Meet the Maker: Liber & Co

When three twenty-five-year-old guys walked into the service entrance of the Lawrence, Kansas, luxury hotel, The Oread, they were full of hope, if a little lost. Liber & Co co-founder Chris Harrison’s neighbor worked at The Oread, and had invited the trio to use its commercial kitchen to expand their stovetop-developed Spiced Tonic recipe to sell back to the bar as a craft cocktail mixer.

Chris, Robert Higginbotham, and brother Adam Higginbotham were greeted by a 30-gallon steam kettle that they had to ask for assistance to turn on. Once it was operational, they looked into the 30-gallon kettle and then back at their piece of paper with their stovetop recipe—a rich and complex spiced tonic made with real cinchona bark, a natural source of quinine. How would teaspoons and cups transform into cups and gallons? There was nothing to do but get out the calculator and start doing some math.

Prior to this pivotal preparation, Chris was living in Lawrence, working in a genetics lab, Adam was living in Austin and shipping tastes back and forth with Chris, and Robert was working as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C. The three had been kicking around an entrepreneurial idea based on the dearth of exceptional bar syrups that could help home bartender create cocktails equivalent to those found in the best bars in the world. They liked the name Liber, meaning “the free one,” the Roman god of fine drinks and good times.

So when the opportunity arose, the three met in Lawrence, Robert using his frequent flyer miles and taking what then was a nauseating risk—putting $1,500 of bottles and labels on his credit card.

Robert reflected on that rough transition in The Oread’s kitchen, transforming small batches to a large one, “Hours later it was time for dinner service and we were still in the way. They were trying to go on about their business. We were washing dishes to try to keep everybody happy so we could finish. Finally, we had 19 gallons of tonic syrup. We brought it out to Chris’s truck in 5 gallon buckets and it was sloshing everywhere. Eventually, we got back to Chris’s apartment, feeling totally defeated by the process. Of course we had to have a drink! It was 11 at night and we were exhausted and we still had hundreds of bottles to fill by hand, one at a time. Somehow, we got it done.”

Robert took some bottles back to DC in his luggage. After he made a gin and tonic for a friend who managed a grocery store near Robert’s DC residence, the friend was so impressed that he ordered a case for the store. “He wrote a check to me personally because we had no bank account at the time. That was five years ago and he’s still a customer. Amazingly, we were profitable on our first case. We went right back in with our earnings and spent on more inventory.”

With Robert an entrepreneurial spirit, Adam an avid cook, and Chris an avid cocktail enthusiast, the three formed an ideal partnership in Liber & Co, which thrives on the trio’s mutual love of food and beverage. The experiences they were constantly trying to create at home for family BBQs, dinners with friends, and impromptu cocktail parties were something they wanted to share with the world, providing mixers that were the same quality as those being made behind bars.

“What was out there before was high fructose. Artificial. Nuclear,” said Robert. “While there were all kinds of high-end spirits, liqueurs, and bitters, there were still no cocktail syrups with high-quality, thoughtfully sourced raw ingredients, made from real fruits and vegetables. We wanted to fill that void because we understood that the discerning cocktail drinker’s day in the sun had arrived. We’d witnessed the wine boom and the micro-beer boom, and knew that cocktails’ turn was next.”

Chris moved back from Kansas. Together, Adam and Chris experimented and created and marketed. And soon, their big break came. “We had pitched to HEB grocery stores because they really support local business. We thought it hadn’t worked out but then we heard from them again. They wanted the Spiced Tonic we made in Lawrence. And they wanted our Texas Grapefruit Shrub. At the time those were the only two we had and they were kind of ‘out there’ in terms of flavor and they wanted both. To put a single case of each product in each of their stores had Adam and Chris in the kitchen for 18 hours. And HEB had 90 stores! It was overwhelming, but we knew that if they were dedicated to our product, we had that support, and that we’d find a way to make it work. We did. By 2014 we were all three back in Austin, moved in to a dedicated 3,000 sq ft space, and we’ve grown from there.”

Today, all three men are full-time employees of Liber & Co., and their stovetop batches have transformed to 220 gallon tanks. Next year, they have plans to move into a 10,000 sq ft space, and their semi-automated production line will be upgraded to fully-automatic. In 2015, they produced 50,000 bottles, every one of which was capped by hand. This year, they are on pace for 70,000, some bottles being made especially for bars buying at larger liquid volumes. In other words, life at Liber is pretty sweet.

The Savory Pantry proudly stocks Liber & Co.’s Spiced Tonic, Fiery Ginger, Tropical Passion Fruit, Classic Gum, and Almond Orgeat Syrups, as well as their Texas Grapefruit Shrub.

What is it like to live in Austin? Robert says it’s a blast: “We’re all from College Station. The city is booming, young, with a great music and art scene. It takes well to a brand like ours that is small, entrepreneurial, and created from scratch. People respect and support that and it shows in our dedicated consumer base who loyally attend our events.

It’s great to sell nationwide, but so cool to have people loving what you make right in your back yard. Our goal is to equip people with what they need to personally make what they need to replicate the best bars in the world. We provide lots of great recipes, but we like the idea that people will use our products to come up with their own expressions of themselves. We hope we empower our customers to follow their own intuitions and use their creativity to come up with something entirely new.”  

Meet the Maker: Savor Cookies

Ready for tastes that are unconventional works of art for your mouth in the form of small, circular shortbread cookies? For André Kreft, every bite one takes should be a savored, artful celebration. 

André Kreft of Savor Fine Foods

Kreft’s family emigrated from France, and he grew up a part of a community of people with stories of moving to this country. “My parents valued going back to our roots, foraging for food, for example. I recall gathering mussels on the coast in the winter. We’d have picnics, eating the mussels in the snow on the beach, and my parents would reflect on their past lives, spiritually connecting to their friends and family that were still across the ocean. I grew up as part of a community of people who had moved to this country, all appreciating the joy of being together and being alive. When I lived in Nigeria, you could cross the lawn and a cobra could bite you and you’d be dead, so I learned personal experiences and from the loss of my mother, husband, and cousin that we shouldn’t waste time focusing on trivial matters, dwelling on the past, or awaiting an uncertain future—now is what we have.”

For Kreft, food is an essential part of celebrating the moment. When he and his mother traveled to France before her death, he recalls a four-day party just to celebrate being alive. It included a ten-hour meal, the point of which was to be with each other, appreciating the joy and the magic that happens around a table with family and friends. “People would get up, maybe go have a cigarette, stretch their legs, and then return for more. For the moment, those that were there were there together. To me, these lengthy meals were part of an acknowledgment that only the moment is a given.”

How did these existential experiences translate into Kreft’s launch of Savor Cookies? Losing his husband and his mother in short term led him to bake his way through grieving.

“Here I was having lost the most important people in my life, and everything was changed. I considered following through with my husband’s and my plan to move to Hawaii, but then I decided maybe what I needed was to stay at home. From there, I moved forward with the idea to begin Savor. Before moving back to my hometown, I lived I San Francisco where I was a visual artist. Back then, it was very important for my art to travel with me. In the food I desired to create for others, I also wanted something durable, light, transportable.”

Savor Coconut Ginger Cookies

That he did and does, daring to combine and create buttery bites like Moka Ginger Savory Shortbread with Smoked Black Pepper; Coconut Ginger; and Nicasia Rosemary, Lemon & Smoked Salt. Kreft’s never-too-sweet little rounds of delight combine tantalizing flavors inspired by place and by phenomenon.

Inquiring about the small size of Kreft’s cookies, I uncovered even more probing thought and inspiration.

Apparently, he used to make them bigger, but without being too heavy-handed, wanted to communicate how we can get along just fine with less. "In our country, we have this tendency to over buy and waste and I want to take the opportunity to suggest a revision to that dynamic. There is truly no paucity unless we create it—this fear that there’s not going to be enough that is followed by snatching up much more than we need. Living in California, I learned that there’s enough for everyone. So I want to suggest that people consider this by judging for themselves if the tiny jewel of a cookie and a bit of goodness might actually completely satisfy them. Maybe it isn’t necessary to have gobs. Perhaps a little bit of sugar and some butter combined with other unexpected ingredients can help others let things go with grace, knowing there’s more to come. I wanted to offer an affordable luxury—this is something everyone can have, perhaps not every day, but also perhaps every day is not necessary to feel satisfied.”

All this in a bite!? There’s more . . .

“I knew that the most important thing to me was choosing something through which I could share joy and happiness. Part of that for me includes bridging gaps. Selling cookies provides surprising cultural and social experiences.” Kreft shared that Scandinavians love cardamom, the French do not generally care for cinnamon, older generations of English and South Africans don’t like birch flavor (because it reminds them of a tonic once used for the body), and most Americans are hesitant about lavender because they associate it with soap.

Kreft enjoys being the junction at which people come together to experience the same delights, and values sending customers away smiling. Order a bag of these tiny treasures today, and the corners of your mouth can’t help but turn up, knowing that their tastes and their meaning stretches far beyond the coin of shortbread melting inside. 

Meet the Maker: Little Belgians

From her bakery in Berkeley, California, Evy Ballegeer thoughtfully creates spicy, crispy bites that are traditional coffee and tea accompaniments in her native Belgium. Speak with Evy, and you’ll enjoy a warm conversation that also imbues every bite of her cookies.

Little Belgians Evy Ballegeer

How did Evy bring Belgium to Berkeley?

“When I moved to the US, I was working as a correspondent and a journalist in New York and later San Fransisco. I wanted a change, so I went to culinary school at Tante Marie’s in San Francisco with no pre-determined goal in mind. During that time, I noted the re-emergence of artisanal food and that people were very eager to get back to the roots and traditions of food. I observed the resurfacing of classic European recipes. I never really set out to be the owner of a cookie company, but I kept trying to think of what I could uniquely bring to this movement. I thought back to the foods I reached for when I first moved to the US from Belgium and was missing home. I realized that when I was feeling nostalgic for my childhood, I would always grab speculoos.” 

In Belgium, coffee or tea are regularly enjoyed around 4pm, and are generally served with a taste of something sweet. Often, these little somethings are speculoos (from the Latin for mirror, as they are perfect reflections of the molds from which they are formed). Historically, their forms were often the patron saint of the town in which they are baked, although today that is not generally the case. These edible pieces of art have many recipes, but Little Belgium’s Belgians use only the highest quality ingredients. They are made rich and complex with organic butter and nine spices, including cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, pepper, and ginger.

Evy shared how her disappointment in what was available turned into opportunity, “So I was nostalgic for speculoos, and I really looked closely at what was out there in terms of thin, crispy cookies. The speculoos I found were all mass-produced, using palm oil versus butter and other sub-par ingredients. I wanted to show others how amazing these cookies could be. Fortunately, when I was working for a pastry chef at Nopa in San Francisco, I was allowed to put some out. The servers kept returning to the kitchen with messages about how much the customers were enjoying them. I also got more positive feedback when I’d prepare holiday cookie boxes. There were other types of cookies in these boxes as well, but the greatest response was always about the speculoos. All of this, combined with the fact that I love the kind of crafting reflected in the molds, came together when I opened Little Belgians.  

Evy began with four molds, made in Germany. “I wanted to use shapes that had something to say about my life in Belgium, so I chose an umbrella, a house, a cyclist, and a bird. The umbrella reminds me of the gray skies that are always over Belgium. The house represents a home in Ghent, my favorite city and the place I went to college. The bike racer is because everyone in Belgium watches cycling in person or on TV. And the bird pays homage to my grandfathers who raced pigeons.”

Evy's Uncle Aulugele, known as "Ori." Ori tended pigeons until a couple of years ago.

I had to do a double take . . . Pigeon racing? Apparently pigeon racing, like cycling, is also a Belgian national sport. “I remember both of my grandfathers in overalls in the garden every Sunday, tending the pigeons in their lofts. They would be released in the south of France or Spain with numbered rings on their feet. Since pigeons are homing animals, they would fly all the way back to Belgium and were clocked by a timer once they returned home. Honor and bragging rights went to he whose pigeon made it home first. When their pigeons came in, my grandfathers and older uncles would take the timers to a café with Belgian beer to compare and show their friends.” (I digress, but if your interest is still piqued, Google “Mike Tyson pigeon racing” and “Pigeon racing gambling in China.” I’ll leave it at that.)

Most recently—just this summer, in fact—Little Belgians has elevated a camping classic. “I used to make s’mores for weddings when I was catering. Nearly everyone agrees that the flavors are good but the size of our classic cookies isn’t perfect for s’mores. So, I decided to make smaller cookies and incorporate handmade, all-natural marshmallows from The Candy and small squares of also local TCHO chocolate.” And naturally, these cutest-ever-s’mores are made from a precious “campfire” mold.

How do these s’mores follow? Evy shared, “They absolutely resonate with our theme. Speculoos bring people together over cup of coffee or tea. S’mores bring people together around a campfire. People are coming together and celebrating moments with food.”

When you gift these memorable treats from The Savory Pantry, you share the spirit and tradition that are baked into every Little Belgian cookie. “We put so much care into making them,” Evy shared, “To me, each one is precious.” Look and taste, and you’ll know this to be true.   

Texas' State Dessert is as Easy as Pie with Pecan Pie in a Jar

Did you know pecan pie is the official dessert of Texas? (Or that states had official desserts at all?) Pecan pie was so named in 2013, following a resolution sponsored by then first-year Texas State Representative Marsha Farney. This was her first bill—and apparently she caught some flack—with lawmakers proposing amendments such as requiring that Texas pecans be the only ones used in pecan pies across the state and making it illegal to use chocolate in the recipe. In celebration of the bill’s passing, the Capitol served up pecan pie.

Luckily, San Saba River Pecan Company makes it easy as pie to replicate this Southern favorite loved nationwide with its Pecan Pie in a Jar, which is perfect for gifting or pantry stocking. Just add eggs and butter, and pour the mixture a prepared pie shell, and within minutes the pie is in the oven. Each jar makes one nine-inch deep dish or two nine-inch pies. Feeling saucy? Add a couple of tablespoons of bourbon!

The smell and taste of the 10,000 pecan trees growing in Central Texas’ Hill Country will pour out of every jar. Indigenous to San Saba County, pecans have been a cash crop since as early as 1857. The county’s typical production is two to five million pounds of pecans per year, backing their title as “Pecan Capital of the World.” All of the San Saba River Pecan Company’s award-winning gourmet products are produced and shipped from facilities housed within the orchard. You'll also "go nuts" for San Saba's Preserves, which include Apple Pecan, Raspberry Pecan, Peach Pecan Amaretto, and Blackberry Pecan. 

Pecan Pie in a Jar is the perfect gift for friends, neighbors, and colleagues—anyone whose time in the kitchen you want to make more simple and delicious! 

Fall for Robust Charcuterie Flavors

Make holiday entertaining easy with our luscious Petit Jean Peppered Ham holiday board!

Scroll down to learn more about each of the components of this board, which includes Petit Jean Peppered Ham, Mr. Filbert's Roasted French Rosemary Almonds, L'Estornell Wild Caperberries, Tishbi Fig Cabernet Preserves, and Jan's Farmhouse Crisps, all available from The Savory Pantry. This board also includes "Rocchina" cheese purchased from Little Rock's local Kent Walker Artisan Cheese. 

Petit Jean Peppered Hams

Our whole or half bone-in or whole boneless Petit Jean hams can feed your family or gift recipients in many ways throughout the holidays. Hams are shipped straight to your door in Styrofoam containers to ensure they remain fresh and at peak flavor. They are accompanied by warming instructions and everything you need to know to serve them within hours of arrival. Freeze what you can’t eat for later use.

Petit Jean Meats of Morrilton, Arkansas, family-owned and operated for over 80 years, is known for producing some of the finest meats available today. Petit Jean Ham is also marketed under the Neiman Marcus label, and, since 1940, is the only ham served at The Pancake Shop, the legendary breakfast eatery in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

The company's beginnings date back to 1922 when Felix Schlosser, a butcher and German immigrant, relocated to Arkansas in search of a better life. He opened a small retail meat market in the town of Morrilton. Schlosser's nephews Ed and Lonnie were brought into the business at the ages of 12 and 10, respectively, and first delivered meat to homes in Morrilton by bicycle.

Mr. Filbert's French Rosemary Almonds

As their packaging indicates, Mr. Filbert's makes "really interesting snacks," with "flavours from around the world." Tasty hot air roasted almonds are tumbled with fresh French rosemary and a touch of sea salt, providing a crunchy, savory snack. These are the perfect nuts to pair with antipasti and cheese, or as stand-alone snacks for any tummy that grumbles.

L'Estornell Caperberries

L'Estornell caperberries are wild fruits that grow in the sun-drenched, mountainous areas of the VEA family estate in Spain. Hand-selected, the caperberries are first put in rock salt for a minimum of three months before preserving. The salt is then removed by rinsing the capers several times in fresh water and the fruits are bottled in white vinegar, using no additives or preservatives. Don’t forget to save a few of these piquant treats to serve in gin or vodka martinis!

Tishbi Fig Cabernet

Oshra Tishbi has created an exceptional selection of wine and fruit preserves made with extraordinary wines from her family's estate in the town of Shefeya, in Israel. This perfect combination of figs and cabernet sauvignon complements cheese with a lovely balance of fruit and wine flavors that linger on the tongue. Perfect with Aged Cheddar, Romano Milk Gouda, Montgomery and Pecorino Romano. Use your board leftovers with a warm croissant, French toast, or vanilla ice cream.

Tishbi wine & fruit preserves have garnered international recognition for their innovative and delicious tastes. Each of Tishbi's preserves are skillfully cooked in small batches to ensure the finest quality product. The unique process delivers a completely natural, fruity and flavorful, less sugared, reduced calorie preserve made from only the finest fruit and Tishbi family Estate Wines.. You can learn more about the history of Tishbi under the “The Story” tab by following the product link. 

Jan's Farmhouse Crisps

Vermont's Jan Gorham was on the hunt for a healthy snack for her three boys. Not satisfied with what she found on the market, she created these anything-but-average crisps. Jan's Farmhouse Crisps are super thin and loaded with dried cranberries, flaxseed, pistachios, sesame seeds, and pumpkin seeds. They offer the perfect foundation for soft cheeses, a great crunch atop a green salad, or straight from the bag. 

Edmond Fallot Walnut Dijon Mustard

Offering a punch of color and bold spice, Edmond Fallot Walnut Dijon also delivers distinctly nutty flavors from fine walnuts grown in Perigord, France.

Since 1840, the Fallot family has maintained a worldwide reputation for exceptional quality mustard. The Fallot Mustard Mill relies on the expertise of artisan mustard maker, Mark Désarménien, who continues the uncompromising production of Dijon mustard by stone grinding the seeds, artfully blending them with the highest quality ingredients and following Fallot family recipes. Fallot is one of the few companies in the world still using traditional stone milling methods, which retain robust gustatory qualities and give Fallot mustards their incomparable flavor.

Use remaining Dijon to flavor poultry, meats, fish, cheeses, vinaigrettes, and sandwiches.

Roccina Cheese from Kent Walker

Handmade and cave aged, Kent Walker Artisan Cheese is a Little Rock local favorite. Italian for "Little Rock," Roccina (Row-cheen-a) is Kent Walker’s take on Asiago, made from local raw cow milk with curds at a high temperature. During the three month aging process, the rinds are treated with salt, giving Roccina a tasty and attractive edge. It's hard to imagine what wouldn't pair well with the Tishbi Fig Cabernet Preserves and Jan's Farmhouse Crisps, but this tasty cheese was just right.