY! and anyone can bake it, even me. All it takes is one normal size loaf of french bread, some milk, a little butter, and a bag of Blue Magnolia’s Cinnamon Bread Pudding.

I haven’t made the Lemon-Chiffon, yet. But I will soon and post it.

Here’s what it looks like straight from the oven.

Being the first time to make bread pudding, I baked the simplest version offered and topped it with homemade whipped cream leftover from the Strawberry dessert I made days ago. (I told you in that post that you would have extra whipped cream for other desserts. I wasn’t just making that up.)

Oh and just so you know: I’m not getting paid to talk about this product. I sampled it in a tasting at Ladles to Linens, bought a couple of bags for myself, and baked it up. Now, I’m sharing my experience with you. It’s good stuff, Maynerd. You ought to pick up a few bags for yourself online and see for yourself.

If you are a work or own a retail store, you can buy Wholesale Blue Magnolia Bread Pudding Mix at our wholesale website www.wholesalegourmet.net.

HENDERSONVILLE, TN ( April 2008 ) – Nashville Wraps, the industry leader in the wholesale gourmet gift packaging business has joined forces with The Sell Gourmet Network as an advertising partner to offer great gift packaging supplies to the gourmet industry.

Buffie Baril, Nashville Wraps Internet Marketing Coordinator said, “Nashville Wraps is excited about partnering with The Sell Gourmet Network because we are both leaders in the gourmet industry. Our gourmet packaging line of products continues to grow and is a very important market for us. As America’s leading wholesale gift packaging company, we seek partnerships with well positioned Internet advertising companies and Sell Gourmet’s wholesale site is at the top of the major search engines offering added exposure for our products. Many of our products including our gourmet boxes and cello bags are significant components for the gourmet retailer’s image. That is why we take our designs seriously and can even create custom boxes and other products for the gourmet wholesale buyer. We look forward to a long and successful relationship with The Sell Gourmet Network as an important part of our marketing efforts!”

Green Way^TM Eco-Friendly Packaging

Green Way™ is Nashville Wraps’ trademark for natural, recycled, degradable or environmentally sustainable retail packaging.

Green Way^TM is Nashville Wrap’s trademark to signify our commitment to sustainable eco-friendly retail packaging. When we put the Green Way TM logo on a product you can be assured that it is as advertised and the recycled content is verifiable.

Recycled Plastics: Encore^TM recyclable products are made with a minimum of 40% total recycled material and can be up to 100%. Typically we use 10-15% Post Consumer recycled plastics along with our own recycling collection center for post industrial recycled plastics.

Recyclable: All Encore^TM bags are 100% recyclable. Just return the bags to any plastics recycling collection point for complete re-use.

Non-toxic: Encore^TM plastic bags contain no heavy metals above the US established minimum and use only non-polluting water-based inks that are better for the environment are used instead of other types of inks or import bags that are often laced with chemicals, heavy metals and toxic colorants.

High Performance/Cost-effective: Encore^TM offers environmental solutions without incurring high costs or complex logistical issues. We use American ingenuity, recycled plastics and efficient equipment to keep costs down. Bags are strong and can match or exceed the holding power of any comparable plastic bags.

Encore^TM Biodegradable Plastic Bags

A unique new additive can be used for made to order bags which allows Encore^TM plastic bags to start biodegrading in 9 months. The bags will biodegrade into simple materials as found in nature, such as water, carbon dioxide and humus.

This new additive does not require oxygen or moisture for composting to begin biodegrading so the bags will naturally biodegrade even in landfill conditions and the bags are still completely recyclable.

Shelf life and reliability will not be affected. Encore^TM biodegradable bags will maintain the benefits of strength, leak resistance, grease resistance, and less storage requirements until they are placed in an environment that cause the material to breakdown, i.e. soil and bacteria.

About Nashville Wraps ®

Nashville Wraps ® is a creative design and distribution company specializing in providing businesses with decorative gift and gourmet packaging products as well as related retail packaging products for resale and store use since 1976. Nashville Wraps can service your needs whether you are an “at home” business start-up or have multiple stores across the world.

Nashville Wraps®

242 Molly Walton Drive

Hendersonville, TN 37075

615-338-3200 – 800-547-9727

Posted on: Monday, 31 March 2008, 03:00 CDT

By Randolph, Ned

Whether it’s helping a designer with an idea start a business or an ambitious entrepreneur intent on going national, the Carlsbad Chamber of Commerce’s Small Business Success Center touts itself as a full-service shop for entrepreneurs and small businesses.

Entrepreneur Russ Bruhn knows the feeling. He doesn’t mind working 362 days a year, as long as it’s for himself.

“What’s the alternative, getting up and working for someone else?”

An energetic soul, Bruhn was once co-owner of a goat ranch in Minnesota that produced not only cashmere and goat meat, but fetched weed control contracts from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, he said.

He last consulted with a beauty products company whose antifungal creme landed a $2.8 million contract with Walgreens.

“I said that’s the last time I do that for someone else.” he said.

Bruhn said the Small Business Success Center helped set him up with a 530,000 Small Business Administration loan and contacts in the food industry.

He launched Carlsbad Gourmet four years ago. Since then he has developed 30 products fruit spreads. hot sauces, mustards, salad dressings and barbecue sauces – all with local ingredients.

He has received orders from Whole Foods Market stores’ 25 locations in Southern California, nine Costco wholesale stores in San Diego and four limbo’s, said Bruhn.

He supplies the fruit spreads for every peanut butter and jelly sandwich at Legoland. And he has partnerships with local brewers Stone Brewing Co., Green Flash Brewing Co. and Pizza Pont Brewing Co. to use their beers as ingredients in his products, which he promotes with them.

“Every time Pizza Port, Stone or Green Flash does a festival we’re right there next to them,” Bruhn said.

Last year, he tripled his sales volume to $930,000. Business has really taken off since the company participated in the Fancy Food Show held at the San Diego Convention Center in January.

“We have gotten orders for almost 50 stores in the last month. It’s really exciting,” he said.

Promoting Carlsbad Products

Bruhn said the original thrust of the business was to promote Carlsbad strawberries. He was trying to fill gift baskets for a Hawaiian Little League team his son was playing against that had brought cookies with Hawaii Macadamia nuts.

Bruhn said he couldn’t find any Carlsbad products in local food marts.

“I said we should have found something with Carlsbad strawberries,” Bruhn said. “Strawberries are pretty significant here.”

He found that more than 80 percent of the country’s strawberries are grown in California so he hired a food engineer who helped him design a strawberry spread.

He and his son took the spread to The Flower Fields tourist attraction in Carlsbad and sold 10 cases of the spread the first day They returned the next week with 20 cases.

He is now looking for a partner to raise capital in order to expand his five-employee business into a larger space and at some point take Carlsbad Gourmet nationally.

Thursday, March 27, 2008
By LAURA MCVICKER, Columbian staff writer

Before he could walk, Edmund Varney was a beekeeper.

At 6 months old, Varney’s father took him to bee colonies in canyons along the San Fernando Valley in Southern California. There, he was introduced to the hives and told the beekeeper’s trade was his destiny.

The colonies were his father’s life and his father’s father’s life.

Varney, the third in a five-generation family of beekeepers, hasn’t retired. Each spring, the 90-year-old and his grandson, Ryan Lieuallen, work at maintaining several hundred colonies of bees to produce 20,000 pounds of honey. At Varney’s Vancouver home, they house queen bees inside boxes for Lieuallen’s honey-making business, Sweet Bee Honey Co. Their busiest season is approaching later this spring.

Lieuallen’s business is still thriving in the face of a declining market nationwide, mainly because of a “colony collapse disorder.” The disorder, which has struck 24 states, causes adult bees to fly away from their hives and not return. As a result, queens and baby bees die. So far, there aren’t any bee losses linked to the collapse in Clark County, said Dean Spellman, the county’s biggest beekeeper.

The Varneys also haven’t been hit. But the worry lingers.

“The main thing is to keep the bees alive,” Varney said. That means being mindful of varroa, or tracheal mites, and applying organic treatments, such as Apiguard, a pesticide, early enough in the season and in the right dosage. The mites aren’t connected to the collapse, but they are a perennial problem for beekeepers.

“We all are in danger of losing the business,” Spellman said. “All it takes is one year in which you are late in applying mite treatment or apply the wrong dosage.”

Regardless of the collapse, the Varneys still make the hives, move the hives, produce the honey, package it and sell it. And they all have different roles.

Varney has spent 68 years in the bee business, and his grandson, Lieuallen, has spent five years developing his colonies. Varney’s daughter, Leeanne Goetz, although allergic to bees, manufactures honey for her own Brush Prairie business, Honey Ridge Farms. She gets her honey from her son, Lieuallen, a Washington State University student in Pullman.

“It’s kind of like anyone who sticks around this guy (Varney) long enough collects bees,” Lieuallen joked.

Beekeeping shaped family reunions, graduations and weddings. It appears in old family photos. It shows up on coffee mugs, refrigerator magnets and other trinkets in Varney’s home. It offered Lieuallen a glimpse into a career he doesn’t think he’d know if it weren’t for his grandfather.

Beginnings

Varney grew up in north Hollywood, Calif., at a time when beekeepers were just pioneering the idea of moving hives. His father, a retired businessman, purchased a swath of land 30 miles away to keep his hives.

During the summer months, Varney and his brothers helped their dad move 74 colonies to honey crops in land close to Bakersfield, Calif. There, they’d haul the boxes of colonies from the truck and place them along the honey crops.

The early life hobby became Varney’s trade. Over the years, he operated a beekeeping business in California and Wyoming before retiring and moving his family to Clark County in the 1970s.

After his daughter, Goetz, married her husband, George Lieuallen, Varney introduced him to bees. While the couple later divorced, George Lieuallen still colonizes bees on the weekends with son Ryan.

At first, Ryan Lieuallen didn’t like beekeeping. He got stung and swore off the insects. Then, he noticed the perks: He got to be outdoors and got money for it.

In his teen years, Lieuallen went to his grandfather’s house after school to build and maintain bee equipment, such as movable frames and smokers. During his junior year, Lieuallen started the Sweet Bee business. He produces honey wholesale to businesses throughout western United States.

As her son’s trade developed, Goetz launched her own business. She sells jam, vinegar and seven varieties of honey to gourmet food shops throughout the region.

Goetz, Lieuallen and Varney still find time to set aside the work, enjoy each other’s company and tell stories. But they’ll take to the colonies the next day. And the next day.

“That’s how they raised their family,” Lieuallen said.

Honey Ridge Farms Balsamic Honey Vinegar is a very nice addition to the pantry, though it certainly was not made according to the centuries-old Italian method, and thus is not a true balsamic. It bears a resemblance, however, to common balsamics on the market because caramel is one of the ingredients. Despite its name, it is an honest product; even the caramel is made with honey. It is mellow enough to use for salads and to add a splash of acidity when deglazing a pan.

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

 

It is made in Brush Prairie, Wash., by fifth-generation beekeepers who will donate a portion of the price to research on the health of bee colonies. The vinegar is $13.99 for 8.45 ounces from www.honeyridgefarms.com.