We came, we saw, we conquered!

A lovely weekend was had by myself and Su Davies, our top consultant of 2008 in Chicago. Su won the trip for the most sales for our first full year and the reward was a weekend in Chicago to visit the Restaurant Show, one of the largest food shows in the world. We managed to get in some good sightseeing as well as having a meal at Moto (http://www.moto.com/) which was pretty amazing. Moto takes food, deconstructs it and then builds it back back up again in a weird way. Picture attached is an edible cuban cigar, we even ate the ash!

So, I think Su had an amazing time, the 2009 winners will be gunning for the cookery class in Tuscany!

Inspired Dinners are here!

We are bursting with excitement now we can finally launch the 'Inspired Dinners' range with you!
We have listened to foodies looking for easy, fabulous entertaining solutions of their own creation; we have thought about how we can give you a high end, valuable product to market, and we have seen the economy shift us away from dining out as friendships and 'home-ships' become more important. And this is our fabulous, valuable, food and friend loving solution.....
Inspired Dinners: Italian Bistro Inspired Dinners: Eastern CanteenOur ‘Inspired Dinner Boxes' are designed to make dining at home a more amazing experience. Five of our products with recipes & instructions to create seasonal menus using 5 additional ingredients (and a few storecupboard items) Plus the extras to embellish and decorate the table to make the occasion special It's an easy and convenient way of creating restaurant-quality food and a restaurant-style atmosphere, without a restaurant-sized bill!

Multinational My Secret Kitchen

Morning all!

Welll... we now have our first consultant from across the water.... Northern Ireland to be exact! Terri, one of our closer consultants to the office made the trip over there this week and Michelle has now joined us from near Belfast. OK, you can make a good argument about being multinational... (a) I'm talking about one nation rather than multi nations and (b) Northern Ireland is still part of the UK, but let us have our glory! Congratulations Terri and Michelle!
We'll be launching the new concept for the beginning of May. We believe we've found a wonderful gap that is the fit between the restaurant dining experience and the "meal for two from Waitrose" But much more as from next week.
Quite a few new consultants this week including a couple of very experienced direct selling consultants, so business continues to move forward very nicely!

The Value Packs are here!

Well... we had to do it..... We've launched a couple of new packs for those that are watching their pennies. Our cheese ball mixes sell so well that we've decided to put all three together for £10 saving £1.97 on the individual items. We also have a salt and pepper pack now for £11, still giving the £1 to Action against Hunger, our chosen charity that we would like to help. You can find more about what they do and where your contribution goes here - http://www.actionagainsthunger.org/

Eat Well, Be Happy...

We've just finished another wonderful One Life Live exhibition, meeting some great people who would like to be consultants. For those that expressed an interest we'll get to you this week, thanks for everyone's enthusiasm! We couldn't help noticing how one company's mission was to highlight the plight of the world's economy and push why you need to earn more money - that's right, scare people into joining your company!! We went the different approach and let people come to us because they loved food. And it worked.
We did meet a great man with a wizards hat on who listened to what we had to offer and gave his opinion. He finished with a wink and a "eat well and be happy" - what an amazing line! We will be adopting it. We later saw the same man with a big banner proclaiming "Free Hugs here" - We love the free hugs concept - if you don't know about it, go here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4

Chicago, Chicago...

Just got back from Chicago... one of our favourite cities and where we lived for six years so very fond memories!
The trip was set up for two reasons, one to check out all the details for the trip for Su Davies, our "consultant of the year" - as the winner of the award, Su is going to Chicago to one of the biggest food exhibitions in the world - The Restaurant Show (http://show.restaurant.org/NRA09/public/enter.aspx) Along with the show though we're planning all sorts of other avitivits including a meal at one of the top restaurants - we're umming and ahhing between Charlie Trotter or Tru at the moment - I think Tru is winning - just look at that menu (http://www.trurestaurant.com/files/Coll%203.9.pdf) Any advice is welcome...
The other reason for popping across the pond is to continue on the My Secret Kitchen USA plan.... things are coming together.... but some hard work ahead of us...

The real story behind the new products

So, the official announcement has been made... so how did we reach the decision to launch what we did?
We've been fascinated by the Szechuan pepper for a long time. The outer flesh of the fruit of the japanese prickly ash bush has an amazing effect when eaten whole. It's almost like eating a nettle but without the pain! It starts off aniseedy, then turns lemony and gives a numbing effect. When it's ground and blended with other spices it give out a fantastic flavour. Our lemon & chipotle sea salt sells very well, so here's the pepper to go with the salt!
Floral flavours have been gaining in popularity for a little while now so we've been playing with rose and hibiscus along with other flowers. The aim here was to do a sweet version of our infamous balsamic reduction. We also got to think about how we can get involved in alcoholic mixes. This was a combination of those ideas - we ended up with a georgous syrup with extracts of rose and hibiscus that when mixed with white wine, gives an aromatic rose. It's also great on any desserts to give a different flavour to the dish.
The peach pudding pickle is basically a Summer version of the highly popular fig pudding pickle. We twisted it with the addition of vanilla and a touch of chilli so that it can work equally well in savoury as well as sweet dishes.
The Fiesta Nacho cheese ball mix was a no brainer. Our most popular item is the red pepper cheese ball and we wanted to extend the range. The secret behind this mix is the preroasted spices which give a truly authentic and rich flavour.

The new gift boxes will be available shortly.
We'd love to hear your comments and thoughts!!