One year anniversary and a giveaway!

Thanks for being here with us!

Hey hey Food Explorers! Can you believe it has been ONE YEAR since we posted our first Substack article?! Now, honestly, I had been a subscriber to Substack for a couple of years prior to actually putting my own work up onto the platform but I didn’t really understand how amazing and rewarding working on articles every week with Jason was going to be.  Jason was definitely the push behind getting Substack all set up while I was in charge of working on creating articles and doing the podcast.

One year ago we put up a teaser for the podcast onto Substack. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to write about here. I knew that I was doing the YouTube and audio podcasts and I knew that I wanted to write, but I really wasn’t sure what. We started off shaky as most entrepreneurs do when they’re launching their first foray into a new medium. And we posted quite sporadically. But over the last 5 months, we have been posting once a week every week.  This article today is officially our 20th post - woot woot!

Our audience has been growing (just under 1,000 subscribers), so welcome to all the new people that have just signed up over the past two weeks! And, our newest paid subscribers!!  We love having you here and, as always, any topics you’d love us to cover please just message us or put something into the comments below. We really want to make sure that we are putting out fantastic content every week but also staying in touch with all of the amazing readers that come back each week to see what we have published.

To celebrate our one year anniversary and all of the fun articles we’ve been writing we’re going to do a Giveaway. I was actually able to acquire a copy of the book Bitter by Jennifer McLagan. This is a book that I referenced in a previous article called Bitter AF and it is one that I go back to over and over again because bitter foods are underrated but also because she has really great information and stories in there. I love a book that is not just recipes but also stories and history about food, commentary on the recipes and where they came from or what they mean to the author - all that melts my butter!  The recipes are pretty easy and there’s pictures (don’t get me started on food books with no pictures of recipes) and the recipes don’t have 55 ingredients of which 52 of them you’ve never heard of before and only three of those are actually available in the country live in …  Plus, you’ll be surprised at the list of foods in the book that fall under the bitter category, including almonds, caramel, coffee, tea, and of course chocolate - like I said this book is fascinating!

Now, with this book there will also be a few other treats in your prize pack but I’m saving those as a surprise.  How to enter? Easy peasy!  LIKE this article is one entry, post a COMMENT as well is a second entry, and become a PAID subscriber and we will give you an extra 3 entries. We will draw on Sunday August 25th. 

But wait, wasn’t there supposed to be an article about Oatmeal Cake this week?  Let us eat cake!!!  Not to worry, that is coming soon as Jason and I spent the weekend in Canmore with our friends Jim and Grace enjoying the entire oatmeal cake.  But, I also was busy filming a super fun “Colleen’s Food Explorer Origin Story” and now I need to edit that and finish the oatmeal cake article.  So much going on!

Wait - There’s more stuff to tell you…

I will leave you with a couple of foodie tidbits this week. I’ve started work on re-creating the Cherry Blossom chocolate from when I was young and I’ve gathered up all the ingredients and picked the mold I will use.  I’ll be searching for tasters soon… And, we found a new product this week in Canmore from an Alberta-based company called Wild Folk.  Jason likes to mock mocktails at times but when he insisted we try a few sips from this company I was sure happy he did!  The Mezcal Margarita was hands down one of the best things I have drunk in a long time.  Yes, it’s non-alcoholic but the synergy of the ingredients, how it all came together into a perfectly balanced drink - hoooly!  While you might think that citrus, sweet, and smoky ingredients will not go together, we can attest that they do go together. Grab one if you can because it was that good!

Mocktails have become all the rage, we even have our Mocktail + Chocolate class that will be returning this Fall.  So, a few questions - have you tried any zero proof/non alcoholic drinks that you love?  Let us know!  And, get those entries in because if you know me (and for those that don’t know me) there will definitely be some treats in there with the prize book that you’ll want!