Friday, October 19, 2012

Hanover Road is Open!

I have probably mentioned many times before that I was raised in the small rural community of Hanover, Colorado. Most of my childhood years were spent on the family farm at the end of Hanover Road. I learned to bake in the kitchen of that house.


Fast forward 40 years. Over the past 2 years I have turned my life in a whole new direction than I had taken for most of my adult life, I followed my passion for baking and cooking, and became a pastry chef. 

For most of this summer I have been working to build a website where I can sell small batch, artisanal products directly to the public. My website is finally ready for its debut, www.hanoverroad.com. Modern technology is amazing! I am very pleased that I was able to set up a very sophisticated e-commerce website all by myself. I look forward to adding more product as I get them developed and working continually to improve the site. Here are the initial two offerings:



Please visit my site today! I hope you will enjoy your visit as much as I enjoyed building it. www.hanoverroad.com

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Expensive Vegan

I mentioned yesterday that I would be checking out a restaurant and hopefully adding it to my list of favorites. Well it is not going to happen. Since it didn't make the list I will not divulge the name but will tell you some of the criteria it failed. First the criteria it did meet, the food was very good and the ambiance was very nice. You may ask, isn't that enough? Sometimes it, is but not for me this time.

First off, I got there before the friend I was meeting. I was seated and then greeted by my server who politely introduced themselves and proceeded to explain the vegan menu and ask if there was anything they could get me, job well done. My response to this was I would like water and would wait to make any further selections until my friend arrived. Here is where they went astray, over the course of the time that I was waiting the server made no less than 3 attempts to get me to try one of their suggestions rather than just checking to see how I was doing. So much for reading your customer.

Rather than rant on and on about a few other things I will say that the bill is what finished it off, not a drop of alcohol and the bill for 2 was $60, that is hard to swallow sober!

Now that all of that is said, if I were craving really good vegan food I would probably give them another try.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

A Few of My Favorite Things

On a walk this morning with the dog the subject of bagels came up and I started craving one! So after I got back from my walk I got on my bicycle and headed off to the bagel bakery to get my favorite bagel, everything bagel toasted with lite cream cheese. I will add that if the bakery doesn't put salt on their everything bagel it isn't and everything bagel! One favorite thing out of the way.

After I ran some errands I came home to make myself another one of my new favorite things for lunch, an open face heirloom tomato and feta cheese sandwich, so simple and delicious. Just toast a nice piece of rustic white bread drizzle with olive oil and top with sliced heirloom tomatoes, slices of feta and oregano leaves, drizzle with additional olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Yum, yum.

Tonight I am going to meet a friend for dinner at a new restaurant and who knows I may have a new favorite, I will let you know.

Monday, October 1, 2012

Product Development

I have been working the last few days to develop some of the product I will be offering on my website. Both of the products I have been testing are ones that I have been making for years. There are a number of reasons to test the recipes even though I am very comfortable with the recipe performance.

First, in order to get the cost for the product where the operation will be profitable I need to purchase them in bulk and some of the original ingredients are not available in bulk or in a form that makes the recipe less labor intensive. Fortunately with some research I have been able to find higher quality ingredients at a lower cost than the ones I have been using!

Second, once all of the ingredients have been determined I need to have the nutritional information for the products calculated. I am very excited to see the nutritional information, it makes the product so official.

Third I am working on packaging. I need to make sure the product is not damaged by the packaging and that the packaging will insure product freshness when received by the customer.

Last I have started testing how the products ship, what condition the packaging as well as the products are in when they are received. Part of this is also finding packaging and shipping containers.

With a good amount of focus and hard work product should be available soon!