Good Day Google+ - Let's talk about Food

Hey everybody, I'm Chef Dennis Littley and welcome to Good Day Google+. It is a good day today. It's beautiful in the state of Florida, although it is a little nippy, 60 degrees, brrr. I have my new Hawaiian shirt on so I'm feeling festive. It's sunny out and I've got 4 of my friends in here today, so what could be a better way to spend Friday afternoon than relaxing with your friends.. And let's say hi to everybody right now, introduce everyone. And right to my— I'm going to go right across what my screen says, and I have Mark Henry. And Mark is in Dijon, France, coming to us. How you doing, Mark?

Bonsoir, I'm good. And g'day, I can use both languages over here.

I like that, g'day and bonsoir. That should be the way to start a show. I like that. You have to start your own show. We'll get back to you later, but I think you're in France and you said it was a little rainy today or cold?

Ah, well, cold by my Australian standards, but actually pretty nice by Dijon standards. It's about 5 Celsius and raining, close to snowing.

Wow.

So not too bad. It gets a lot colder and a lot snowier.

Well, you're still in one of the warmer regions for our guests today, so we'll get to the really chilly one in a bit.

I can't complain, that's right.

I know, I know. All right, and next to Mark I have my friend Larry Fournillier, and he is in Trinidad, and I know it's not snowing in Trinidad.

Bonjour, mes amis. It is currently 82 degrees, 83 degrees Fahrenheit, and today's a little cool by Caribbean standards, or Caribbean standards. Usually it's about 90 this time of the day, but we've slightly overcast, so it's about 83.

Get out the jackets and the earmuffs then, huh?

Yeah, well, my earmuffs are right here.

Well, thanks so much for joining us today, Larry. I thought you'd enjoy the conversations we're talking about.

Chef, you know I always have a good time with you, pal.

Thank you. And then for the first time on the show, also have Erin. Is it Ely or Ellie?

It's Eli.

Eli, I wasn't even close, okay. Well, Erin, Eli, thank you so much. And I did meet you at ShiftCon, didn't I?

Yep, ShiftCon, that was a great convergence.

Let me tell you, did a lot for me. It was definitely an aha moment in my life, and I'm so happy to have made it. I went thinking, oh, I'm just going to talk about Google+ and hang out. I had more OMG moments than I thought possible.

It was really great. I'm super excited about it and definitely planning on going again this year.

Oh yeah, absolutely. My wife is even asking, "Are we going back? Are we going back?" Well, good. And you are in Eugene, Oregon?

Yes, Eugene, Oregon.

And I guess it's pretty temperate there for the Northwest, isn't it?

Yeah, we have what you call a temperate climate, I guess, but right now it's 48 degrees and rainy, so this is our rainy season.

Yeah, we've been getting a lot of rain here, and it's not our rainy season, so we're wondering what's going on. But what are you going to do? It's Mother Nature. She does what she wants, right? All right, we'll come back in a little bit. And then of course, I have my friend Candice Carew from my favorite cheese company, Cabot's, and I am loving all the cheese you send me. The cheese care packages I get once a month now.

We love sending you our cheese, Chef.

I know, it's not organic, and I do eat a lot of organics, but your cheese is just so good, and the fact that it's coming from small farms and they're part of your cooperative makes it—

1,200 farm families in the cooperative, in Cabot Cooperative, and it is called the world's best cheddar for a reason.

That's for sure. It is the only cheddar I have in my— the only cheese other than American I have in my refrigerator. I hate to say I have American cheese, but that's one of my guilty pleasures. I'm like, "Is American actually cheese?" Yeah, is that a class of cheese?

Cheese food?

Yeah, I know. The first time I saw that on the label, I was like, "What?" I've come a long way. I keep saying baby steps and things. Maybe someday I'll stop eating it. I don't know. I've made a lot of changes. We all got to have something. At my age, I'm 61 this year, I figure I don't smoke. I don't really drink, so I eat cheese. What the heck? My cholesterol's okay.

Dr. Pompa: More and more we're hearing how good dairy products can be in a healthy diet. So go for that cheese, chef.

Yeah, yeah, you're not gonna—

I can't be wrong.

What's that?

The French can't be wrong. You look at how healthy they are, you know, despite the smoking, the coffee, the cheese, the escargot, the wine. They're, you know, you look at the heart, the heart disease rates in France, but they're all skinny.

Everything in moderation. So that's what—

that was my point. There's nothing really banned, but just be, you know, moderate about it.

Exactly.

And Candice, you are in the coldest part of the country, you said.

I win the prize today, I think. It's about 18 degrees outside right now in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. On the coast of beautiful Maine. But tonight it's supposed to— the wind chill is supposed to get to 30 below.

Ooh!

That's a little cool. You know, you want to put the gloves on when you're milking those cows, I think.

Well, and that's, you know, that's the wonderful thing about our farm families. They're out there 365 days a year taking care of their animals. They're usually small family farms So I give them a lot of credit for the kinds of jobs that they have and that they do.

Our hats are off to small American farmers. You know, a lot of them get caught up in how big business does things, and they're having a hard time. Cabot's at least giving them a way to survive and to exist in the madness that, you know, a lot of these a lot of our country has gotten into. But we'll talk more about that. I just want to say hi to some friends who are in the house, and I want to say hi— Michael Thomas is here. How you doing, Michael? Thanks for stopping by. Cheryl Deuce is in the house, and she's checking in for a bit. Did someone say cheese? Now we just need some bacon.

I like Cheryl.

I know.

Carmen Mandich is here. Kristen Maddis is in the house. Kirsten, I'm sorry. Madison's in the house. Nazim Beltran is here from Milan. He's saying hi and it's pouring in Milan. At least you're in Italy though, so we won't let you complain. Karen Shin is here, Don S. is here, and it goes on and on. And I will say hi to more of you later, but thank you so much for stopping by today to watch Good Day Google+. And now we're just going to talk to our guests a little, and as always the rest of you in the panel, if you have questions for our guests, just chime in and engage. That's what we're here for. It's like— I always tell people it's like Ellen meets The View, and we're just gonna have a talk.

Do we get to dance pretty soon, Chad?

If you want to dance, you can dance. Sometimes I sing, but that's not always a good thing.

I can supply the music, the Caribbean music.

I love it.

We have a steel drum back there.

Yeah, yeah, I'll find a clip.

But anyway, let's, let's talk. And if you're watching and you have a question for anyone, please just put it in the comment track and we will get to it. So Mark, yours— we're going to start with you since you're there first. And why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, about what you do and what you brought to share with us today?

Oh, well, those of you who know my furry knives know a big chunk of my background. I Invented the Fury knife when I was still at university in Australia, mechanical engineering, and I'd always been interested in cooking and knives. I had friends who were chefs and they were showing me what they thought were the world's best knives, and I thought, well, in an engineering sense, they're really dinosaurs, you know, these things. This is way back in the '90s, you know, and I said 'You know, this is a good opportunity for engineers to get involved and go back to basics.' So I really re-engineered a lot of things with knives, and they took off in Australia to such an extent with the elite chefs that then people started to ask for them in the department stores and the gourmet stores. So we went to retail, and it became a pretty big brand in Australia. Then a little old unknown TV wannabe chef picked them up at Sur La Table one day and took them home and said, call that guy, I'm taking these on my next show and I don't care whether you do a deal or not, but do a deal. And it was Rachel Ray talking to her manager at the time, her husband-to-be, John Cusimano. He called me one day and said, Rachel wants your knives and she doesn't care what kind of deal I do. And I said, okay, here's the deal. And I'm just a struggling Australian engineer, you know, I don't have big American business type money. So we did a deal that really worked for everyone, and then she took them to retail. And even though they looked like fun, affordable knives, the Rachel Ray knives, I put all my engineering into them so they actually worked when people got them home. So then she just took off like that. That was back in the early 2000s, you know, and she went crazy after that. So it was good, it was a wild ride, and I lived in San Francisco for 7 years and absolutely loved it, living in the States. Sold the business in 2008, and then the people who bought it weren't engineers, that's all I can say. They were business people. And so they managed it more like a business than a passionate engineer who's really into knives, I guess. So the nice thing is just lately an Australian company has bought the assets from them. They couldn't make— an Australian company's bought the assets and they've brought me back to re-engineer everything and bring it back to its former glory. So the products that we're putting out now are better than the originals.

Excellent.

Better than the originals. So then that knives, that's great. I love getting back and helping out my old brand and seeing it back on its feet. And then cookware, I've always wanted to make cookware and always loved cooking with cast iron. It's kind of a similar thing to the knives. I thought, well, everyone's talking about there's nothing you can do with cast iron, it's just a lump of cast iron. You put a little handle on it and you cook in it, that's all you do. And that got me thinking, as I am wont to do, and when the industry is talking about all you can do is different colors, you know, if you've got enamel, you can— the innovation is, hey, we've got a new color this season. It's not really my definition of innovation, plus I'm colorblind, so it doesn't really work for me anyway. So I started to really look at, well, what can we do to make cast iron pans perform like restaurant pans, you know, and if you walk into any restaurant, you'll see that the pans aren't really the same as the ones that you cook at home with. They're quite different a lot of the time and pretty rough. Carbon steel, you know, is the most common thing.. And so I started to look at what they were using. Of course, I was using it myself, talking to the chefs more about it. Then I figured the beautiful thing about cast iron is you can make it any shape you like. You're not restricted by stamping and punching and rivets and folding and all these things. You can literally make it any shape you like. So that's when I started to really get into the science of the handles, how to stop heat being transferred up the handle so that the handle stays so cool that you can pick it up even when it's on maximum gas on the stove. And we achieved that. It's the first ever cast iron handle to stay cool. And, uh, sounds crazy, but it's just engineering, you know. And then in terms of the body shapes, we've got sauté shapes that act like more like a restaurant sauté pan, you know, than a stay on the stovetop pan. And clean Australian iron like you guys have got clean American iron. I love the American cast iron pans. I think they're great, and you can trust them because the source of the cast iron is good. There's no heavy metals going in there, and that's something that people haven't really studied yet, but it's a concern from maybe suppliers that don't monitor their materials as much as the Americans do, the Australians do, the French do. You know, so there's that. And on the bottom of the pans, we cast the exact casting date. And when we launch a new model, we put it on Kickstarter, and the people who back us on Kickstarter, they get a pan cast with first edition and the actual casting date. So they become collectibles. That's clever. Love that. Yeah, look. So then when they go to retail, when they go to retail, they say just cast and the cast date. So that's pretty cool, that's still collectible. But for the people who order them on Kickstarter, they actually get first edition and the cast date. So they've become a pretty hot item. And it's like our bonus, it's like a way we can thank people for backing us because to pay for the dies, to engineer these in Australia is really a horrendous thing, you know, we've got labor rates that are pretty high, as you can understand. Oh, and we machine the bases, we machine sand the bases, it's kind of semi-manual machining to make them like the antique American pans, the Griswold and stuff that are machine smooth. We found just the right balance between smooth and still with enough coarseness left in it to grip the seasoning. So we've got a smooth pan that also hangs on to the seasoning, and that's the best we found. So yeah, people are appreciating it. And that's the handle. That's what's so different about the handle.

Yeah. I have a question. Mark, especially with the handle. The handle is into the body of the pan, correct?

Yeah.

What's the— this might be a trade secret, I don't know, but what's the technology that prohibits the handle from getting hot?

Ah, yeah, well, it's pretty simple engineering. It's not rocket science, but if you have a look it's quite thick in that direction, so it's strong, right? But then you look in that direction, it becomes thinner. And when you look straight down the wall of the handle, it's really thin, right? But then it turns around like a J-beam, and then there's the big air gap in the middle.

And air is a good insulator.

Yeah, and well, there's a lot of surface area for the volume of metal. So it's like a motorcycle with fins, you know, the old motorcycles had fins to cool them down. It's just the same principle. The more surface area you got, the more radiation and convection, and that takes the heat away. And it really works. I mean, you can crank that up on the stovetop as hot as you like, and you can grip it all the way to there. So you can grip it quite safely. Just don't pull it out of the oven.

Hahaha.

Like anything. I make it very, very hot.

I would tend to do that and forget that I had it in the oven. That's always my problem.

Once you get it back on the stove and then you go to move it and go, "Oh, I had that in the oven." You know, a good idea for that, Chef, I found through painful experience, I just leave a good heat-resistant cloth over the handle the whole time. 'Cause I always forget, you always forget, you grab it, you know. But at least if you do it on ours, you get a nice heart-shaped scar. You know what we call this handle? They're love handles. Love handles.

Ah, nice. Clever.

Yeah, we have our love handles in the US. They're also one of those.

It's another thing, yeah.

And you have a Kickstarter promotion going on right now, right?

Yeah, I think we put a link on our Google+ page and it's all over our website, of course, and things. We're launching two new pans that are really big. They're huge, they're 13-inch and very— a big surface area inside. We call it the Big Skillet and then the Deep Pan, and they fit together as a lid and a base as well. And good value and all the same cool features of this. And they're so big that we couldn't put one single handle on, so we put two handles on, but they're actually quite unique as well because when you lift up the pan with one handle, the other handle touches down on the stovetop very quickly and you use that as like a pivot point.

Mm.

So you're not using—

nice—

there's very little weight in the hand on the handle to scrape and pour out of, so it more than halves the weight of the pan, so you don't have to struggle with two hands and nothing to operate a spoon, or one hand and it's just too heavy, you know.

That's why.

So yeah, engineers, we think too much about simple things, it's painful.

But that's good though.

Very good.

Yeah, that's exciting. I found your page on Kickstarter, so I posted the link in the chat box.

Hey, thank you. Wow, you're a technical whiz.

I'll Google it.

You see all the books behind her? She's a smart creative.

Well, I did get the pan in the mail. I do have the one pan that was sent. I'm going to season it because you did tell me how to season it properly to make sure I get that— because you said it would have like a Teflon almost surface from that kind of nonstick surface from seasoning correctly.

Yeah, it'll be absolutely nonstick if you do it right and just about as good as Teflon. Yeah, close, and I think so close that why would you put synthetic chemicals on a pan If you can get really close with all natural, you know. Yeah. And all you do, see they come pre-seasoned, so it's actually ready to cook on if you want to just go for it old school style, you know. But what we say, the very best way to do it is get some high temp oil like flaxseed oil or rice bran oil or canola oil is the simplest, most accessible high temp oil. You wipe it on so thin that you basically can't see the oil anymore. Whatever you do, don't leave any pools of oil. It's the single biggest mistake that kills seasoning in pans. So wipe it on so thin with, say, a cloth, an old cloth, clean cloth, and basically wipe it all off again all over. Then put it in the pan— in the oven upside down on the very highest setting you can manage for 1 hour and then turn off the oven and let the whole thing cool down, take it out, oil it again the same way, and go through that cycle as much as you can stand until you go crazy.

You know, if you're—

Am I just oiling the inside of the pan or am I oiling the outside as well?

Yeah, why not? You know, if you're doing it all at the same time, all it means is that 'cause it'll turn jet black and it really looks like it's been painted with Teflon at that point after, say, 5 or 6 runs like that. And if you've done it all over, it just means that you've basically got something that's not going to rust and it's going to be like Teflon. And then you still look after it a bit. You might still be a bit more careful with drying it. You don't put it in the dishwasher. You don't scrub it out with soap.

Right.

But it's not, it's not going to rust instantly. It's going to be pretty low maintenance at that point. So it's worth putting in the extra effort for a rainy day at home or a cold and snowy day if you can't go out like you guys up there.

Why not?

You know, it's a perfect pen.

So would you clean it then, like if it really needed a cleaning, maybe some salt, kosher salt or some rough salt to wipe that with?

Yeah, if you really get into trouble, if you've been doing some gummy stuff, some barbecue or something goes wrong like that. Hey, I've just suddenly got an echo. Can you guys hear that?

Yeah.

No, I don't hear it. It could be a Google thing. Sometimes we don't hear them and it shows up. And other times everybody hears them and then they don't show up.

OK, well, if you're happy with it, I'll persist. OK. So yeah, but if it's properly seasoned, very rarely will you need to attack it because things just don't really stick unless you're doing something really gummy. Then at that point, and even if it goes really bad and you've somehow destroyed it or someone's put it in the dishwasher and rusted it, guess what, you don't throw it away. You just scrape it out, scrub it out, and re-season it. So these things last for hundreds of years. You just keep renewing them. So you can't get more sustainable than that, you know. This old— well, it's only been the last few decades, right? You buy a pen for a year or two, suddenly it doesn't work anymore, you throw it out, and God knows what you're throwing in the trash, you know, in terms of the synthetics that are on it. And you— I don't know how many are disposed every year, but yeah, so a little extra maintenance and you've got something that's going to basically last forever, many generations. Very cool.

Well, thank you so much for sharing that with us. Thanks, Dennis. Aaron did put the address because Cheryl had asked about the pan, so the link for it is in there. Let's turn it over to Aaron now. Aaron, why don't you tell us a little bit about what you're doing and what you're passionate about?

Well, I'm working with a group of people actually across the country trying to bring capital to local farmers and local food producers and restaurants that use local food. Part of the What they call our movement is Slow Money, and actually there's a huge Slow Money contingent in the state of Maine. Maybe you've heard about them there. I have, yes. There's also a group in France.

So, um, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense, actually.

Yeah, so the Slow Money movement started about 3 or 4 years ago by a guy named Woody Tausch, and he was more like on the angel investing side and venture capital end of things. And he came to this realization that that system just isn't really working for farmers. Oftentimes farmers and small business can't access capital in the same way that traditional businesses do. One, because they might be in startup and they don't have a history, a lot of banks don't want to give them loans. And also farmers have a hard time accessing traditional capital sometimes. Plus they might also need to get capital maybe at a lower interest rate. So the whole Slow Money movement is around bringing capital to these businesses that are producing local foods in a way that makes sense for them and also for people that want to be involved in local investing. So the cool thing that just happened here in the state of Oregon is that we just published yesterday, actually, a new crowdfunding law for Oregon residents to invest in small business and do it legally. Because up until this point, most of the capital that I've helped bring to small business and farmers has been through what they call peer-to-peer loans, which is more like friends and family kind of loans. So I have a group, I would find farm businesses and local food producers and small food businesses in town that needed capital And then I would find investors that were willing to lend them money through a peer-to-peer lending kind of format. Um, and I've only been doing this for about a year, but I created about $100,000 in loans for small business and farmers in my area. But with this new law, which is really exciting, um, you can actually buy securities in local small business in Oregon if you're an Oregon resident. So this will allow small business in Oregon to raise up to $250,000 in one raise, and each individual investor is limited to an investment of $2,500. So the goal is to, you know, create some capital for these businesses. 97% of Oregon businesses have less than 50 employees, and so The majority of business in Oregon will benefit from this. Um, we're going to have the first launching of the ability for basically what I call the 99% to buy local investments. Most oftentimes investments like these are only available to what they call accredited investors, and those are people that actually have assets worth a million dollars or more. And they have an annual yearly income of $200,000. So that cuts out— that cuts out like 95% of the population investing in local business. So that's what's really exciting. And in Oregon, just in Oregon alone, 1% of people's savings amounts to almost $1 billion. So if we could move just 1% of assets in savings in Oregon into small business, It would be a huge thing. And so that's what I'm working on right now, and I'm really excited about it.

Well, that's pretty cool. And you just— you were involved in some of the legislature in Oregon as well, weren't you?

Well, yes. So what happened is here in Oregon, there's other— there's 13 states in the, in the country that have crowdfunding laws. In Oregon, ours didn't go through the legislature. What they did was the securities regulators wrote an exemption to an existing law, so it didn't have to go through this long legislative process and actually happened in like 3 months instead of like 2 years, right? If you try to put it through the legislature, it takes a lot longer. And we were fortunate here that the person— actually, there's a woman in Portland, Oregon who really started the whole thing. She was the one who talked to the Oregon regulators and got them thinking about it, and they said, "Hey, we can just do this. We'll just write an exemption to an existing law," and that's what they did. So It only took like 3 months to make it happen.

Wow, that is clever.

Yeah, it's really exciting, and we're having huge parties starting next week since the law was just published yesterday. We have a week of what they call a silent period. This is common, like, for, like, if you're doing an initial public offering or something, there's a period of time when you register your documents with the regulatory agency that you have to, like, not be able to talk about who's who's doing the offering. So we're in our silent period right now, but in about a week I'll be able to announce that there's 12 businesses across the state doing their first offerings under this new law. And 2 of them are right here in Oregon where I live, and I've been helping them bring their offering to the market. One of them is a local brewer, and it's a really cool business. And the other one is another local restaurant. I can't be I don't want to get too specific about it because then you'll know exactly who they are. And we're in the silent period for another week, so once that opens up, you'll hear a lot more about it.

Erin, I have a question. What is your background? Do you have a background in finance?

No, I'm a forester by trade.

Wow.

I used to fight forest fires and work in the woods. My husband is actually in finance and he is a financial planner and he's been in the business for over 20 years. And about 5 years ago he left the firm that he was with and went independent and I actually started working in his office. Although I'm, I'm not licensed in any way, so I can't give investment advice or talk about it in that way. I have a little bit of help from that. You know, just working in his office, I've learned a lot. And then a lot of this is self-education. And also my involvement with Slow Money, I've had a lot of training sessions with them. We've talked about all these ways to finance business and make these things happen. So it's just been an evolution of, you know, the last 5 years of kind of self-taught, self-interest, and learning and reading about things.

Very impressive.

I have a question, I have a question, Erin. Is this open to all small businesses within the state? Now let's say, I know there are certain states in the US where marijuana is legal and you know, they have growers. Would, let's say, for some reason it becomes legal, growing marijuana becomes legal in Oregon. It did.

Oh, it did?

Okay. All right, great.

Actually, the last election they legalized marijuana here.

Okay. Would any one of those small growers be eligible for getting money in this program?

I don't know if that would qual— see, the issue with legalization of marijuana in the state is it's still not legal federally, right? So these guys can't use traditional banking operations or anything. I'm not really sure if they would be able to use this. I do know that under this exemption, you're under the— when you're under the offering period, that 80% of your business has to be within the state to qualify to use this exemption. And of course, if you're growing marijuana and it's only legal in Oregon, you're only going to be selling here, right? So that would meet that condition. But honestly, in regards to that, I don't know, just because of the federal issues around legalization.

Well, it would certainly make Small Business Saturday a lot happier.

Yeah!

And my advice to them seeking bank loans would be to have the bank manager try the product before reviewing the loan.

Sign here. You just hand him the documents.

Now we did have a question from Kristin Mattis, Erin, and it was— she says, "Awesome idea." How could she pass the word along to the CSA farmers who feed her? Would they fall under something like that?

Yes, definitely, they would. They could do an offering. I mean, she should get a hold of me and I can connect her to the— you know, how this would happen. There's regulatory documents that have to be filed and things that have to happen before they can do their offering, but Yeah, have her contact me and I can help her.

Very good. All right.

Wow, what a great initiative.

Yeah.

Sorry, a question then. What about— it seems to me it's happening in a lot of countries. It seems to me that a lot of people— there's the backlash against the processed food, there's a backlash against the big corporates telling us what's good for us and all these things. Isn't that a great future for you guys and these sorts of programs and the small producers like the cheese, the dairies, any producer of food and really good food, unprocessed food largely? Isn't this all going to be a great confluence in the next 5, 10, 20 years? Do you think?

Yeah, I definitely think so. I mean, with the slow food movement, which is, you know, started in Italy, and there's also probably a bunch of whole slow food in France.

Love it.

The goal of Slow Money is to connect that whole thing together, right? To continue to increase local food production and the use of local food in our areas. So oftentimes the limiting factor is that a lot of these small businesses can't get the capital they need to scale up their business or take it to the next level. So that's what this is all about. Although the Oregon law is for any small business, the whole Slow Money contingent, which is what I'm part of, is really focused on local food production. So I'm excited about the possibilities, definitely.

Wow, it sounds—

That's alright, Mark, go ahead.

Oh no, sorry, Chef, I was just going to say it sounds like the right time in history to bring all this together because, you know, we fight for this ourselves in our own little way. If anyone reads our vision statement on our website, we're not going to be preaching about sustainability. What we're going to be doing is just asking people to think about the products they buy, and whether it's food or kitchen products or any product you buy, if you just think a little So you add 10% of knowledge to your buying decisions and you end up buying 10% of stuff that's better for you and more sustainable for the future. Yeah, my simple example is a cast iron pan that you hand down for generations instead of throwing out a coated pan in 2 years. It's one simple thing, but there's plenty of examples like that. If everyone thinks 10% better, imagine the impact that's going to have on the future, and I think it's Yeah, it's up to us to take responsibility for our buying decisions because people are going to keep stocking those supermarket shelves with whatever we're buying, you know. So it's our responsibility.

Very good point.

Yeah.

Yeah, Erin, I was going to ask, is this something that has gone on in any other states, this kind of initiative for the small business loan type things? Because this seems really novel.

Yeah, there's 12 or 13 other states that have new crowdfunding laws. And they're all, you know, they're all different variations of what we're doing. And Oregon has one of the smallest limits for the amount that you can raise. So our limit is $250,000, but like I know in, I think it's Georgia, they'll let you raise up to $1 million. You know, there's a lot of kind of nervousness around the part of the regulators because they're trying to protect investors from being taken advantage of, right? So that's why most of the time these sorts of things are only open to accredited investors, because they just make this assumption that if you're an accredited investor, you have a lot of money, that you're a sophisticated investor. But I found that that's not necessarily true, just from talking to people about this issue. They make the assumption that if you're an accredited investor and you can afford to lose this kind of money because The reality is investing in small business is very risky. You know, Mark probably knows this. Anybody that's run their own business knows that there's a lot of risk and a lot of potential to not be successful. And so people that are investing in these kinds of securities have to actually be really, you know, aware that they, they could really be losing all the money that they're investing in this. So, you know, the offshoot is that the regulators think, okay, if you're an accredited investor, you can afford to lose this money, but if you're not, if you're part of the 1%, they're really trying to protect them by limiting the amount of money that they could potentially lose. And I guess the other sort of trick to this is that if you're buying a local security like this, these are what they call non-registered securities, so there's, there's no open market to resell your your stock, right? So say I buy an offering in this securities offering, I buy a stock, an equity in a company. There's no open market for me to turn around and sell my share. So in— versus if you bought, you know, a mutual fund or an equity in the stock market, you could turn around tomorrow and sell it, right? Because there's a way to do that. When you're buying these local securities like this that are not registered, there's no place for you to turn around and sell it. So you have to really be sure that you want to hold on to this. Under this law, you have 9 months you have to hold on to it. After 9 months, you could turn around and sell it, but there's no— I mean, who are you going to sell it to other than selling it back to the company, right? Or potentially turning around to one of your friends and saying, hey, would you like to buy my stock in this company? So that's also something else that people have been a little bit nervous about because there's no what they call real exit strategy for the investor here. Most of these companies that are doing these offerings would most likely want the first right of refusal. They want to buy that stock back from you because I would say that the majority of small business doesn't necessarily want to have other people as owners of their business. But so that there's sort of— there's two things to think about with this. One is they want to control their own business, right? That's why they're in business for themselves. But two, when you bring in a partner like that, then it could, it could complicate the way you run your business a little bit. But the positive side of it is that you have advocates that are supporting you and also talking about your business and promoting it because they're, they're part owners of it, right? So there's two, you know, two Pros and cons around all of this, and that, that's why Oregon has been very kind of cautious about how much you can raise and the limiting of individual investment by $2,500 per investor.

I like the deal where they have to be from the state. I mean, that makes it even better to me because you're encouraging locals to stay together. Although sometimes I think Oregon is going to secede from the Union, they do so many things a little more interesting.

No, it's a great thing. I'm really excited about it, and we're going to be having a big party next week when we can talk about who the companies are.

Very cool. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. And now we're going to hand it over to Candice, and we're going to talk cheese.

Oh, my favorite subject.

Cheese and bacon.

Yeah, I'm so lucky to represent the 1,200 farm families who own Cabot Creamery. It's a cooperative Dairy cooperative that was started in 1919 in Cabot, Vermont, and they've been going strong ever since. We have dairy farm families in all the states of New England and New York State as well, and we are absolutely the makers of the world's best cheddar. How many of you have— any of you tried it? I know Chef has.

I believe I have.

Yeah, well, one of the things— have you tried it? Larry, probably.

I lived in San Francisco, and my wife's crazy about cheese, and we ate a lot of American cheese when we lived there.

No, we don't get Cabot here in Trinidad.

Well, you'll have to come visit us, take a farm tour, tour the factory. It's a great way to see how the cheese is made.

I will be coming to the States very shortly, and I will— we'll keep in touch.

Come in the summertime, it's beautiful.

Not in the 11-degree weather.

One of the things we are very excited about is our new cookbook. In the entire time that CABOT has been in existence, we haven't really had a printed cookbook, and we are in the second week of February about to launch our first one. 150 wonderful recipes, but also the book contains really lovely stories about our farm families, and so it gives you a glimpse into the life of some of the Cabot farmers. I can't wait to come back on and show it to you, if I may, Chef.

Absolutely. Now, are the recipes from some of the farmers?

They are, absolutely. They are The majority of the recipes are from our farm families. We also have some of our Cabot Cheese Board bloggers who contributed. And there, it's food that is wholesome and easy to prepare, family-friendly, everything from appetizers to desserts. Some beautiful, beautiful farm photography. Contained in the book as well. So it's, it's going to be— I think it's going to be a real hit. People have asked us for years to do a cookbook, and we finally have one to present.

That is awesome.

Yeah, it is. We have, of course, our staple items people know us for, things like grilled cheese sandwiches and macaroni and cheese. So we have wonderful variations of those classic American dishes, as well as other— the baked goods, for instance, we use a lot of Greek yogurt in baked goods. We have great smoothie recipes. I don't know if any of you are fans of smoothies, but we have some wonderful— we have one called a Maple Moo Smoothie, which has great Vermont ingredients like Vermont maple syrup. Pears, Greek yogurt, it's a winner. You can also go on our website and find a lot of thousands of recipes on cabotcheese.coop. You can go right there and check out our recipe section. We are on Facebook. We have great photographs on Facebook and Instagram. We archive wonderful recipes on Pinterest. We're @cabotcheese on all those platforms. So you can see us there. I can see Aaron busily putting things together.

I went to a— it was a restaurant thing here on the lake, Lake Nona in Orlando, and they actually had a Cabot cheese display. I was so excited, I went up to them and said hi, and they had this cutout of a cow that you could stick your head in.

We have a bunch of those, and they're lots of fun to I took a picture.

I didn't post it, but I took a picture.

Oh, you've got to post that thing. Post that.

That was funny, but it was exciting. Then when you guys added me to your cheese board thing, I'm so— I don't get a package that I'm more excited about than the Cabot one because I know I'm getting all kinds of cheese.

Those are pretty thrilling because we get to showcase some of our flavored cheeses. We have horseradish, which is my very fave, and we have a wonderful new Farmer's Legacy collection that are European-inspired cheeses, 3 new cheeses. And I know that they have them readily available in the Orlando market, Chef, so you can try those out there. They're pretty swell.

I have been getting them regularly. Publix carries all those, and I did make with your You sent me the horseradish cheese. I made a potatoes au gratin with it that were really good.

Yummy.

I make a wonderful lobster mac and cheese with the Legacy Collection Alpine that is to die for.

There you go. Kirsten just— I have to put this up. Kirsten says, "I've stuck my hand in a cow, never my head." We won't even go there. I'll let that one rest. One thing was, one of the toughest things I've had trouble finding in Florida, Candice, was Greek yogurt that wasn't 0%. I love Greek yogurt, and I like to bake with it, and I like to use it for other things, but all they had were— it seems like the state of Florida is telling you you can't have any Greek yogurt with fat in it. I'm like, I want at least 2%, please.

There is a fear of fat that is, I think, more and more becoming known as being unfounded. But we make a 10%— our plain Greek yogurt, 10%, is the most divine thing you can—

Oh, God.

Drizzle a little bit on it.

The more the better.

What's left if you've only got zero— if there's 0%, what are you doing? I know the science behind it, but what are you doing? Wouldn't you rather have fat than the things that they need to do to get rid of the fat?

Yeah, a friend of mine told me—

Just a straight French attitude. But just then have a little bit of it instead of a whole tub of the bloody thing, you know.

Yes, exactly.

And enjoy it.

Not to mention it's loaded with protein, so when you use it when you're baking or if you use it as a substitute for sour cream, You're adding protein, which will satisfy your hunger longer. You can go longer between— you don't have to snack because you stay satiated. It's a wonderful way to go, this— the nonfat— the fat products and not the nonfat products.

Well, Cabot's was one of the ones I found that they did sell, so I was happy when I saw that. I had never up to that point used Cabot's Greek yogurt, so I was excited to have found it.

That's great. The vanilla bean, which is our other flavor, we use real vanilla in it. It's all these— you were talking earlier about wholesome products that are real and authentic, and we have those. They're so good.

Not essence of vanilla. It's real vanilla.

Vanilla flavoring.

Reconstructed. Yeah, you sold me, Candice. I— when I get up there, I'm gonna definitely try some Cabot.

Wonderful. I would love to walk you through that.

Christopher Goldman just posted— where did I lose it here— he was talking about his fiancée Maggie Unzueta is a big cheese fan. She has so much fun as a food and wine blogger working with brands. Wonder if she's ever worked with Cabot Creamery. Maggie's a blast.

I don't recognize her name, but I will look her up now. I'd love to know her.

She's great. She's on my show like every few weeks. She's on as a regular.

Well, then I will track her down.

You'll hunt her down.

Here's Dave Pipe saying that a big smile about Candace Carew's comment about Cheddar used to live a 15-minute bicycle ride I'm from the Cheddar Village in Somerset.

Oh.

Dave's across the pond.

Yes, he is. Yes, well, Cabot was the first American cheddar to be imported to England, so we must be doing something right.

Yeah, because the English are very particular with their cheddar, because American cheese, they don't class that as cheese at all.

Well, some of it is cheese-ish. Nobody does.

Yeah, you know, one of my favorite cabbage cheeses is the aged, the cave-aged one.

It's called Cabbage Clothbound, and it's aged in the cellars at Jasper Hill. We have a wonderful relationship with the people at Jasper Hill, and that is award-winning and blow-your-mind delicious. It is so good.

It's at the higher end of the price range, but Yeah, I can almost never find that. I'm telling you, that's— I buy the 3-year a lot of times. I can get that at Sam's or Costco, the 3-year aged, and that's my second favorite.

Yeah, you should try the White Oak Cheddar, Chef, in the Legacy Collection. That's very similar in how it's made to the Cabot clothbound. It simply isn't cave-aged, it's aged naturally.

But those are little— I think those are 6-ounce blocks.

Yes, exactly right.

That's almost bite-sized for me. I'm looking for the 2-pound blocks. They are good. The White Oak and the other cheddar that you make too—

The Farmhouse Reserve.

Farmhouse Reserve is excellent.

Those are 3, and because We love them because they are European-inspired. They do hearken back to another time and another taste, so they're definitely worth trying.

Cabot needs to start making their own Stilton.

If anyone out there wants to find out a store near them where they can buy Cabot products, we have a store finder on the website. So you can just go to the website and click on the store finder, and it will tell you the closest place to you that sells Cabot cheese.

Nice. I'm not even going to try.

I know there's not one in my town. If you try that in France, you may get a knock on your door from the French police. They're telling you to buy American cheese.

Mais non.

Jamais.

Yeah, definitely, definitely. Well, now let's drop back. We haven't talked to Larry too much. You've been making some nice comments, but Larry, what you got going on?

Well, Chef, as you know, I took a little downtime just to regroup and listen and just stop and plan what I want to do for 2015. And I think I'm on the right track now. So later this year I'll be coming back to Colorado and I will be bringing my Caribbean cuisine and culture to the state in the form of Trinidad Carnival. So we call it Carnival in Colorado.

Oh, fun!

So that's later this year.

Where in Colorado?

It will be in the Denver area. Right now we're looking at facilities to house the event. And it's going to be a one-day event. We're going to have music, Caribbean music, Caribbean food, you know, the dances, the whole ball of wax. It's like a microcosm of Trinidad Carnival in a in a small area.

Sounds like fun.

Yeah, and you know, I've gone back to my basics, which is, you know, producing Caribbean food, authentic food, and using, you know, fresh ingredients and, you know, preaching that. So kind of like I said, I took time off, I was on a little hiatus, but it was basically to to recharge and to see where I want to go because Chef, as you know, we have a responsibility to our followers and I wanted to do something that was authentic and that was me, you know, my voice and that's my voice because, you know, I just didn't want to just do another series of HOAs and— because you run into a brick wall. After a period of time. And that's what happened to me when I was doing all those HOAs.

It starts to wear you down a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly. So I think I've got a renewed vigor and I have a purpose now and basically showcasing my culture and food to the rest of the world. And like my Tagline says, I'm living true to my tagline, flavoring the world one pot at a time.

Now if you go up to Oregon, you can flavor the world with some different pots.

That's right.

Although you can in Colorado too. You got that Rocky Mountain High going on.

Jeff, you're funny.

The problem now is, you know, if I went back to my youth and rolled one and smoked a fatty, I'd go to sleep. I'd go right to sleep. It's terrible getting old.

Probably like drinking wine these days, you know, a couple of glasses, you just don't want to face the consequences the next day.

I almost never drink anymore because of that. Every now and then I'll pull a bottle of limoncello out or Prosecco or something, but it's usually when I know I'm going to be able to go to sleep in a little while. It's inevitable.

Hey, Chef, I have to say something though. On one of your shows, well, most of your cooking shows, you always mention that you have a bottle of limoncello in the fridge. And, you know, here in Trinidad, we don't have that readily available. So when I was in Colorado last year, I did went on my way and do some limoncello. Got some limoncello. I am in love with that thing, Chef. So I can relate.

Danger. Danger.

I can tell you too, Nazim's wife just posted a video for limoncello crema.

Oh!

And limoncello crema is even better when it's— oh my God. It's amazing. I'm going to have to try and make some of that because that is really our favorite. That's all I drink, that and I keep tequila. I enjoy that. Those are the only things. I have all kinds of alcohol in the house if friends come over, but I really don't. Those days are behind me.

I have to blame you, Chef. I have to blame you for getting me hooked on limoncello.

Limoncello, it's a good one. Although in Italy, I had some that were made— they range from being made from really nice and sweet and mild to almost being made from Everclear, they tasted like. Some of them were so strong and so potent, it was like, whoa!

I guess I'll have to do a limoncello tasting because I'm going to Italy in May.

Where in Italy are you going?

I'm going to Rome first and then to the Tuscany area after that, and then to Paris after that.

You will love it. I know when I was in— I went to the Amalfi Coast, and I went to Sorrento. When we're coming back to Rome, they're so funny. The guy there at the airport says, "Which one of your bags should I check?" to my wife and I. "Oh, you can check mine." He's starting to rummage through it. They're not too thrilled about rummaging through dirty clothes, but he goes, "You didn't bring back any limoncello?

What's wrong with you?" Yeah, Limoncello is like Italy in a bottle. Every time I take a sip, it reminds me of being there.

Those Sorrento lemons, they are huge. I've never seen or smelled anything so lemony in my life. It just freaked me out. The difference then when we get here is a lemon, "Oh, that's not a lemon anymore. This is a lemon." You know, limoncello made from authentic— those lemons from the area is just wonderful. It's a beautiful—

I'm looking forward to that. Cool.

You make some for us, Aaron.

Gotta love it. Well, we're coming close to the show, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to stop by and say— and give everyone a chance to shout out and anything, any calls to action they have or anything they'd like to share with us right now. So Mark, do you have anything anything you'd like to leave us with, where people can find you, anything you'd like from them or something they can do for you?

Yeah, well, thanks, Chef. I think two key points. One is we're already in the USA. We're getting good distribution. We're getting a lot of attention from some great chefs in the USA, some influential people, and our stuff can be found at Chef's Arsenal. It can all be found on our website as well, of course. They're doing a great job of making it accessible in the USA. And then to fund the— using Kickstarter to fund the two new models, that's on Kickstarter until February 17th, so that's your only chance to get the first edition cast of the pans. So that's highly recommended., they'll be around for, you know, in 1,000 years I'll be looking back at those pans at the 2015 date and saying, wow, there's some history in those pans. I heard they used to have Teflon 1,000 years ago.

You know, those things, you're right though, you know, they're made to be thrown away because once you get them marked up they go in the trash, you go and buy a new one, and that's not the way to live. It's really cool.

Not for me, and I think there's enough people agree with us that we'll make this thing work. So yeah, support us on Kickstarter, keep the dream alive.

Absolutely, I'm going over to buy one as soon as we leave here.

Yep, me too.

Alright guys, much appreciated.

Any calls to action or anything you'd like to talk about before we go?

I'd just like to say visit us at cabotcheese.coop. And on all our social media platforms. We're having a blast there, so come on by.

Very great. Thank you for being on today, and I look forward to my next shipment of cheese.

Lots of fun.

Thanks for having me.

Erin, anything you'd like to share with us before we go? Any calls to action?

Well, my call to action is if there's Oregon residents on the Hangout today to contact me. I posted my email in there. If if they want to learn more about this. But also, in addition to that, even across the whole country, you can look up the Slow Money movement at slowmoney.org and find your local Slow Money group or somebody in your area that's helping, you know, bring capital to local farm and food product businesses.

Excellent. And Larry, anything you'd like to leave us with before we leave?

Folks, just keep watching this space for more authentic Caribbean cuisine and culture.

Yes, one pot at a time.

One pot, flavor the world one pot at a time.

Alright everyone, thanks so much for being here today. It was a wonderful day on Google+. I had a great time with all my friends and I hope you did too. So we will see you real soon, and if you're around tomorrow morning, look for On the Road with Chef Dennis Littley. I will be at Port Canaveral for the Florida Key Lime Pie Festival.

Oh, lucky you!

Lovely, lovely, lovely!

So I'll see you all on another day and have a good weekend.

Bye-bye!

Bye!

Bye! Bye!