• food,  Los Angeles,  San Diego,  WorldWide

    Bring farm-to-table goodness with Native Vanilla

    This season, bring farm-to-table goodness to your holiday baking and enjoy the sweet taste and smell of quality vanilla. Or consider adding vanilla essentials to a gift basket for family and friends as an impressive gift for those who enjoy baking.

    Native Vanilla embodies the richness and goodness of pure vanilla to make your recipes pop with flavor. It’s ethically sourced extract grade rare Tahitian vanilla beans have a sweet floral aroma with fruity undertones. And their journey to your doorstep couldn’t be more inspiring.

    The backstory to this wonderful company is just as sweet as its products. The seeds of NativeVanilla grew when it’s founder, Dan Edmiston, made his way back to the Papua New Guinea town where he had spent part of his childhood. Seeing the town’s need for economic survival, he committed to starting a company that harvested the beauty of vanilla while sharing the profits with the local micro-farm community.  Thus, quality for the consumer and a fair price for the farmer. As Dan likes to say, “To meet a need is to find true meaning.”

    What Native Vanilla Treat Will You Make, or Give, This Holiday Season?

    Holiday Cranberry Vanilla Bean Cake Recipe

    This cranberry vanilla bean cake will be the talk of the holiday party! Yeah, it’s that good. It is soft, flavorful, and has just a little bit of tart. Each bite will make you want to have more. Are you ready to make this cranberry cake?

     Prep Time: 20-minutes                       Cook Time: 45-minutes

    Ingredients:

    CRANBERRY FILLING

    • 12 oz fresh cranberries, picked over
    • 2 tablespoons of orange juice
    • 2 teaspoons finely shredded orange zest
    • ½ cup sugar
    • 1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
    • ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
    • 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

    CAKE

    • 1 cup buttermilk
    • 6 egg whites, lightly beaten
    • Native Vanilla Bean, split
    • 2 ¼ cups of cake flour
    • 1 ¾ cups sugar
    • 3/4 cup of butter, softened
    • 4 tsp baking powder
    • 1 tsp salt

    FROSTING

    • 16-ounce cream cheese, softened
    • ¾ cup butter, softened
    • 1 tablespoon finely shredded lemon zest
    • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
    • 3 ½ cups confectioners’ sugar
    • Sugared cranberries

    Check out the full Holiday Cranberry Vanilla Bean Cake Recipe at this link to Native Vanilla’s Website.

    Eggnog Recipe

    What are the holidays without an eggnog recipe? This recipe is quick and easy – 8 ingredients and only 15 minutes to make.

    Prep Time: 5 minutes                   Cook Time: 10 minutes

    Ingredients (makes 12 servings)

    • 6 large egg yolks
    • 5/8 cup granulated white sugar
    • 4 cups of milk
    • ½ tsp cinnamon
    • 2 Native Vanilla beans *(see instructions for cutting and scraping seeds below)
    • ¼ teaspoon nutmeg
    • 1 ½ cups of heavy whipping cream
    • ½ cup of rum (if giving to children or those who don’t drink leave this out)

    Check out the full Eggnog Recipe at this link to Native Vanilla’s Website.

    Vanilla Bean Beer Recipe

    Ever wanted to brew your own beer? It’s the perfect time of year to do it. Here is a great recipe using Native Vanilla Beans.

    Ingredients

    Check out the full Vanilla Bean Beer Recipe at this link to Native Vanilla’s Website.

    Vanilla is one of the world’s favourite spices. With its unique taste and wonderful aroma, vanilla has the power to transform any dish into the ultimate foodie delight. But you know that already, don’t you? You’re probably here because there are still some things about vanilla that you’re unsure of. Well then, you’ve come to the right place. At Native Vanilla, they are endlessly fascinated about all things vanilla, and passionate about sharing their expert knowledge on this remarkable plant.

    TAHITIAN GOURMET VANILLA BEANS – GRADE A

    Product features:

    • Grade A Vanilla Beans – hand selected with finest curing process, vacuum sealed for freshness
    • These high-quality vanilla pods are 6-8 inches long, plump, oily, black/dark brown, 30-35% moist
    • Perfect for cooking, desserts, beverages and ice cream. Rich in taste and smell; strong, full vanilla flavor.
    • Ethically sourced and grown by micro-farmer cooperative.
    • Tahitensis vanilla is rarer than the Madagascar variety and is infinitely more versatile.

    TAHITIAN EXTRACT VANILLA BEANS – GRADE B

    Product features:

    • Grade B Vanilla Beans – hand selected with finest curing process, vacuum sealed for freshness
    • These extract vanilla pods are 4-6 inches long, black/dark brown, 15-20% moist and weigh .05-.10 oz
    • Use for baking, making vanilla extract and powders. Enjoy sweet floral aroma, with flavors of fruit
    • Ethically sourced and grown by micro-farmer cooperative.
    • Tahitensis vanilla is rarer than the Madagascar variety and is infinitely more versatile.

    About Native Vanilla:

    Native Vanilla brings organically farmed, sustainably sourced top-quality vanilla to your home. Ethically sourced and grown by a Papua New Guinea micro-farmer cooperative, the company is committed to providing Tahitensis vanilla products including vanilla extract, vanilla bean powder, and vanilla beans. Quality for the consumer, a fair price for the farmer. Follow them on Instagram @native_vanilla and learn more about their inspiring journey here.

  • Fashion,  New York,  San Diego,  WorldWide

    Buy Something…This Holiday Season Is The Time to Support All Female Owned Businesses

    The best way to show encouragement of supporting female owned businesses is to buy something from a business owned by a woman. Tami Lange, Save The Girls owner and founder, who is a first-time entrepreneur, has weathered the challenges of the global pandemic by finding outlets to sell products.  Without those sales, she would have closed. She knows the importance of each purchase, so while the prescription of ‘buy something’ may sound overly simple it is the thing that so many businesses need now more than ever.

    Advice for women business owners to support each other are well intentioned but not always as helpful as they might be. Suggestions like work with other women entrepreneurs to create a positive environment, sponsor a women’s conference, or attend a workshop are fine during normal times. But in a stretch when business revenue is down, people need to make a more meaningful and concrete impact and the best way is to make a purchase.  “Lots of women have very unique challenges to their business,” Lange said. “Whether it’s enough internet bandwidth while working from home, child and/or elder care, or schools closed,the female in the business world has a steep hill to climb. Buying something from a business that is owned by a woman will help relieve a little financial stress so she can weather the other storms in her life.”

    Lange is a one-woman testament to the power of flexibility, improvisation and the courage to act when things are going badly. Lange invented a touchscreen purse for women to store and operate their smart phones without having to remove them from the purse. Duringthe global outbreak her business shrank by more than 95%. The retail outlets where the clever, fashionable and useful purses were sold were all closed. No one would have found fault with her had she just quit. But anyone who thought that Tami Lange would walk away from her once thriving enterprise had another thing coming.

    Lange quickly found new opportunities and available channels to market and promote the Touch Screen PurseThe accessible conduit to new customers was online sales and television the avenue for promotion. Her web site could accommodate more sales without any major change. Television features with ‘America’s Got Talent’ judge, Howie Mandel, followed by another on ‘The View’ provided enough revenue for her initiative to remain viable. She sold over 14,000 of her touchscreen purses right after a feature on ‘Good Morning America’ (GMA). The sales from these televised features drove enough commerce for Lange to not only stay in business but expand to other lines for women that were as attractive as they were needed and useful.

    She added full facial scarves, face shields, and bucket hats to help provide protection from airborne hazards and make a positive fashion statement. All are available via the Save The Girls web site, https://savethegirls.com/ and at many of the retail outlets where Save The Girls Touchscreen Purses are sold.

    About Save The Girls

    Save the Girls is a female owned business that manufactures and sells uniquely designed touchscreen purses which allows purchasers to use their cell phones to text, answer calls and utilize other smartphone functions through their purse. The Soft Solution Scarf and nowthe full-face protective mask and headwear are the newest offerings from Save The Girls. They are perfect for any woman in the age ofthe Coronavirus/Covid-19 pandemic.