Happy Spring! On the last day of March I was interviewed by BBC Radio about the global spice industry. Yes. BBC Radio. Live. Me. I was quoted in a BBC article earlier in the week entitled “Spice sales boom as home cooks get more adventurous” and they were doing some quick coverage on the radio. I was already excited to see our farm featured on BBC and really didn’t expect anything else beyond the article!
It was my first live interview and I had less than 2 hours to prep for it. Needless to say, I was pretty freaked out! Though, my nerves started to relax when they intro’d the segment with the song Wannabe by Spice Girls. This warmed my dear millennial heart.
The interview was quick and it was a cool opportunity to be able to share a bit about our farm to a totally new audience. But the crux of the interview that made me legitimately laugh out loud was when the interviewer said “There’s a kinda old cliche that U.S. food, when you go out and you eat it, it tends to be, well I hardly dare use the word, a little bit bland!”
If you are already using our farm-to-jar chiles on a regular basis, then the food you are eating is anything but bland! You know that if something needs a bit more oompf in flavor, our chiles are the perfect solution. Food in America is also anything but monolithic. The food we eat here is diverse and full of so many different flavors. Whether it’s a bit of Calabrian chile flakes, or a big spoonful of Smoky Piment d’Ville or Comapeño chile powder, your food is already light-years ahead of what the BBC thinks we’re eating.
My response to the interviewer from BBC was that, “I definitely think my friends use a lot more chile powder than before they met me. I spend a lot of time with people who love food and are definitely interested in making it more flavorful.” Thanks for being one of those people.
We're so happy to be part of making the food you eat flavor forward and full of different chiles. Cheers to eating NOT BLAND food together!
Krissy & the Boonville Barn team
P.S. If you want to listen to the full interview, visit this link and head to 41:46 in the episode.
Spotlight on: Lumineux Chocolate
I get excited whenever other companies reach out and want to use our chiles in their products. Lumineux Chocolate in South Carolina started using Piment d’Ville in this chocolate bar last year.
Their chocolate making mission is to bring African cocoa beans to chocolate lovers in the U.S. and show off flavors folks haven’t had before. The chocolate itself is incredibly fruity and the heat of the Piment d’Ville is definitely present.
With some sweet treats, the sugar can overpower the flavor of Piment d’Ville but that is not the case here. It’s a deliciously spicy chocolate bar made with cocoa beans from Uganda and Nicaragua.
Right Now On The Farm
The ground is finally starting to dry out from the incredibly rainy winter we experienced. Nacho and Alejandro have moved out of the greenhouse on non-rainy days and have added one and a half acres of growing space to the farm this year. This means more space for beans and chiles! A new water system was installed for this new field along with fencing and the promise of a fruitful harvest.
Gideon has been learning all about what it means to import equipment as we have a legit bean thresher on the way from Turkey! Hopefully it means no more bike threshing - our thighs rejoice!
I’ve been deep in the world of redesigning our website and can’t wait to share it with you next month. Maybe by the time I write next month I’ll even have eaten a perfectly ripe strawberry out of our field. The cold, wet winter has everything here in the valley at least 3 weeks behind and we need some serious sunshine for the berries to start popping. One can hope…
What We're Cooking
