meagins fresh stuff

Well, i have been pretty busy, starting my new "business":

Meagin's Fresh Granola

(a Meagin's Fresh Stuff production)

Months of endless, creative experimenting with granola ingredients has turned into a little business opportunity. I am hoping that i will be mildly successful, selling homemade granola to family and friends, students and professors at school, coworkers, etc. I sold my first pint of granola last week while i was at my favorite cafe - one of the other customers overheard me talking about my homemade granola, and ordered a jar! I think that the big selling point is all the fun ingredients i use (cranberries, walnuts, dried cherries, dried apricots, maple syrup, almonds, pecans, macadamia nuts, honey, dried plums, dried peaches, hazelnuts, brown sugar, banana chips, orange-flavored cranberries, vanilla extract, coconut . . . etc).

So anyway, the past month or so has been a frenzy of buying and trying new ingredients, stocking up on quart and pint jars, typing up menu proto-types, coming up with fun names for granola recipes, ...and washing lots of granola-cemented cookie sheets, sweeping up the oats on my kitchen floor twice a day, getting really creative with my counter space, etc.

I got a new email address for Fresh Granola orders - meaginsfreshstuff@hotmail.com. I created an excel spreadsheet with the cost of every ingredient i've used, so i can calculate how much each batch i make costs out of pocket. I'm in conversation with two dear friends who run a graphic design/web design company (www.triplefrog.com) about designing a cool, fresh-looking granola menu, business cards, even a website where i can sell other Fresh Stuff (like cool magnets, giant floor pillows, beverage coasters, etc) and maybe even post my old poetry and essays.

Anyway, this is the most "creative" thing i've ever done! I have always been frustrated by the fact that i definitely have a desire to be artistic, but i have zero artistic skills (can't draw, sketch, paint, sculpt, etc). Well, this whole Meagin's Fresh Stuff is giving my lots of opportunities to be creative. I even started playing around with GIMP (graphics and image manipulation - an open-source version of adobe photoshop). I created this little thing last night:

not too shabby, considering it was my first time ever using a computer graphics program, right?

So, anyway,if you need any homemade granola . . . you know where to go.