A Roller Coaster Year!
December 31, 2022
It is that time of the year again, winter is settling in and the smells & sounds of the holiday season fills the air. My boys come home to spend time with us, and I start to chill, kick off my shoes and collect my thoughts for this year’s blog. The phrase that jumps to my mind as I think about the year is “what a roller coaster”!!
The year started off so well, normalcy was returning, everything was opening including travel and did we travel. So many friends and family to meet, events to experience - baby showers, tailgating at college football, concerts, restaurants, and new places to name a few. Our journeys took us across the country to New Jersey, Michigan, Indiana, Nevada, New York, and even beyond the country to Morocco. We enjoyed Morocco’s beautiful landscape and delicious cuisine, full of spices and herbs. Tagine, a slow cooked savory stew, is a must try dish.
Unfortunately, as they say for every “Ying” there is a “Yang”, and this year had a quite a few to choose from. The war in Eastern Europe and unprecedented inflation, just to name a few. Inflation for sure was the grinch for me as everything from gas to raw materials to packaging went through the roof. I had promised myself when I started Nal’s Kitchen to give my customers the best quality and that was a fundamental principal I was not going to compromise. This has taken an enormous amount of effort and a lot of support from my vendor community to keep my cost increases manageable. A little bit of help from all our loyal customers and of course a hit to our margins has let us navigate through this year. In between all of this we managed to start a newsletter for our loyal members with exciting new recipes and fun facts on health benefits of our ingredients. Membership is free and of course we respect your privacy and will never share your email with anyone. So do visit our website to sign-up and give us your feedback and suggestions on what you would like to see in these newsletters. With all this no wonder it felt like a roller coaster and through it all we even managed to grow our business in 2022. This could not have happened without the support of all our loyal customers, retail partners and vendors. Thank You Everyone!!
As we look to enter 2023, which will be our 5th year anniversary, we are starting to think about the next phase of our journey. They say dream big if you want to succeed and so we decided to move from a shared kitchen space to leasing our own kitchen. A big step for us and a scary one as you consider the current economy, however we believe in our products. There are lot of aspects to work through and we look forward to sharing our experiences in our next newsletter or blog. You, our customers, have told us that our dressings & spreads make it easy to cook great, tasty, and healthy food for yourself & your families right in the comfort of your home & this is the source that gives us the confidence to take this BIG step. Speaking of healthy meals got to run and make a quick lunch for my family. Today will be whipping up a nice plate of hummus flavored with our honey ginger dressing and topped with some bison meat sautéed in our spread. Should be done in 30 minutes… Yummy! Look for the recipe in our next newsletter.
We hope you had a wonderful holiday season, and we wish you the very best for 2023. Fill it with plenty of FUN, LAUGTHER, LOVE, & GOOD HEALTH.
Nalini