Heidi's Favorite New Thing for Spring
Our Gourmet buyer, Heidi Brothers, has returned from the Fancy Foods Show, where she discovered lots of great new foods for you to try. She’s especially excited about the The Zen of Slow Cooking, a product that adds serenity to the kitchen and provides employment for adults with disabilities. These award-winning spice blends are specially crafted for crock pot and Instant Pot cooking.
With a special needs son, co-creator Meg Barnhart of Lake Forest (who remembers coming to The Little Traveler as a child!) wanted to incorporate a way to help individuals with disabilities. She’s partnered with Planet Access Company, a Des Plaines, IL organization that provides training and employment for adults with developmental disabilities, to do all the labeling and heat-sealing.
Check out Meg and Melinda from the Zen of Slow Cooking on ABC Chicago.
Healthy Snacking
Healthy isn’t just about setting a goal, it’s a way of living. One of the biggest challenges in healthy eating is on-the-go snacking. We’ve brought in several options for quick bites that don’t just taste good but are also good for you, like Bobos organic rolled oat bars, Kakookies superfood energy cookies, Redd vegan protein + multi-vitamin bars, and Sipp sparkling organic soda with blended fruits and herbs.
Stonewall Kitchen Shop
The chefs at Stonewall Kitchen continually learn and innovate, making it the most awarded specialty foods brand in the industry. Among new additions this spring—a Moscow Mule Mixer! Plus tasty new jams, spreads, and sauces.
The "It" Flavors of the Season:
Pick a Peck of Pickled...
It’s a dilly of a trend in foods—pickle flavored everything! Pickled asparagus, carrots, beans, you name it, from Tillen Farms has no GMOs or artificial preservatives—delicious in a Bloody Mary. Or try dill pickle peanuts, dill pickle mustard, even a pickle soda (that we promise tastes way better than it sounds).
Sea Salt Caramel
Soft, buttery goodness. We don’t need to say more than that, do we? Oh, but we will.... Sea salt caramel malted milk balls, sea salt caramel popcorn, chocolate sea salt caramels, salted caramel and chocolate chunk shortbread, salted caramel scones, sea salt and caramel sauce, dark chocolate sea salt caramel. Drooling yet?
Everything’s Better with Bacon
Bacon has worked its way from a trend to a staple in contemporary gourmet foods and candies. Some call it a Baconaissance. Savory, salty bacon adds a new dimension to standard flavors. Sir Francis Bacon takes sweet peanut brittle to its highest level by lacing it with bacon. Stonewall Kitchen, that great innovator in deliciousness, adds bacon to jams, ketchup, and dressings to create entirely new flavors. Snuffle around in our Gourmet Rooms to find even more foods elevated by bacon.
