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Vegetarian/Vegan

A Plant-Based Alternative to Conventional Queso

By Lorrie Baumann

Core & Rind Cashew Cheesy Sauce is a clean-label, vegan alternative to the kinds of shelf-stable cheese sauces in jars that are often sold in the snack aisle next to the tortilla chips. “It’s great for people who are on specific diets, who are plant-based, who are keto, who are vegan, but it’s also for those who are looking for more plants on the plate or just looking to cut out the junk,” said Core & Rind co-Founder Rita Childers. “It’s versatile in that way, that it’s not for one specific vegan customer. It fits into a lot of diets.”

The cheesy sauce is made from simple kitchen ingredients by Childers and her co-Founder, Candi Haas, who met in college at Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Giraradeau, where Childers was studying journalism and Haas was studying business marketing. “We were your typical unhealthy college students,” Childers said. “It’s hard just having a busy lifestyle – you want to grab something that’s easy.” The two lost touch with each other after college, but they reconnected after Childers had decided to discard the careless eating habits she’d developed as a young adult and return to the vegetarian lifestyle of her childhood. “I was interested in figuring out different ways to support my health,” she said.

When she met Haas again, her friend invited her to participate in a presentation that she was preparing as a final requirement for a culinary nutrition program offered by the Academy of Culinary Nutrition. As soon as she saw the kitchen where Haas was recording her presentation, Childers knew she’d found a comrade-in-arms in her battle to improve the quality of her diet. “I’d never seen anyone’s kitchen look like this except for mine,” she said. “I’d felt like a weirdo with all the health foods, but then Candi took this program, and it ended up being very similar to what I was doing at the time, too.”

That inspired Childers to enroll in the same program, and when she’d completed it, the two started talking about how they were going to put what they’d learned into action. They decided that what they wanted to do was to develop some of the tasty vegetarian products they’d been preparing for their own consumption and turn them into packaged products they could sell to others with similar dietary goals. “We came up with 12 items just to test out if people wanted these things the way we wanted these things,” Childers said. Then they took their products to a farmers market in St. Louis, Missouri. “We had a great reaction, but people really went crazy for our cheesy sauce,” she said. “They just loved the flavors and couldn’t believe that it wasn’t cheese.”
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After multiple markets produced the same enthusiastic reaction, Childers and Haas decided it was time to think about how to get their vegan cheesy sauce onto supermarket shelves. “It took a year and a half after going to the farmers market to make it shelf-stable,” Childers said. “We launched Cashew Cheesy Sauce in October, 2017.”

Core & Rind Cashew Cheesy Sauce is now available in three flavors. The shelf-stable original is called Sharp & Tangy Cashew Cheesy Sauce. Bold & Spicy launched in 2018, and the newest flavor is Rich & Smoky. “It’s a unique item because it’s a cheese alternative, but it’s also shelf-stable and clean label,” Childers said. “A lot of our competition is refrigerated, so we definitely wanted to differentiate ourselves in that way. It’s super-versatile, and you can keep it as a pantry staple, as a snack or a sauce on pasta…. Candi and I like to say that we just want to get more real food on people’s plates, and our flavor-packed sauces help people do that.”

The sauces contain no chemical additives, no preservatives, no gums and no fillers. “It’s just ingredients you can pull out of your own pantry and make a sauce at home with,” Childers said. “We’re not your average food entrepreneurs. We don’t have a background in food science. We do have a passion to create these products that people are asking for – that are more transparent and more health-focused, health-building…. I think we were just sick of picking up every sauce on the shelf and seeing ingredients that we didn’t want to put in our bodies, and we knew that other people felt the same way too. That’s been a big driver of ours.”

Core & Rind Cashew Cheesy Sauce is packaged in an 11-ounce glass jar for dipping that retails for $9.99. It’s vegan and gluten free. It’s available in the Midwest through Fortune Fish & Gourmet, and nationally through KeHE.  Distribution is also available in Canada.

Perfect Indulgence from Graeter’s Ice Cream

By Lorrie Baumann

Richard Graeter has turned to the makers of plant-based dairy proteins to ensure that his fourth-generation premium ice cream company can survive for another 150 years. Graeter’s Ice Cream has teamed up with Perfect Day to launch Perfect Indulgence™, Graeter’s new line of animal-free frozen desserts, which is in its initial launch with six flavors: Black Cherry Chocolate Chip, Cookies & Cream, Oregon Strawberry, Mint Chocolate Chip, Chocolate and Chocolate Chip.

Perfect Indulgence is made with the same hand-crafted quality as the rest of Graeter’s premium line and it’s virtually indistinguishable from traditional ice cream, Graeter said. “Graeter’s is about one word – indulgence. We are about treating yourself; it’s a reward,” he said. “We won’t put our family name on a product that doesn’t deliver indulgence.”

Graeter’s has had a lot of experience ignoring passing fads in frozen desserts – the company never made a frozen yogurt – but Perfect Indulgence is both animal free and lactose free, opening up the market for it to people who have avoided dairy in the past. “Whenever we can remove an obstacle from somebody enjoying our product, then why wouldn’t we do that?” Graeter asked. “If you are fine with traditional dairy, then great. But there are people who heretofore couldn’t enjoy it before, and now they can.”

Only harder and longer erections help one enjoying an viagra discount sales intimacy to the fullest. This is a story of old Jeff cheap viagra australia and Leena. It might be no, so in this critical juncture you just need to have an excellent medicinal therapy and this is none other than kamagra. buy generic levitra http://icks.org/n/data/ijks/1482460255_ij_file.pdf Kamagra Australia was the medicine that was prescribed to me but he faced little super cialis cheap drowsiness every time when he took kamagra tablets 100mg. While previous experiments with plant-based desserts couldn’t produce a product with sufficient quality to interest Graeter, his interest was piqued when he read a trade magazine article about Perfect Day’s fermentation-based method of making actual dairy proteins from microflora. His first reaction was skepticism. “When I first read about Perfect Day’s product, what went through my head was, ‘frankenmilk,’” he said. “We partnered with Perfect Day almost a year ago, and we’re learned that is it quite the opposite. It’s a modern iteration of a very old process – using fermentation to make and prepare food…. This delivers what you need to make something creamy and indulgent – you need dairy proteins. You just don’t need the cow.”

Graeter’s gets its Perfect Day proteins in the form of a liquid base from Smith Dairy in Ohio, which has supplied the ice cream base for Graeter’s in the past. “They receive the Perfect Day protein, rehydrate it, add sugar and pasteurize it,” Graeter said. “Once we get the base from Smith, it goes to the flavor vat just like our traditional dairy mix does.” From there, the mix goes to Graeter’s 2.5-gallon French Pots to be made into an ultra-premium dessert with the same process that Graeter’s great-grandmother used when she took over the business after the death of her husband in the very earliest days of the 20th Century. That process keeps Graeter’s from becoming the next mass-market premium ice cream brand, but it doesn’t keep Richard Graeter from thinking about the future of the planet, the dairy industry and the company, he said. “If this is the future of dairy, we’d like to take note of it, and I’d like to be in on it from the beginning,” he said. “Perfect Indulgence is vegan, so folks who have made the decision to go vegan for ethical reasons can eat it. It also has the benefit of being lactose free. That opens up Graeter’s for a whole segment of the population who previously couldn’t eat ice cream. But it is dairy and does contain milk allergens. Our customers need to understand that it is not dairy free.”

After its initial roll-out with six of Graeter’s traditional flavors, a seventh flavor, Madagascar Vanilla is rolling out in early 2021, and Black Raspberry Chocolate Chip is on the way, too. “The vanilla we have developed now will stand up to our traditional vanilla,” Graeter said.

Perfect Indulgence has a higher retailing at a little higher price point than the traditional ice creams, $7.99 a pint compared to about $5.50 to $6 a pint, but Graeter’s is hoping that economies of scale will bring down the price differential in spite of the additional complexities created by the higher price of the Perfect Indulgence mix as compared to the dairy-based ice cream base and the special sanitation that’s required to prevent cross-contamination of the product with cow milk dairy. “That adds a lot of cost and complexity, but that’s what you have to do,” Graeter said. “Our little plant is chugging along pretty hard. It’s just a matter of planning it all in and working hard to safely keep up.”

Granola for the 21st Century

By Lorrie Baumann

By day, Margaret Barrow is a mild-mannered college professor who teaches composition and literature at Borough of Manhattan Community College. When she unleashes her vegan super powers, though, she’s on a mission to use the granola-based snacks she used to make just for herself as a tool to help her students make better lives for themselves. The product she’s making for that purpose is It’s NOLA, poppable snack balls made from oats, seeds and nuts.

The idea to turn the snack balls she’d been making at home for her own consumption into a business came from her students, she said. They’d been bringing snacks to her classes that her vegan sensibilities wouldn’t allow her to share, so she decided to bring the snack balls she’d been eating at home – they’re chia seed, pumpkin seed, flax seed and sunflower seed along with nuts, oats and spices mixed with a vegan binder to hold them together in crunchy balls. “I started making them for me and my family because I’m the only vegan, and I wanted to make something that we could all eat,” Barrow said. “My students had never had vegan before, and I was delighted to share it with them.”

The students liked the snacks so much that they started asking Barrow if she’d bring more so they could share with their family and friends. Then they started showing up at her home at night. Then some of them told her that she should really start a company and sell them. She said no.

Undaunted, students Mariem Sanoe and Candice Ricks took some of the snack balls to other New York colleges and New Jersey’s Rutgers University and passed them out to students there, along with a survey. Then they brought the results of their consumer research back to Barrow. “We think you should read these,” they told her. “You always told us to get evidence to support our arguments.”

Shocked, Barrow held out a hand for the surveys and started reading. “I was shocked. It was totally unexpected,” she said. “The surveys gave me a sense of the commitment and the belief that the students had. I was the person who was always their champion, and for the first time I felt I was on the opposite end of it.”
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Then she started thinking. “I’ve spent most of my life doing two things at once,” she said. “I’ve spent so much of my life juggling two goals at a time. I have a lot of energy.”
She consulted the business professors at her college, and she asked a lawyer if there was a way that she could use profits from an entrepreneurial project to support community college mentoring programs.

They didn’t tell her no, and maybe it wouldn’t matter if they had. Vegans are used to answering doubts about the positions they’ve staked out. Barrow started accepting a new identity as Founder and Chief Executive Officer of a small artisanal food business. “I asked the students to accept sweat equity to come into the company and help me,” she said. “I’ve been mentoring them while I’ve been learning about being an entrepreneur. I want to continue working on legacies of wealth with them.”

It’s Nola is a snack that’s intended as a fun and filling amuse bouche to soothe a between-meals hunger pang rather than as a substitute for a regular meal or any part of one. A serving is low in calories, low in sugar, low in sodium and low in fats and carbohydrates. “It’s filling without making you feel lethargic. It provides energy. It’s a true traditional snack, which means that you’re having something between meals to get you to the next meal. You don’t need to eat a whole bag,” Barrow said. “Most people say that they can eat three or four of these balls and they feel good. They’re addictive – that, I can say. They’re very uniquely flavored.”

It’s NOLA is offered in Luscious Cranberry Coconut and Sassy Mango Masala as well as Decadent Chewy Chocolate, which is the newest flavor. They’re packaged in stand-up pouches with either a single serving, a two-serving 12-count or a 24-count. “We’re working on getting them into cafes, so it’s a stand-up pouch that will work next to a cash register,” Barrow said.
Ten percent of the profits from It’s NOLA are dedicated to community college mentoring programs, with the funds to go directly to the programs rather than being funneled through a foundation or non-profit organization, Barrow said. “Ultimately I’d like to raise enough money so we can create housing for community college students,” she added. “Some of them live in the projects – they just don’t live in the greatest of circumstances while they’re being educated.”