As you can imagine, making dinner every day for the past 24 years has been challenging.  So this week I decided to throw in a new recipe, and instead of trying to jam another meatloaf down the family’s throat, I made a tourtiere.  It’s a fancy word for a meat pie, in case you don’t know.

This handily disguised meatloaf was immediately wolfed down with cries of joy.  So I’ve decided that putting all the same old stuff into various crusts will probably get me through the fall.  My next venture is going to be chicken in some sort of a cream sauce in puff pastry.  That will hopefully engender the same enthusiasm.

I sent out my second newsletter, and I received an amazing amount of positive feedback.  I’m now starting to suspect that the fruitcake business is a front and that my real passion is my blog and the newsletter.  Won’t Denis be surprised when he hears we installed a commercial kitchen in order for me to write.

On Thursday I attended one of those ghastly networking events put on by the Chamber.  It’s not their fault, don’t get me wrong, but I have to say I’d rather have a colonoscopy than attend one.

Picture this: You walk in and like a shark begin to circle the crowd.  Not just you, but everyone else is looking at name tags, trying to ascertain whether or not to approach this or that person.  A print shop.  Meh!  They’re too small to order fruitcake.  A person from Interior Health Authority, well, hey, there’s a juicy morsel.

Once you’ve zeroed in on your prey, you forcefully eject yourself into their conversation and introduce yourself.  You then speak with insane enthusiasm about your product.  If the person’s eyes glaze over, you slowly back away.  If they make the mistake of looking interested, you press your card into their hand.

After two hours of this I was so relieved to be getting into my car and drive home.  However, if I managed to make one or two good contacts, then it’s worth it.  One must keep a positive attitude.

The other unpleasant aspect of marketing is calling all of my stores to see who is going to be re-ordering.  Unfortunately, when my product is far away, and no-one in the store is offering samples, it doesn’t do well.

If people don’t know that it’s actually edible because they’ve only ever had bad fruitcake, then they’ll never in a million years purchase it.  However, if they could try it, they’d be converted.  If only I could be in dozens of stores at once!

When Mike Roberts of CHBC-TV left the other day he said, “I like your spirit.”  And I guess that’s the secret to any marketing, which is to believe in yourself and your product.  Look how well I did with the family and the meat pie.