Engaging stories of love, joy, comfort and friendship with proven scrumptious, healthy recipes, we celebrate LOVE as the secret ingredient for wonderful food!

Subscription Box, Spring 2015 Revealed

May 14, 2015 by Mary 6 Comments

MARY’s secret ingredients subscription box, spring 2015, revealed!!

We had so much fun!! It is so interesting to research and find new companies and products, do the testing :), and then pick the best for you! This box has products from Italy and Scotland, spice mixes influenced by the foods of South America, a delicious new form of low calorie pasta that’s really made of vegetables but you’d never know it, an amazing kitchen tool, the BEST cheese straws and the most flavorful and wonderful tasting pho. If you ordered a box, you won’t be disappointed. And I’ve got some knockout recipes coming up, using all of these products as ingredients, giving all the ready-to-eat items a whole new usage.

In doing this, we hope to inspire you with new recipes to take the doldrums out of the daily question, “What’s for dinner?” Please email us any recipes you create using these products as we are planning on developing a community cookbook with the whole collection at the end of the year. Won’t that make a great holiday gift?

And by buying a box, you’ve just helped in our efforts and partnership with Feed The Children to eradicate worldwide childhood hunger. Thank you for joining in on our big hairy audacious goal.

Please take a look at our super cute video put together by our amazing team – it’s worth the one minute!! (who knew products could dance?)

Our June summer box ships on June 25th! You can order that here.

Chef’s Planet Cit-Trease

Chef’s Planet makes life in the kitchen easier by offering unique, cleverly designed gadgets to fit your active lifestyle. They are constantly thinking of new ways to make cooking simpler and more enjoyable! This clever tool makes it easy to remove citrus from the peel so you can enjoy fresh fruit cut up in a bowl or juiced in a juicer. Simply score the citrus in a complete rotation by placing the blade teeth at the edge of the peel. Continue rotating the citrus and move the Cit-Trease handle in a perpendicular position to the face of the fruit until it pulls away from the peel. Getting juiced was never so easy & healthy!

– Stainless steel blade will not rust or tarnish
– Great for preparing citrus and other “scoopable” foods like avocados and squash
– Dishwasher safe (top shelf)
– Patent pending

Chelsea Market Basket – Their founder’s passion for inspired specialty food and thoughtfully designed gifts led to the creation of Chelsea Market Baskets in 1993. Owner, David Porat continues to search the world for distinctly high quality, unique, innovative products with a certain indescribable charm. Chelsea Market Baskets aims to delight customers through their retail shop in NYC, mail order gift business and wholesale imports.

Reids of Caithness Oaties – Product of Scotland

Donald Reid started this family-run bakery located in Thurso, Scotland in 1966 using his grandmother’s over 100 year-old recipes. He uses the same locally grown oats from the same mills that his grandmother used to bake her delicious biscuits and cakes. The recipes are unchanged and their award winning, buttery, crisp cookies have stood the test of time. We can see why!

Delta Bred Cheese Straws

We are excited to share with you one of their most treasured family recipes. These cheese straws are made in small batches and use 100% real cheddar cheese. They are perfect for anyone looking for fine taste at fine times! Whether you enjoy your cheese straws with sweet tea or mint juleps, we can assure you will experience the mighty fine taste of Delta Bred!

Harvest Foods Shirataki Harvest Noodles Marinara

Made from Konjac Yam Root, this secret weight loss food enjoyed in Asia is now available to you in a vibrant marinara sauce of blended tomatoes, onions, basil and sea salt to delight your taste buds. Healthy and convenient, Shirataki Noodles are vegan and low calorie, making them perfect for anyone trying to be mindful of their weight.

Skinny and easy never tasted so good!

Loacker Cremkakao Chocolate Bar – Product of Italy

Nine – count ’em nine – bite-size pieces make up Loacker‘s velvety chocolate bar with cream-filled centers and their signature light and crispy wafers. They make them easy to break apart so each bar-within-the-bar is a treat unto itself to savor and linger over. Cremkakao is a milk chocolate bar.

So easy, yet at the same time, so hard to share.

Samba Flavor Chimichurri Dry Mix

This is your chimichurri on the go! Created with gourmet quality herbs and spices for the chimichurri lover, this is very easy to prepare. You can mix it with wine, vinegar or lemon juice and olive oil. Adjust to your preferred acidity and taste!

Enjoy the best flavors of South America!

Savory Choice Authentic Veggie Pho

Made with traditional flavors and aromatics, infused in a rich broth, this pho contains no artificial flavors or coloring and is made with natural ingredients. Add your choice of protein or veggies, cooked rice noodles and garnish with your choice of condiments to create the perfect pho dish in minutes. Each stick pouch of liquid broth concentrate is reconstituted with 2 cups (16 oz) of hot water.

Savor the homemade flavor!

MARY’s secret ingredients is moving forward with crowdfunding

February 28, 2015 by Mary 14 Comments

I want to eradicate hunger on this earth.

I know, a pretty big, bold, audacious statement. But I think we can do it with your help, using MARY’s secret ingredients.

We’re on a mission – by supporting new natural food manufacturers and giving them an outlet to showcase their products AND giving you the opportunity to sample and try while I suggest new recipes to inspire your cooking, we can make enough money to give back to Feed The Children to tackle this hunger problem. Hunger is not about a total lack of food. It’s a distribution problem. It’s a poverty problem. It’s an education problem. Money is needed to solve these problems. We are now on a crowdfunding mission.

Did you know that we, in the United States, have the highest percentage of hungry people of any developed nation, a rate closer to that of Indonesia than that of Britain?

The simple fact that anyone, anyone in our country should go to bed hungry or any child not be able to concentrate in school due to hunger is an absolute crime in my book.

We need to fix it.

Did you also know that many obese people, of whom there are plenty of in this nation, are actually malnourished? Yes, they’re eating just a ton of fatty, processed crap with no nutrients. They are actually starving. They don’t cook or eat real food.

So MARY’s secret ingredients seeks to solve both problems, by introducing new natural food products from our box to add excitement to your cooking, including the crazy recipes that I create, and then also donating a percentage of profits to Feed The Children.

We have been growing rapidly but we’d really like to ramp it up to solve the hunger problem so we can give oodles of money to Feed The Children. In order to enlarge our community and prove just how big this concept can be to our investors, we have launched a crowdfunding campaign. You can make an investment in exchange for an exclusive gift from us.

Please visit and invest what you can. Besides, I’d love to meet you in person and have you over for a cooking lesson, a brunch or even a dinner. Here is the link: http://smallknot.com/marys-secret-ingredients-1

Please tell all your friends and share on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. to get the word out.
Thank you for all that you do. 🙂 Let’s have fun while we all tackle this problem together!!

Our Gluten-Free summer MARY’s secret ingredients Box!

July 2, 2014 by Mary 10 Comments

Our summer MARY’s secret ingredients box was mailed last Wednesday, so all of you who ordered should have received it by now. We love these products and as it turns out, they are ALL gluten-free, even the toaster oven liner! And a big thank you to all of you for supporting our mission to eradicate worldwide hunger, as your purchase helps to support Feed The Children.

We have great items to eat and drink, just as they are, at any of your upcoming picnics or BBQ’s, and as I did with the spring box, I will provide inspiration and recipes using all of the ingredients here on this blog over the next two weeks, so please stay tuned.

Check out the video below of our lovely Marie opening a box to the Frank Sinatra tune of HOW ABOUT YOU.

LOVE, Mary

Or you can check it out on youtube here.

ZUKALI MEXICAN GOURMET Big taste, small beginnings. Zukali Mexican Gourmet was born out of a passion for making food and salsas at cookouts with friends and family in their hometown of McKinney, Texas. At Zukali, flavor is foremost.

Cilantro Pineapple Salsa: Inspired by tacos al pastor, this tangy love story of cilantro & pineapple is sure to arouse your tastebuds. We roast fresh peppers over an open flame, we toss in pineapple, and steep it all in a special blend of spices to bathe your mouth in salsa bliss.

COMMUNITY SPICE COMPANY Community Spice Company was founded by nurse Janis Callon in 2010. She comes from a family of foodies. Her father, Stanley, was an executive with Del Monte and her mother, Donna, was a registered dietician. Distressed by the poor quality and the outrageously salty spice blends typically found in the stores, she became adamant to make a healthy low sodium flavored spice blend line that used premium ingredients with realistic labeling for serving sizes.

barbi Q: A perky spice blend that is Community Spice Company’s signature flavor! It is fun, friendly, and the life of the party. Perfect on steak, salmon, ribs, burgers, chicken and home fries.

ka Bobbii: Light and luscious. Lemony with a stimulating twist.
Perfect pick up to fish, chicken, couscous, lentils, & quinoa.

SNP 400: Flexible blend with national appeal. Fantastic with roast chicken, burgers, soups & chili.

mz. Curri: Exotic and confident. This blend takes no prisoners nor will you! Great on veggies, chicken, pork, prawns, fish and onions!

SIMPLY7 The idea behind Simply7 was born because most of the food you are eating everyday is made with ingredients that most people don’t recognize and can’t even pronounce. Simply7 decided to make sure that every ingredient in their products is not only natural but is SIMPLE. Everyone should be able to identify the raw vegetable, fruit, grain, or legume used as ingredients in their products.

Sea Salt Quinoa Chips: All of Simply7 Quinoa Chip flavors are designed to deliver all the flavor and nutrients of the ancient super grain, quinoa. Sea salt is our “original” flavor and truly brings out the slightly nutty flavor of quinoa. You might expect sea salt to be similar to the flavors of other basic salted snacks but it is so much more. The unique flavor of quinoa and the light dusting of sea salt makes for a snacking experience that will keep you reaching for more.

CHEF’S PLANET Chef’s Planet makes life in the kitchen easier. It also offers other innovative, problem-solving kitchenware. They believe you can balance cooking with a busy life, so they are constantly thinking of new ways to make cooking simpler and more enjoyable!

What exactly is an ovenliner? Well, it’s a time saver. A drip and crumb catcher. No need to use chemical cleaners. Chef’s Planet toaster-ovenliner can be easily trimmed to fit on the rack. And, best yet, it’s MADE IN THE USA!

JAXN’S TWICE-BAKED POTATO STIX® The Bodacious Food Company, committed to providing fresh, great tasting premium baked products, created Jaxn’s Twice-Baked Potato Stix® in 2009 as their gluten free and all natural baked snack. Jaxn’s introduces a new, unique concept in better-for-you snacking.

Sea Salt and Cracked Black Pepper: Sea Salt & Cracked Pepper is a perfect duo of century-old flavors. Experience our snack’s robust blend of cracked pepper and natural sea salt. We sprinkle our flavorsome spice recipe on each twice-baked stix, providing “ingredient conscious” snacks bite-after-bite. Bye bye fries!

BRUCE COST GINGER ALE Bruce Cost Ginger Ale was founded in 2010 by Bruce Cost, author of an award-winning cookbook, a chef and a ginger lover. The original recipe was first created as part of a medicinal dinner. Several years later, after amassing a cult following for the beverage, Cost began bottling it with his partners, entrepreneurs Joseph and Terry Tang. In 2014, Bruce Cost Ginger Ale opened its very own factory, bringing the brewing process to Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Ginger Ale Original: Proud descendent of the first soft drink, Bruce Cost Ginger Ale is delicious, sparking and rich with whole ginger. Made with only fresh ginger (no extracts or oils) and pure cane sugar, this is a fundamentally simple, delicious and spicy beverage. Unfiltered with rich ginger particles, it provides iron and a little vitamin C as well as refreshment. MADE IN BROOKLYN

CLEAN, LEAN AND SEXY Clean, Lean and Sexy was inspired by a mother’s mission to transform her daughter’s health. Suzie Carpenter, a Certified Nutrition and Peak Health Coach founded Clean, Lean and Sexy to provide great-tasting whole food energy products in the form of simple, gluten-free healthy snacks.

Coconut Cashew All Natural Whole Food Energy Bar: Healthy snacks without hidden ingredients are hard to find. Clean, Lean and Sexy Whole Food Energy Bars are made with only pure, all natural, recognizable ingredients; and they taste great! They are made with real coconut and without gluten, corn, soy or dairy ingredients. There are also no processed sugars or artificial sweeteners. Indulge, enjoy and be free (now that’s sexy)! It’s a No Grainer!

2 COUPONS

Please note: Mortar and pestle are a part of MARY’s secret ingredients trademark and are not items included in the box.

MARY’s secret ingredients revealed!

May 5, 2014 by Mary 14 Comments

Everyone should have their box of surprise secret ingredients by now. It was chock full of goodies from all over the world. So let me present it to you with music in the video below! This is our lovely Marie Anello, our project manager and soon to be famous opera singer belting it out to the tune of “I Can Cook Too” from On the Town.

Or you can watch the video on YouTube here: http://youtu.be/bneUwn7zMWk

Here’s what Marie is pulling out of the box, in order:

Sweetwater Spice Company Brine Bath bottles SWEETWATER SPICE COMPANY
Created in Austin TX, their brine concentrates produce the most tender and juicy meat, no matter how it’s cooked! Now this is a brine concentrate, NOT a BBQ sauce. You need to follow the directions and dilute this with water to create a quick time brine solution to marinate, tenderize and flavor your chicken, meat or seafood. Either one of the two flavors below were included in our box.

Pineapple Habanero Jerk BBQ Bath Brine: This brine is a classic, island inspired recipe with the traditional flavors of pineapple, thyme, allspice, garlic, onion, and of course, habanero chilies. In all, there are 16 herbs and spices and each hits the tongue together with an extra kick from the habaneros. It’s great on pork, poultry, and seafood!
OR:
Tres Chilies Fajita Bath: This brine uses natural smoked salt and smoked chilies (chipotle, ancho, and cayenne) to bring the taste of the grill indoors. The medium degree of spice of this flavor is balanced with the sweet final note of the apple juice base.

Harmonian Greek oregano
HARMONIAN
Harmonian is a Greek brand just established in June, 2013. The company’s aim is to bring a new understanding of “healthy” and “taste conscious” food to the market.

Oregano From Wildcrafted Plants: The ultimate Mediterranean spice – with rich aroma, full flavor and antioxidant properties – is inextricably linked to red sauces, Greek cuisine, and pizza in any form. Following the tradition of Harmonian spice collection, the oregano is collected by hand from wildcrafted plants in Pindos’ cliffs, contributing a unique, strong aroma in contrast to conventionally cultivated oregano. You can smell this through the packaging – it is heavenly!

Flathaus Fine Foods chipotle cheddar cheese straws
FLATHAU’S FINE FOODS
Flathau’s Fine Foods was formed by a husband and wife duo back in 1995. They set out to systematically perfect gourmet snacks, one at a time, and I do believe they succeeded with these cheese straws. And the packaging is so darn cute!!

Chipotle Cheese Straws: These are all natural cheese straws made with aged sharp cheddar. Based on the owner’s great grandmother’s family recipe, this version has been released in an updated cheddar chipotle variety, using the right blend of high quality ingredients to create these perfect gourmet snacks. Bite into this traditional Southern favorite blended with a tiny kiss of chipotle that will keep your taste buds coming back for more. “I could eat a LOT of these” my husband, Steve, said.

NUESKE’S
Nueske's Applewood smoked sausages Nueske’s was founded in 1933 by R.C. Nueske who couldn’t find an Applewood smoking flavor as good as his family recipe anywhere. So, he decided to market his smoked bacon, sausage, turkeys and hams in rural Wisconsin.

Applewood Smoked Landjaeger Sausages: Super lean cuts of pork and beef are coarsely ground and blended with just the right amount of fresh cracked black pepper to give this slightly chewy, traditional German snack its fabulous Old World flavor. Then they let their smokehouses work their magic, bringing the essence of sweet applewood to each and every bite. A standby for generations of outdoorsmen, these sausages are the perfect tag-along for your next trek through the woods, tailgate event, or any time you crave a deliciously different kind of snack.

Calmer Sutra peppermyntle tea and ginger infused honey CALMER SUTRA TEA
Calmer Sutra Tea is an Australian family-owned business specializing in crafting deliciously calming tea, herbal tisane and honey blends. They started their tea journey over 10 years ago.

Peppermyntle Tea: A calmer twist on a calming drink: Peppermint leaves with a hint of sweet lemon myrtle. This blend is fresh and minty with subtle citrus notes. It’s perfect for refreshing your body, settling an upset stomach, and helping to restore a sense of calm at the end of a long day.

Ginger Infused Honey: Smooth textured and sweet, our double blended honey dances with its freshest partner, ginger root, in this palate pleasing blend. It’s sweetness with a calmer KICK!

LOACKER
Loacker is an Italian company based in South Tyrol, at the base of the Alps, specifically the Dolomite Mountains, producing wafer and chocolate products. Alfons Loacker founded it in 1926 as a family company.

Loacker Quadratini wafer cookies
Quadratinis, Hazelnut or Dark Chocolate Flavors: A mouth-watering snack supply for a break
wherever you are: at home, at work, on a trip, or when exercising. Loacker applies craftsmanship to the best raw ingredients to make wafer and chocolate specialties that are appreciated for their fresh, crisp taste, their delicate creams, and their fine chocolate. A delight that never fails to please, combining a love of nature with a passion for the art of baking results in a delicious creation. And they’re not too bad in calories – only about 17 per cube!

Starting on Wednesday of this week, on every other day, I will post a recipe and/or serving suggestion using each one of these ingredients, starting with Nueske’s Applewood Smoked Sausages and Flathaus Fine Foods Chipotle Cheese Straws. You can also find our partners highlighted on the Partners page of our MARY’s secret ingredients website www.maryssecretingredients.com

A big thank you to all of you who ordered a box! Your purchase will help to eradicate childhood hunger as 10% of our annual profits will be donated to Feed The Children.

So see you on Wednesday – to put some LOVE in your cooking!

MARY’s secret ingredients boxes are on their way!

April 27, 2014 by Mary 14 Comments

It’s been a week of preparing and packing the actual boxes. Our team at the office, headed by our amazing Lily, did an awesome job! The boxes have all been lovingly filled with amazing products that I know will inspire your cooking. All of our spring MARY’s secret ingredients (MSI) boxes are on their way. I’m guessing that those of you who ordered them will have them in your hands early this week and I can’t wait to hear what you think.

Our spring boxes are completely sold out. But don’t worry, you can still order the other seasonal boxes right now but really, don’t wait, as we’ve already sold quite of few of those as well, as many people purchased all of the seasons.

The ingredients in this season’s box are from all over the world, and of course, fit our profile of all natural, healthy, gourmet eating. I have been busy working on recipes and serving suggestions using all of them, which will appear here in the coming week.

More importantly, we want to thank everyone – our partners and our customers who have made a commitment with us to eradicate world hunger as we are donating 10% of our profits to Feed The Children. No one should go hungry.

Soon the suspense will be over and you’ll be spicing up your cooking with new flavors and new ingredients! Spread the word and remember, to always cook with LOVE.