Weekly Wrap-Up: Toffee and Caramels
Welcome to another edition of Allison’s Gourmet weekly wrap-up. I hope you all had a fantastic week!
Thank you for the great Facebook activity this week everyone. We loved your comments on our homemade tempeh posts. Also, thank you so much for sharing this week’s blog posts with your Facebook and Twitter friends. If you missed it, everyone seemed to enjoy Vegan Toffee: Not Just for the Holidays post.
We’d like to give special shout outs to our fellow tweeple for your support: @Animal_Advocacy, @melissagerman, and @eatpure. The lovely @eatpure was kind enough to blog about our caramels! Check out her post here: Vegan Caramels. Thanks so much!!
We sincerely appreciate your support friends – keep us posted on what you’d like to see or hear more of, and don’t forget catch up with us on Twitter and Facebook. Have a great weekend!
Brownie O’Clock
Like so many other people these days, I realized a few years ago that I’m sensitive to wheat gluten. My sensitivity is partly what has prompted my move to make more of our products wheat-free and gluten-free. I was so tired of not being able to eat my own products!
Ever since we transitioned our organic brownies to be made with organic oat flour, I’ve had our baker make a few mini brownies in each batch, so that I can have some to taste test for “quality control.” Taste testing all of our products is one of my favorite parts of my job, but when our products were made with wheat, my taste tests of each organic brownie batch could only be one little bite. Now, I get to eat a whole mini brownie by myself if I want to! In fact, I’ve become so addicted that Tessa, my assistant, began calling my almost-daily brownie habit, “brownie o’clock”. The term has now expanded to include “chocolate o’clock” for Tessa, and “cookie o’clock” for my husband, David, who loves our new (Wheat-Free) Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookies.
Do you have a daily ritual or special self-loving indulgence? What’s your “pleasure o’clock”?
Vegan Toffee: Not Just for the Holidays
Although many people think of toffee as a wintertime treat, around here it’s one of our staples year round. 
Vegan toffee is almost always one of the confections open for nibbling in the employee sweets stash, along with vegan peanut butter cups and peppermint creme patties. Despite its association with the holidays, vegan toffee makes an excellent warm-weather treat because it is almost completely impervious to temperature fluctuation. Although it may become slightly oily, and it’s chocolate coating may melt, our vegan toffee will not be seriously damaged by heat the way vegan peanut butter cups and other chocolate items would be. So break with tradition, eat toffee in the summer and don’t worry about your goodies melting!
Gift Baskets: Super-Deluxe Samplers in Pretty Packaging
Check out the gorgeous new packaging we finally have for our vegan gift baskets! Instead of different flavors of one kind of product, as you get with our Organic Tea or Just Cookies Samplers, our vegan gift baskets offer an elegant sampling of many of our products and are perfect for larger groups or for those who want to try a wide variety of our products. 
We have two gourmet coffee gift baskets which include either a four-flavor organic coffee sampler or a 12 oz bag of our superlative Peruvian Femenino coffee beans, as well as several flavors of cookies, brownies, fudge and confections all in one beautiful basket. These gourmet coffee gift baskets are the ideal way to spice up a social event or get an idea about your family’s favorite delicacies before birthdays and holidays come around.
Fair-Trade Refreshment, All Day Long
We all know that it’s important to stay hydrated in the summer. One of the best ways I’ve found to do this is to drink hot and iced teas and tisane (herbal teas). They’re more interesting than water, delicious and flavorful, without being too sweet. 
Our Organic Tea Samplers are a great way to have a variety of teas and tisanes on hand for all day tea sipping.
8am: Wake up gently with a warm cup of Organic Rooibos Earl Grey Tisane. This refreshing herbal tea offers sweet citrus notes and is caffeine-free.
10am: In India, people drink chai all day long, and you can too! Our Organic Rooibos Chai Tisane is a delicious caffeine-free treat hot or iced, any time of day.
1pm: Although we call it After Dinner Mint, this refreshing herbal tea is the perfect finish to any meal. End your lunch and start your afternoon with a tall, cold glass of our refreshing organic mint tisane.
3pm: Beat the afternoon yawns with a caffeinated wake-up. Organic Mango Ceylon Tea will do just that with it’s combination of earthy and delightfully fruity notes.
Fair-trade teas and tisanes, whether in tins or sampler pouches, also make perfect fair-trade gifts. So, whether it’s for yourself or someone else, give a fair-trade gift of delicious all day refreshment to someone you love this summer.
