Blogversation 2012: When you’re in a food rut, where do you turn for inspiration?

Throughout this year, several bloggers will engage in a conversation here and on their blogs — asking questions of each other and responding. Others are absolutely welcome to join the conversation, as well. Learn more about the ladies of Blogversation 2012.

Today’s question comes from Amy Throndsen, on Twitter as @amyserves:

Amy Throndsen asks what you do when you get in a food rut.

One of my most inspiring dinner parties was a few weeks ago when I invited a friend over for “Refrigerator Review.”

She brought a few things from her fridge and we mixed them with mine and came up with a meal that neither of us would have prepared had it not been for the other person’s ingredients.

I often find myself buying the same things at the grocery store (kale, kale and more kale – I’ve already confessed my addiction) and making the same meals.

When you’re in a food rut, where do you turn for inspiration?

Blogversation 2012: What’s your feel-better food?

Throughout this year, several bloggers will engage in a conversation here and on their blogs — asking questions of each other and responding. Others are absolutely welcome to join the conversation, as well. Learn more about the ladies of Blogversation 2012.

The last few days, I’ve been feeling a little oogy, as a college roommate of mine like to say — not laid out miserable sick, just not 100 percent.

That’s meant I haven’t eaten much, and what I have eaten has mostly been one of my go-to comfort foods: macaroni and cheese.

A year ago, I was far more than oogy. I was probably as sick as I’ve ever been. I didn’t eat for nearly two weeks, and dropped about 10 pounds.

When I was trying to find something, anything, I could eat last year, I found several resources suggesting the BRAT diet: bananas, rice, applesauce, toast.  All were recommended as gentle on the tummy, not too hard to digest.

But while I ate quite a bit of toast and applesauce while I came back to life, I also listened to my body. My body wanted comfort food, so although I worried throwing a grilled cheese into an angry stomach would be too much fat and grease, it totally worked.

I think part of the reason is how much I love a good grilled cheese. Comfort food does more than feed the stomach, it nourishes the soul, and I think when I felt terrible, I needed both badly.

When I was sick as a kid, my stepmother would get me a Slurpee, half Coke and half cherry, to soothe my sore throat. Now any time I have a Slurpee, I have that warm feeling of being loved and cared for, no matter how many sugary calories I’m pumping down my throat.

My guess is that our comfort foods are partly influenced by our tastes — I adore mashed potatoes and always have — but probably are more a factor of memories and experience. If you grew up in Michigan, you probably drank flat Vernor’s ginger ale when you were sick, and that means something different than any old ginger ale.

But on that theory, my macaroni and cheese romance would have to focus on the bright orange Kraft my mom made, and not the gooey, creamy elbows I’ve been downing this week.

What’s your feel-better food and why?

 

Brook Eddy’s trip to India leads to journey as entrepreneur

Brook Eddy founded Bhakti Chai after a trip to India taught her to love spicy chai tea

Brook Eddy went to India looking for inspiration. She got it, just in a different way than she expected.

In India, Eddy fell in love with chai — spicy, sweetened tea served with milk — and today her Colorado-based Bhakti Chai is approaching $2 million in sales and Bon Appetit magazine namechecked Bhakti in naming Boulder America’s Foodiest Town in 2010.

The path to tea mogul was challenging and unexpected.

The divorced mother of twins had no background in manufacturing, and her experience in food was limited to small-scale catering. But she trusted her heart as her chai business grew from a hobby to a multi-product line with 16 employees.

In 2002, made plans to go to India to pursue her writing passion. She applied for a $10,000 Lange-Taylor grant through Duke University to research Swadhyay villages, while her photographer brother took photos for a creative collaboration on the experience.

“I had faith it would all work out. I felt like I’d been working since I was 15, finished undergrad in an honors program, went to grad school, and started to work full time two weeks after graduation,” Eddy recalled.  “So I did feel like I deserved to take three months and travel – and did think that the trip would on some level lead me to my next opportunity.”

Off she went, halfway around the world, to pursue creativity and experience a totally different culture.

“India was like going home. I’d never been there before, but some part of me had been there and resonated with the sights, sounds, smells, chaos, colors, vibrancy. I learned so much about my inner strength and my inner voice in India,” Eddy recalled. “It was also the first time I had ever traveled with my biological father and brother. I did not know them growing up, so it was a beautiful opportunity to get to know them better.”

Eddy found she hadn’t been chosen for the Lange-Taylor grant, which left her searching for the next thing, but still committed to writing a book, using the inspiration and stories she collected in India.

Meanwhile, she’d also returned from India with a taste for the Indian spiced tea the way it’s authentically served there. She looked around when she returned home and couldn’t find a product that was spicy enough or fresh.

That had pushed her to the kitchen to make her own. She started by making a traditional chai recipe and added fresh ginger and black pepper. It took about four months in 2005 before she felt she’d hit on the right proportion of spice and sweet, for a fresh-tasting tea.

In 2006, she was writing a story entitled “Bhakti Trampoline” at a coffee shop in Boulder and was wishing she could sip on her homemade chai while she was writing and not the watery, preservative laden, spice-less chai they served. She asked the cafe owner about trying her chai.

“They had a sample the following week and signed up as my first customer. This is when I remember walking out of the cafe thinking, ‘Do I really want to start a chai company?’ I thought about this and that yes, I could actually rock a chai company and make extra money and have my chai more readily available for my consumption in Boulder,” Eddy recalled.

Bhakti Chai has some of the most beautiful labels you'll see. It's not just the tea that's inspired by India. Look at those colors.

She launched her business with the name “Bhakti,” which means devotion through social action. She came to understand this meaning from the Swadhyay movement, which she studied while in India.

“When the chai company came to me, it was only natural to build it around Bhakti. I knew I could create a company that was profitable, sustainable, and that invested in social change. I always was so confused why companies couldn’t do all three,” Eddy said. “Now, we hear about triple bottom line companies and the three Ps – People, Planet, Profit – but then it was me thinking, ‘why not? Why not build something meaningful while providing an interesting fresh product reminiscent of India.’”

On the Bhakti website, Eddy tells the story of her learning about Swadhyay movement, including:

“Devotion shouldn’t just be an introverted experience but should be a social force fostering universal family. Societal transformation then derives from this ideal of universal respect and unity, compelling individuals to serve their community by donating two days a month for the good of their community. “

“We started very small,” Eddy told the Denver Post. But, “as we grow our giving grows.”  In 2010, Bhakti donations totaled 25 percent of net income, going to groups like the Global Fund for Women and Colorado Youth Matter.

Eddy stayed committed to this business philosophy even after she and her husband divorced in 2007 and she faced supporting her kids as a divorced mother, along with the common challenges of underfinanced start ups.

“The hardest part was being hand to mouth for a long time and feeling so on the edge of not making it due to cash flow issues and not having any investment or loan money for the first two years,” Eddy said. “Banks would not touch us because all they looked at was my credit score. I kept trying to get them to look at our P&L and balance sheet, but they wouldn’t. Didn’t even care how successful we were, only wanted to know my social security number and my assets — which were none.”

Since she couldn’t get traditional funding through banks, Eddy told Reuters, she reached out to her network for funding.

Bhakti Chai was experiencing growing pains in the form of cash flow shortages as increasingly larger accounts put in ever-larger orders, sometimes taking more than a month to pay. After failing to secure bank loans, Eddy drew on her development skills to drum up support from local investors, eventually raising a total of about $250,000. She also tapped Boulder’s enthusiastic network of food entrepreneurs, who were eager to help fill her void in business experience by giving freely of their time.

“It was also hard because I felt alone for the first couple of years – but now I have a great team of employees, advisors, investor members and consultants which makes me feel more balanced and supported.”

Bhakti's newest product line are these ready-to-drink chai blends. I'm a dirty chai addict so I love the coffee blend. It sounds weird but coffee and chai are delicious together.

That team has helped put Bhakti on a growth path that includes now making chai ice cream, as well as beverages both for consumer and commercial channels. They recently launched a ready-to-drink line of products — bottled already blended with soy milk — in three new Whole Foods regions, adding 80 new stores in Texas, southern California, Arizona, Nevada and Louisiana, as well as Portland and Seattle.

Running a company that’s doubling its sales each year while caring for 7-year-old twins is a juggling act, but Eddy says her children feel part of Bhakti.

“They already have so much pride in Bhakti and in me. Every time we go to Whole Foods they love to tell the check out person that their mother started Bhakti Chai. The reason is that they always get such a fabulous response and they smile so wide feeling like a little celebrity themselves,” she said.

Learn more about Bhakti:

Blogging disclosure: I am rarely unbiased about anything I write about. Think of Newvine Growing as my version of Oprah’s favorite things. In the case of Brook and Bhakti, we’ve been friends with Brook since she worked with my husband, John, more than 10 years ago at Michigan Radio. She’s given us her spicy tea several times. I approached her about a profile several months ago and she offered to help sponsor my blogging efforts, but did not ask for nor did I offer editorial control over what I would write.

Social media serendipity leads to great wine and a hometown connection

In my first attempt at video blogging, I tell a personal story to illustrate the soft side of social media’s benefits:

If you don’t have five minutes to spend — and I know, that’s long and I need to practice tightening up my story telling — here are the high points:

I have a saved search in HootSuite for all tweets using the word “Newvine.”

My saved search picked up a Twitter handle @newvineland, a California winery. Of course I had to buy some wine from @newvineland.

I got on the phone with Melissa Sorongon from New Vineland — and discover we both grew up in Saginaw, Mich. She graduated two years after me from the Catholic high school across the street from my public high school. Now she and her husband run a small winery.

So one Saginaw native in Brooklyn gets wine shipped from another Saginaw native in California, brought together by the weird serendipity of Twitter.

And by the way, New Vineland syrah? MM-mmm.

Should you really do what you love?

I like contrarian advice — not that I always agree with the devil’s advocate view, but I think it’s useful to challenge conventional wisdom and reconsider whether you still believe it’s true.

For example:

• Do you really need to drink eight glasses of water a day?
• Is eight hours of sleep best for you?
• Should all couples be monogamous?
• Are you really drinking that glass of red wine for your health?

It’s with that appreciation for against-the-grain opinions that I was attracted to a Penelope Trunk post headlined Bad Career Advice: Do what you love.

Trunk writes:

Often, the thing we should do for our career is something we would only do if we were getting a reward. If you tell yourself that your job has to be something you’d do even if you didn’t get paid, you’ll be looking for a long time. Maybe forever. So why set that standard? The reward for doing a job is contributing to something larger than you are, participating in society, and being valued in the form of money.

The pressure we feel to find a perfect career is insane. And, given that people are trying to find it before they are thirty, in order to avoid both a quarterlife crisis and a biological-clock crisis, the pressure is enough to push people over the edge. Which is why one of the highest risk times for depression in life is in one’s early twenties when people realize how totally impossible it is to simply “do what you love.”

I recently blogged about a new documentary on Joseph Campbell, who advocated that we follow our bliss. And I believe it’s so important to making life meaningful that we find the things that bring us joy and make them a priority in our lives.

But I think Trunk’s argument is worth contemplating — maybe we drive ourselves crazy by trying to make a living at the thing we love, when it could be enough to do that thing for free.

I love to cook. However, I know enough people in the restaurant business to know doing it professionally is a high-stress gig that would likely turn me off to cooking. So I love doing it just for fun, and that’s enough.

Meanwhile, I get paid to put together marketing plans, design surveys and set pricing plans, among other things. Would I do any of those if I wasn’t getting paid? No, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy them. I’m happy with my career path.

Trunk further writes:

if you are overwhelmed with the task of “doing what you love” you should recognize that you are totally normal, and maybe you should just forget it. Just do something that caters to your strengths. Do anything.

What do you think — about doing what you love, or about water, sleep, wine or monogamy?

Kicking off Blogversation 2012 — join the conversation

In the three years I’ve been blogging here, I’ve been grateful for the opportunity to write regularly and to get to know topics and people that inspire me.

Even more so, I’ve loved the chance to engage in conversations about those topics and people.

Ages ago, when I was a young newspaper reporter, writing was mostly a one-way process. Occasionally I’d write a story and someone would call to yell at me, or more happily, someone would send a thank you note. But mostly I felt distant from my readers in those pre-Internet days. Perhaps my favorite thing about blogging is the opportunity to see which posts people are reading and to get immediate feedback.

To encourage a richer dialogue and get more voices into the mix, I’m launching a project called Blogversation 2012. I’ve invited some of my favorite bloggers to join a running conversation about creativity, passion, goals, values, happiness, relationships, career and food and drink.

It’s like an online salon of smart thinking.

It’s like a virtual coffee klatch.

Every week, we’ll post two questions here on my blog.  Participating bloggers will all respond, either here or on their own blogs.

Others are of course welcome to jump into the conversation by commenting and doing blog posts of their own. With this impressive, interesting group assembled, I think you’d be hard pressed not to want to join in the action.

In their own words, the Blogversation 2012 participants are:

Kim Ann Curtin

Kim Ann Curtin, founder & CEO of The Wall Street Coach, is the resilient and insanely resourceful executive coach and adviser to today’s progressive executives and entrepreneurs. A Conscious Capitalist and professional fixer who works with leaders to stop limiting behaviors, design inventive solutions and empower them and their high-performing teams to achieve results beyond their wildest dreams.

Kim is a connector within corporate industry and has worked with some of the more interesting and successful CEOs over the past 12 years. She instructs others on how to create wealth and meaning in their lives. A facilitator of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey model and NonViolent Communication. Kim is currently writing a book on Conscious Financiers.

If she had to do it all over again, Kim would talk less and surf more.

Find Kim’s blog online at  www.TheWallStreetCoach.com. She is @kimanncurtin on Twitter.

*****

Lauren McCabe

Lauren McCabe is a writer who has also worked as a radio DJ, surf instructor, public relations consultant, SAT teacher, marketing director, and now, a social media strategist. She lives in New Orleans, a city driven by deep relationships, and she helps businesses build those relationships online, driving more sales, reaching new customers, and building their online reputation.

Lauren received her BA in English & Creative Writing from Columbia University and uses her major every single day of her life: from composing tweets that help businesses grow, to analyzing business plans. Study what you love, not what everyone says is practical, because loving what you do IS practical. When she’s not tweeting, Facebooking, and blogging, she’s writing about travel, work, and love, the three most important things. In her spare time, Lauren plays the harp, surfs in strange places (NYC & New Orleans), and works on her novel about mermaids.

Her blog is at http://mermaidchronicles.wordpress.com/and her Twitter handle is @mermaidtales.

*****

Maria Stuart and her son, Will

Maria Stuart is an award-winning journalist whose longtime newspaper position was “eliminated” for budget reasons in early 2009. After realizing her job loss was actually a liberation in disguise, she quickly became a popular blogger and Internet entrepreneur. She founded the community website LivingstonTalk.com, which has grown tremendously; in 2011, over 50,000 unique visitors read nearly 250,000 pages on the site. While delicately balancing the demands of her digital universe, her freelance writing and website building, her novel-in-progress and her home life, Stuart wonders how she ever found time for a “real” job.

She lives in Howell, Mich., with her husband, their nearly teenage son, and Ted, the hyper labradoodle who keeps her from sitting at the computer too long during the day.

You can check out her website at http://mariastuart.com. She’s on Twitter at @mariastuart.

*****

Amy Throndsen

Amy Throndsen, a Wisconsin-native wound her way around the western United States and East Asia as a “professional volunteer” with AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps and Peace Corps (China) and is now back in Wisconsin working for her family’s international
agricultural business, primarily responsible for heading the marketing and international sales efforts for Dual-Chamber Cow Waterbeds.

She has been a guest blogger for agriculture-focused and life-coaching blogs, and spent 2011 blogging about her 1-year journey to 1,000 running miles. Currently without a dedicated blog, she is excited about being a contributing member of the Blogversation 2012 with Colleen and company.

Find her on Twitter as @amyserves.

*****

Eleanor Traubman

Eleanor Traubman is the editor-in-chief of Creative Times, a blog designed to celebrate and inspire the artists of New York and beyond.

She leads Creative Conversations, a goal-setting group for women artists and entrepreneurs, and is also the arts writer for The Bank Street College of Education Alumni Blog.

Her mission? To bring people together through the arts, creativity, and humor.

Eleanor’s work has been featured in The New York Times, Time Out New York, The Brooklyn Paper, Family Circle, and Fitness, and she was listed as one of the Park Slope 100.

Eleanor is on Twitter under her blog name, @creativetimes.

*****

Lesley Ware

Lesley Ware is a New York-based fashion personality and teaching artist. Originally from Michigan’s West Coast, she loves all things unique and full of glitter. Her current creative interests include photography, sewing, and publishing.

Lesley has written for the DIY Business Association, Girl Scouts of the USA, Jones and CLAM magazines and the Women of Color Writers’ Workshop. Lesley’s photos can be seen on sites including The YBF.com, We Love Colors, and Essence Magazine. Lesley is also the featured model for TranquiliT, an eco-friendly fashion line.

When she’s not being creative you’ll find her spending time with her husband, stepson, and cat, Nina Bean. She blogs and posts pretty pictures at www.thecreativecookie.net.

On Twitter, Lesley is @creativecookie — not to be confused with Eleanor’s @creativetimes, we just happen to be a group blessed with loads of creativity.

*****

Jennifer Worick

Jennifer Worick has written or co-authored more than 25 books, including the New York TimesBestseller, The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Dating & Sex. She has written on everything under the sun for national magazines, and currently writes a books column for today.com. In addition to finding her on bookshelves and newsstands, you can also check her out online at her blogs, word. and Things I Want to Punch in the Face.

Along with fellow author and publishing professional Kerry Colburn, she delivers publishing talks and workshops to help burgeoning authors get published. You can also catch Jennifer in university auditoriums and lecture halls, where she delivers side-splitting slide-show presentations.

She lives in Seattle and will be joining the Blogversation at word. She’s @jennifer_worick on Twitter.

******

You can follow the whole pack of Blogversationists on Twitter in one fell swoop by following our Twitter list.

And you can keep up on the conversation by clicking up there in the upper right to subscribe to Newvine Growing. You’ll get posts delivered to you free.

If you want to get notified of the responses to a particular post, you can subscribe to the comments when you leave a comment.

Most popular Newvine Growing posts in 2011 — have you read them?

If you’re looking for a little reading material today — maybe the Sunday paper isn’t doing it for you, maybe you’re a bit hung over from ringing in the new year, maybe you’re killing time ’til a college bowl game — I’m here to help.

According to my WordPress stats, these were my 10 most-visited posts in 2011:

• Why the ending of Bridesmaids bugged me
• Ari Weinzweig, lapsed anarchist, shares the business philosophies of food mecca Zingerman’s
• Silencing your inner critic
• Clint Maedgen, musical chameleon, straddles the line between tradition and rock ‘n’ roll
• About the author — Colleen Newvine Tebeau
• 40 Things I Have Learned at 40, by Lisa G.
• Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg eats only the meat he kills
• Setting my goals for 2011 as a comprehensive view of my life
• Larry Kirshbaum on the transition from publishing bigwig to literary entrepreneur
• Robert Fogarty reinvents himself by helping transform New Orleans
• The Holstee manifesto: This is your life
• 10 marriage lessons learned in 10 years of marriage

Being on the list doesn’t mean I wrote the item in 2011 (my bio, for example, goes back to the launch of this blog), just that they were frequently read last year.

I look forward to a new year of creating posts you might check out and enjoy.

Cooking dinner for someone is a great way to deepen your relationship

The GOOD 30-day Challenge includes a call to cook dinner for someone -- click to learn more.

How can you not like a website with this as its “about” description:

In a world where things too often don’t work, GOOD seeks a path that does. Left, right. In, out. Greed, altruism. Us, them. These are the defaults and they are broken. We are the alternative model. We are the reasonable people who give a damn. No dogma. No party lines. No borders. We care about what works–what is sustainable, prosperous, productive, creative, and just–for all of us and each of us. This isn’t easy, but we are not afraid to fail. We’ll figure it out as we go.

Call it a new party, call it a 21st century collaboration, call it an army, call it your new home. Or just call it GOOD.

GOOD launched an idea I love — 30 days of good. Every day they put out a challenge, from emailing someone you admire but have never met to lending someone a book to supporting a local business.

#18 in the GOOD 30-Day Challenge was “cook dinner for someone.”

I love this challenge for several reasons:

1. Cooking for someone is such a beautiful act of generosity. It’s a gift of your time and attention, even if it’s the final product is something as basic as grilled cheese and tomato soup. When I host, I think about who we’re having over and go shopping with those guests in mind because I want to prepare a meal they’ll enjoy.
2. Sharing a meal in someone’s home is intimate. You aren’t surrounded by strangers in a restaurant and paced by a waiter who decides when to take your order and when to drop the bill. You see your host’s surroundings and you can get that wonderful, easy lingering time before and after the meal without feeling you’re holding the table. Want to wait an hour between the main course and dessert? You’ll have a lot more time for conversation, without wondering if the next table over is eavesdropping, and you can ask questions about their books, art work, vacation photos, whatever’s on public display.
3. Not everyone knows how to cook. It’s still surprising to me how many New Yorkers take pride in never cooking. Never. Sure, there’s great takeout food to be had here, but that can get expensive and fattening, and it removes an element of connection to your meal. You don’t get the pleasure of making something exactly how you like it, and feeling invested in your mealtime experience. Cooking for guests can show them the pleasure of a shared, homecooked meal.

Mark Bittman, my New York Times food writing hero, recently wrote that the problem with Americans’ eating habits isn’t that it’s expensive to eat well, it’s that we don’t want to cook.

Slow Food USA organized the $5 challenge, calling on people to host dinners in their homes where the cost per person was $5 or less, to help demonstrate that eating at home can be cheaper than fast food. They’re doing it again Oct. 24, so check out Slow Food’s Tumblr if you’d like some pointers on a $5 or less meal.

What’s nice about the $5 challenge is that Slow Food isn’t just suggesting you cook an inexpensive meal for your family. They suggest you share it with friends — so the act of generosity can inspire a conversation about why you support Slow Food. It’s a point of connection.

You could do the same about almost anything — cook a meal for the coach of your kid’s Little League team to spark a conversation about parenting or sports, or cook a meal for friends who share your political leanings to discuss what you hope will happen in 2012.

The core of it is sharing the gift of the meal. John and I haven’t hosted a dinner party lately but I’m inspired to get out my apron, especially after visiting friends last weekend who fed us like kings.

Want some inspiration? I’m going to be interviewing Sara Moulton for a freelance piece, and here she is with pointers on an easy, inexpensive meal from salad to dessert:

Mark Bittman’s Kitchen Express is about getting food on the table in 20 minutes:

Naturally, if you’d like to throw down for a full day of cooking, we’re happy to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

How about you? Do you like cooking for friends and family?

McClure’s Pickles is about tradition, not trendiness, says Bob McClure

Even though in his profile photo on the McClure's website, Bob McClure is sporting the requisite Brooklyn beard and even a trucker-ish hat, he says the inspiration was tradition, not trendiness.

In Brooklyn, artisanal pickles are a little like mixologist cocktail bars and beards — which is to say, hip and trendy in a purposely not-too-mainstream way.

But co-founder Bob McClure insists he and his brother, Joe, were not thinking about the “foodie movement” or trying to tap into trends when they decided to launch a small-batch pickle company.

“I have a cultural attachment and a familial attachment to something I’ve been doing for a long time,” he told me by phone recently. “It started when we were kids making the product with our parents and grandparents back in Michigan.”

Besides harkening back to their roots, making pickles from their grandmother’s traditional recipe, the McClure brothers started their pickle business for supremely practical reasons.

Bob McClure is a Brooklyn-based actor who had long supported himself with a series of temp jobs. Joe McClure is a classical musician who got his doctorate in physiology, but still knew something about the instability of the creative lifestyle.

“We started a business as part of making a lifestyle for ourselves,” Bob McClure said. “I wanted to have something more in my control … and to have that be something I love.”

McClure recalled that he made a few batches of pickles in 2006, and people suggested they were good enough to sell. At first he said no way, but thought about it a bit more before calling his brother, living in their native Detroit, to feel him out about going into business together.

They got a big assist when Bob McClure happened to meet the founders of the Brooklyn Kitchen just before they opened their now wildly popular store, and they offered to carry McClure’s Pickles. The New York Times wrote about the opening of Brooklyn Kitchen, and subsequently wrote about McClure’s, and “that launched the company,” McClure recalled.

Now they’ve grown to 15 employees, a mix of full and part timers.

One of the first things that prompted me to taste McClure’s pickles was their labels, which declare them as based in Detroit and Brooklyn. How could a native Michigander living in Brooklyn resist?

Bob manages accounts and research and development from Brooklyn, while Joe runs the factory in Detroit. The split keeps Bob close to acting work, which he continues, and puts McClure’s largest real estate demands in the obviously cheaper location.

Besides creating jobs for themselves, Bob McClure said he enjoys getting to work with his brother. It keeps them close across the distance.

McClure's Pickles is running this ad by Team Detroit with the headline "When is a jar of pickles like a mansion on the hill?"

McClure’s recently began running an ad created by Team Detroit with the headline, “When is a jar of pickles like a mansion on the hill?” It speaks to the McClure’s business philosophy, which includes hand packing its pickles rather than using a machine, which is cheaper.

“… a pickle is still just a pickle, right? Yes, and a house is just a house. Though you would never pay the same price for a stinky tar-paper swamp shack as you would for a gabbled and Jacuzzied Georgian palace, would you?” the ad says in part.

“It’s not just another pickle,” McClure said. “We believe in the integrity of the product.”

Brothers Bob and Joe McClure run McClure's Pickles, with operations in Brooklyn and Detroit.

He said as a small producer, they can’t compete with the lower prices of the corporate food producers that can use their massive scale to outbid little guys.

Instead, McClure’s looks to cut costs where possible without losing quality.

For example, when they began buying vinegar in industrial quantities, that reduced their vinegar pricing by about 30 percent — which helped them get their overall costs low enough to enlist distributors, which look for prices about 30 percent below wholesale.

Keeping an eye on costs is important because the final price consumers see after distributor and retail mark up can’t be so high they simply choose another pickle, McClure noted. So if they can maintain quality while offering lower prices to retailers, they hope that will mean increased sales.

Because of his time as a temp, McClure said he went into entrepreneurship pretty confident in his office skills. But McClure’s got a boost from Columbia Business School students who helped them with free consulting, including analyzing their cost structure and determining what price they had to charge to make money.

As McClure’s has grown, the brothers have looked for new products to add to their line up.

They started with pickles, then relish. As a way to help customers get the most value from their purchase, they told people to save the brine and add it to bloody marys. Eventually they created their own bloody mary mix incorporating pickle juice.

The most recent addition is pickle-flavored potato chips, inspired by a tweet that said something like, “I’d like a Better Made potato chip and McClure’s pickle merged into one.” Someone at Detroit-based Better Made saw the comment on Twitter and called McClure’s to pursue the idea.

McClure said he’d love to add curried sauerkraut to the product lineup but hasn’t had time to make that a reality yet.

But even as the pickle company grows, Bob McClure remains committed to acting. He’s shooting a film called The Brass Teapot, and calls acting “an important part of my life.”

He likes the balance — he says the time between acting gigs is unpredictable and he enjoys having the consistency of the pickle business in between.

And his castmates benefit, too. McClure recently took pickles to the set of Brass Teapot to share.

Another example of how Bob McClure blends acting and pickles is this sassy McClure’s ad on YouTube:

Blogging disclosure: I am rarely unbiased about anything I write about. Think of Newvine Growing as my version of Oprah’s favorite things. In the case of McClure’s,  I did not receive any freebies prior to writing this piece, but Bob did send a lovely thank you gift of pickles and chips after publication. I heartily endorse McClure’s pickles for snacking and as a never-fail hangover cure.

Going to agriculture summer camp, talking “agvocacy”

I feel a bit like I’m off to summer camp to meet my pen pals.

Every Tuesday night, a diverse group of people participate in a Twitter chat using the hashtag #agchat — it’s a moderated online conversation of usually about a dozen questions on a focused agriculture topic, ranging from use of smartphones to farm regulation.

Here’s how the AgChat Foundation describes itself:

The AgChat℠ Foundation is designed to help those who produce food, fuel, fiber and feed tell agriculture’s story from their point of view. The Foundation will educate and equip farmers and ranchers with the skill set needed to effectively engage on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, YouTube, Linkedin and other social media services. It will give them knowledge to unlock new tools to effectively tell their story. Research shows that social media is a growing opportunity for farmers to have a stronger voice in educating people about the business of growing food, fuel, feed and fiber.

The Foundation is built from the highly visible “#AgChat” community on Twitter. This weekly moderated chat has served as an international meeting place where the people of agriculture can discuss difficult issues, tell their farm stories and identify ways to connect with people outside of agriculture. More than 2,000 people from seven countries have participated in #AgChat since it started in April 2009. And that’s only the beginning.

Farmers are leading a grassroots effort to develop the AgChat℠ Foundation. The organization is designed to connect agriculture in communities beyond Twitter. Four program areas have been identified to maximize agriculture’s opportunity with social media – be sure to see what farmers have to say about why this is important.

Though this group effectively uses social media to build community, there’s no substitute for meeting people face to face. We’re doing that in Nashville at an event called Agvocacy.

This is a topic near and dear to my heart, and I hope to learn a lot.

Meantime, some of my past posts on farms and farmers markets include:

• Focusing on farming and the American food supply — a summary of tidbits from the North American Farmers’ Direct Marketing Association convention this February
• Newvine Growing book club: Food Matters by Mark Bittman
• I heart farmers’ markets — or how a kid raised on canned veggies loaded with butter learned to love the real thing
• The tour of best farmers markets
• Newving Growing — what I’m doing to help farmers and farmers markets talk to customers