Emmy's Organics on Chocolate Covered Bacon

Wow another great interview! We had Samantha and Ian from Emmy’s Organics on Chocolate Covered Bacon-The best in independent food finds, and what a great informative interview it was. Ian has been on a raw foods diet for quite some time now and Samantha has been migrating over to the same. In doing so they both became a little bored with the normal foods available to them. They wanted something a little more exciting. So why not make it, right! Well they did not only was it fun for them to make, it tasted great too. When Ian lost his regular 9-5, they decided to make it their full time obsession! Boy, are we glad they did. Sitting down to talk with them was a joy, and if you missed it, well I hope I’m able to recapture everything for you.

Emmy’s Organics specializes in raw, organic, gluten free foods. These help fill a need in many people’s lives for differing dietary needs and lifestyle choices. With amazing products available online through their Etsy and Foodzie shops, like Raw Dark Cocoa Macaroons and Raw Granola you’re sure to find something you like. They have a great variety of macaroons available. They seem to flavor them almost as if they are ice cream, taking unique macaroon flavors to a whole new level. All of their items are made in small batches with 100% raw ingredients and are low on the glycemic index, allowing you to indulge your sweet tooth with out feeling too guilty. As for what they make their items with well let’s hear it from them, “We use the highest quality of ingredients, unprocessed, organic and fair trade when possible.” So they are not only looking out for you health wise but they are looking out for the health for the earth as well.

When I asked them why they got started and what inspired them to start making these amazing items here is what they told me. “We wanted to offer healthy food (especially sweets) that didn’t compromise on flavor, texture or consistency. Ian has been gluten-free & vegan for 8 years & Samantha eats a 90% raw food diet. We wanted to offer food from the source, of the ones who eat what they make.” Ian has a health condition similar to Celiac disease that requires him to be on a gluten free diet, which was a big factor in his focus.

Ian and Samantha also enlightened us as to what a raw foods diet is. Discussing how the items are still cooked, but at a very low temperature for a much longer time. Dehydration is a great example of this. They dehydrate and smoke many of their foods, which provides a safe way to ensure your foods are free of possible pathogens but at the same time retaining most of the nutritive value. Nutrition, after all, is why we need to eat, but why not indulge in some great tasting food.

The limited items that you see in their shops are just the beginning of their arsenal of foods to satisfy your cravings. They sell locally at a farmers market, where they serve up fresh almond milk, made the day before. One of the byproducts of this process is almond meal, which many producers just toss out. They have taken to using even this byproduct to make wonderful food, they usually reserve these items just for themselves and close friends. You can visit their blog where they talk about making hummus from the left over almond meal once they are done straining it. I can imagine how delicious this must be. Available at the farmer’s market they also have Dairy Free ice cream, great for children that are lactose intolerant.

Could you imagine what it would be like to miss out on ice cream growing up? Well this is one of the things that make Emmy’s Organics so great, they work to provide to everyone the very things they miss when they have to go onto a special diet. They even serve their almond milk over some of their raw granola for breakfast at the farmers market! So if you in the area, stop by, say hi and pickup a bowl of granola to enjoy! Don’t forget to wash it down with some ice cream or some of those great macaroons!

Thank you once again Ian and Samantha your story and shop are amazing. Coming up this week on Chocolate Covered Bacon-The best in independent food finds, we have Urban Cheese Craft! Don’t forget to go to Blockhead Radio, pop a player and listen in! We’ll help satisfy your cravings.

James ~ The ClosetCreature

LiberTEAS on Chocolate Covered Bacon LIVE!

What another great show! We had Anne from LiberTEAS with us tonight. She hand blends teas to meet the highest quality and taste standards. I must say they are a piece of art in and of themselves. I hope that you didn’t miss our show, but if you did, I will give you some insight as to what you missed. I will also give you a little extra peak to let you know a little more about the artist behind LiberTEAS. So sit back and relax as I take you though the tour.

Anne was gracious enough to join us live on Chocolate Covered Bacon, which airs live Thursdays at 6PM EST on Blockhead Radio. She started by describing how she blends each new batch of tea, to meet the highest of standards. Anne test brews each batch to ensure that it will come out just right and will not disappoint. Her teas are unique blends using herbal, black, green and white teas; she comes up with some amazing flavors.

Anne got her start in hand blending tea when a local shop stopped making her favorite chocolate tea blend. She had switched from coffee to tea, due to the spike in caffeine from the coffee, unlike the gradual release from the tea. So she searched and searched for a replacement she was never happy. Anne made her first attempts back in 1999, though she was never was happy with those attempts. After taking several years off, in 2002 she decided to give it another try. This time she used all the resources she could, to get as much knowledge as she could. After a couple years of blending and producing teas that she was “quite pleased with” she decided to take her business to the Internet. When asked what her favorite blend is she responds, “The product that started it all for me is my Chocolate Rose Romance, so it will always have a special place in my heart, however, I’m quite fond of all my teas!” With such an amazing assortment, anyone would be fond of her teas!

Some very unique teas that, available in the Artfire shop, are called the Allergi-Teas. They are specially blended with the help of a herb specialist friend. Anne decided to blend these while dealing with her own allergies and not willing to take it anymore. While searching for a tea to help, but that would also taste great, she was disappointed time and time again. So Anne teamed up with a friend and came up with not only a functional herbal tea, but also one that made a great tea. Anne drinks daily in the morning to help combat her Allergy symptoms. Anne and her herb specialist also team up to make her Meadow Nocturne teas, which are also functional herbal teas for relaxation.

One of the most difficult things in dealing with any food products is finding the right balance in ingredients. Things are no different for Anne, “There are so many different teas out there that it can be a bit overwhelming. Determining which would be the best tea to use for a new tea blend becomes a taste testing frenzy in itself. After that, it’s finding the right balance of ingredients to capture the best flavor.”

As with most hand crafted businesses marketing is also difficult in the Foodie world too, “I really need to work on enhancing my marketing and advertising approach. I’m creative when it comes to tea… but not so much when it comes to advertising my product.” I personally think she did a great job talking about her product live on the air. So we may have found her a way around that! Anne is very passionate about tea, and you can tell in everything that she says, and how she describes her teas. Off the air we compared tea tasting to cheese tasting. If you get a national brand commercial tea, and brew that, it’s the same as going and getting some Kraft cheese off the shelf. You might like it, heck you might love it, but it’s not the same as going a cheese shop and getting a great block of imported Gruyere. Drinking hand blended tea is far superior to getting a boxed tea. With the added preservation power of the tin, or the specially designed bags that she sells for the refill, you are getting top notch tea with every purchase.



If you interested in finding out more about Anne or LiberTeas you can follow her on Plurk or Twitter as LiberTEAS. You can visit her shops on Artfire, 1000Markets, MadeItMyself or her Tea blog. Interested in seeing Anne’s other art? Stop by her Etsy shop and her Art Blog. If you visit The Tea Review Blog, you can occasionally find one of her reviews as she is one of the contributing reviewers there.

Thank you for joining us for Chocolate Covered Bacon-The best in independent food finds! You can catch us live Thursdays at 6PM EST on Blockhead Radio. Listen live and join us in chat, where you can ask questions of the Foodies we have on for each show. Next week we have Emmy’s Organics joining us, with some great organic and gluten free sweets to satisfy your cravings!

--James ~ ClosetCreature, you host for Chocolate Covered Bacon

Luca Chocolate on Chocolate Covered Bacon

On April 30th we were fortunate to have Leslie from Luca Chocolate grace us with our first live interview on Chocolate Covered Bacon-The best in independent food finds. The show airs live on Blockhead Radio, on Thursdays at 6PM EST, 5PM Central. Just in case you missed it, even for those who didn’t, I would like to recap the interview for you. Also if you listened in I may have some more insights to Luca Chocolate, as I have some questions that I asked that never made it on air!

First, we would like to thank Leslie for taking the time to come on air with us. It was loads of fun to chat with her and to learn more about her wonderful products. I had never thought about how much went into making chocolate before. Leslie talked about how long it takes her to develop new flavors and she worked for nearly a year on the concept before Luca Chocolate even sold a piece of chocolate. It takes Leslie about 8 weeks to take a new flavor from concept to a completed product ready to sell. Leslie sure does put a lot into each product that is created! One question that I really wanted to know is where she got the name. Leslie told us that the name actually came from her horse, which I must say is a beautiful name, not just for the horse but for the chocolate too!

We discovered Luca Chocolate by doing a search for, you guessed it, “Chocolate Covered Bacon” on Foodzie. It is a great site filled with independent food producers from throughout the country. I discovered her Bacon Box and thought that I just had to have her on. The picture made me just want to nibble at the screen. What a great variety of chocolates in the box, including not only Chocolate Covered Crispy Bacon pieces dusted with Sea Salt, but also some Chocolate Covered Bacon topped Caramels. These just sound wonderful: the sugary sweetness of the caramel almost imitates the delectable flavor of fresh maple syrup that accidentally poured onto your bacon with breakfast. Top that with some milk or dark chocolate and you have a dessert made in heaven.

In talking with Leslie prior to the live interview I asked her two questions that she had no idea were actually intertwined. I asked what her favorite product that she made is and what her favorite scent is. Leslie’s favorite product to eat was the Vanilla Butter Cream Truffles, which not only look amazing, but sound divine! Her response to one of her favorite scents was vanilla, not the extract that you get from the grocery store, but the fresh bean pods that she has brought in just for her chocolates. I have to agree with her; if you have never smelled fresh vanilla you don’t know what you’re missing. Much like chocolate, there are many kinds of the vanilla out there with each one there tiny nuances that change the flavor ever so slightly.

It is amazing how much your sense of smell influences your sense of taste. For food artists their sense of smell is much like painters’ eyes. A painter finds it difficult to paint with out the use of their eyes much as a food artist finds it difficult to create without their sense of smell. As you create with your sense of smell you begin to learn just what to add to make your taste buds light up! Leslie mentioned when creating new chocolates your taste buds start to acclimate to the new flavors, and that the sense of smell helps to continue the creative process when this occurs.

Much of the inspiration for Leslie’s chocolate is from the fruits, nuts, and flowers of the season. She has a great limited supply of floral inspired chocolates just for Mothers day! Which is much like a bouquet of flowers for Mom, but mom can eat them! Her aim is to provide “classic flavor combination's with a twist”. She uses the knowledge of food science and the cooking techniques she learned by attending French cooking school. After many years in a traditional kitchen, she felt like being a pastry chef was more to her liking, and returned to school to get her education. From there she went on to create Luca Chocolate, and well that is definitely a good thing, otherwise how would we have found such great items.

In the next several years Leslie would like to get more involved with the wedding market allowing for a more steady flow of business through out the year. As a Chocolatier much of her business is during the major candy holidays. She also offers a chocolate of the month club that you can join, and she would like to see that grow as well. In the next year or so one of her close friends and her chocolate supplier is moving to making more of their own handmade chocolate, so she plans to switch more of her supply to his great blends of milk and dark chocolate.

Luca Chocolate is also available at several places outside of just being online. You can find a list of locations on her website. Want a sample? Keep up with her on her blog, she will tell you where she’s doing her live demos, possibly in your area. You can find Luca Chocolate online on Foodzie, Etsy and her own site Luca Chocolate. She will be looking into opening a twitter account as well, keep checking in on her to find out what she’s up to.

I hope you enjoyed the show and if you missed it: I hope you have enjoyed catching up on what you missed. Don’t forget to join us live on Thursday May 7th for our feature on LiberTeas of artfire and many other places too. Now head on over to one of Luca Chocolate’s sites and satisfy your cravings, and don’t forget to tune into Blockhead Radio to stir your own creativity!

--James – The ClosetCreature – Your Host