What a fantastic surprise the manager of Peppers Foods in Victoria and I received on Sunday.  Eric Akis, food writer and cookbook author, wrote a column for the Victoria Times Colonist in which he listed locally produced delicacies for Christmas and where one could find them.  He ended the column with the heading Fabulous Fruitcake, and extolled mine by saying, “It’s not often you can use ‘fruitcake’ and ‘fabulous’ in the same sentence, but I do when describing the cakes produced by the Kelowna company Nuttier than a Fruitcake.”

This of course brought a flood of people to Peppers, and so I hurriedly shipped six cases to the store.  As well, I was very fortunate that Phil Johnson, the host of Kelowna’s AM 1150 morning show called me again.  He did a brief interview, and then on Monday he’s going to do a give-away of a couple of my fruitcakes, so that will also drive people to the stores.

This has all been very good, but it’s been a tough week standing in the various Quality Greens stores.  Due to the blizzard on Thursday I had to cancel my gig in Penticton, but as my route would have taken me through Westbank, which received 46 centimetres of snow, I felt that risking my life for fruitcake wasn’t worth it.

I was frozen solid upon leaving the Westbank Quality Greens demo, and learned that more layers are good.  So yesterday in Vernon I was dressed a bit more warmly, yet still froze!  With the doors opening and closing every few minutes, it’s hard to keep warm.  The staff told me they wear several layers, plus hats and boots and are barely able to survive.

While in Vernon I was interviewed by the business editor of the Vernon Morningstar newspaper.  She also took a photo, but this unfortunately won’t appear in the paper until next Sunday.  However, some people eat fruitcake between Christmas and New Year’s, so it will still help with sales.

My friend and baking assistant, Marilyn, happened to be listening to a new FM station in town, and the host, a 20-something, said some disparaging things about fruitcake.  She promptly phoned in and set him straight, and then phoned me.  So the next day I took him a fruitcake and told him to try it.  I said if he thought it was really terrible he could continue to disparage fruitcake.

I had the station on, so had the great pleasure of hearing him say, “Okay, here I go.  Mmmmph (chomping sounds).  Mmmm.  Hey, this is actually good!”  Even after a break he returned to the topic of how Nuttier than a Fruitcake makes a really good product.  I was really happy about that, as another convert puts me that much closer to fruitcake heaven, doesn’t it?