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Cookies and Kickstarter

13 Mar

I’m embarrassed to see how long it’s been since I’ve posted anything. Last time I posted,  I said something about how I was going to start to (slowly) work on some new cookbooks. I did actually keep that promise,  but then my world turned topsy-turvy.

Not long after I posted,  a family looking for a new location for their business came to look at Desserts Plus and quickly made us an offer on our building. We accepted for many reasons, and starting looking for a new space. We had no idea how long it would take us.

Since moving our of our building 13 (!) months ago,  we’ve had a pop-up store for Passover,  rented a kitchen to cater a few major events and even had a booth at a farmer’s market for part of the simmer.

All along we worked on finding our space,  which we did last summer. Several delays kept construction from starting until early this year (you can see a lot of our updates on our Instagram account).

In fact,  we even have a  kickstarter campaign going to try to get the final push we need to finish our space.

(You can read more about our campaign on our Facebook page, instagram or kickstarter.)

Meanwhile,  while all of that was going on,  I was slowly working on my next cookbook.

Last month I published Pam’s Cookie Collection:

This is smaller than my other books with just 40-something recipes, but I’m proud of this one!  It’s got lots of recipes that I’ve been baking at Desserts Plus over the years, along with lots of others that I created in my home kitchen.

You can get copies here:

Createspace
amazon. com
amazon. ca
And here’s a wonderful write-up by the equally wonderful Norene Gilletz in the CJN.

If you don’t have any of my books but you’ve wanted them,  now is a good time to get them!  For the next week one of the rewards for our kickstarter campaign is a cookbook collection.  You can get one copy of each of my three books – signed if you like! (It’s listed twice – once if you’re able to pick them up at our new café and once if you need them shipped throughout North America.)

I’ll try not to be such a stranger!  Thanks for stopping by and reading.

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Too busy baking. .

7 Aug

No matter how strong my intentions are to post more,  I generally fail. I really,  really want to put up blog posts,  but life gets in the way.  I could go on about how my fridge hasn’t been working for a month so I haven’t been able to cook. . but who wants to hear about that?

Instead,  I’ll show you some of the things I’ve been cooking and baking at work over the last few months.  And if I can find the time and energy,  I’ll get more posts up.  Really.  🙂

Ps: if you want to see more of my cooking/baking,  I post regularly (with my sister) on our instagram account.  You can find us at Desserts_Plus.

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Passover Post — No Time to Post

8 Mar

I started off the year well, posting more times in one week than I did in all of 2012. I did well into February until I got buried under Passover prep and all of the sudden I had no time to do anything.  I have a notebook full of recipes just waiting to be typed up and pictures on my phone ready to upload, but they’ll have to wait until after Passover before they get turned into posts. I thought I’d be able to post some great new recipes for Passover, but time got away from me (though there’s still a chance of some posts during the holiday).  Instead, I’ve done a little search online to find my Passover footprints and round them up into a single post here.  Some of the links are recipes on my blog or other websites, some are links to my business and my books and a few of them are links to eGullet.org, where I spent 3 Passovers blogging for the members there during Passover (I look back on those foodblogs now and can’t figure out how I got them done).

These are recipes on my blog:

The three eGullet Passover foodblogs I did over the years:

My family business: So, the reason I’m so busy now is that along with my parents, I own a kosher food store (the only independent kosher food store in the city) and catering company.  Passover is our busiest time of the year, no question.  We turn our store over completely for Passover,  removing all items that are not kosher for Passover from the shelves, freezers and coolers and bringing in well over 1,000 kosher for Passover items (plus beef, lamb, veal, poultry and deli). Starting last week, we’ve been getting truckloads of products delivered almost daily, starting with an initial order that weighed in at 11,600 lbs.  You can take a look at what we sell on our Facebook page, where we posted this album/tour.

On the side, I write cookbooks.  So far, two.  The second book is Passover –  A Kosher Collection. For the three weeks leading up to Passover, my days are spent (among other things) answering questions from my customers.  Younger customers are looking for help with traditional recipes, older customers are looking for new ideas and vice versa.  I realized that there was a need for a new Passover cookbook and went to work on it.  In the US and Canada, you can by it in various Judaica stores, and it’s available on Amazon.com in hard copy or for the Kindle/eReader.  You can also order them from my website, and I’ll ship them anywhere! Around the web – my Passover friendly recipes/articles from other sites:

To all those preparing for Pesach, I hope it’s an easy year for you and hopefully I’ll be back during the holiday with more recipes.  Chag sameach!

Newspaper reviews . .

28 Aug

Not for the book. This morning I woke up to find a nice write-up about our business in the Winnipeg Free Press. You can read it here. No time to get any book work done today – the phone won’t stop ringing.

Shabbat shalom!