Minty Monday with Peppermint Jim and Chef Nick

Chef Nick and Peppermint Jim have been best friends for many years. The two first met at a Lansing Community College event and are eversince known to be a colorful duo.

Voluntering, helping the good cause, feeding the hungry and helping kids is what they love to do. They made headlines last year by breaking all world records with the largest slab of fudge. The proceeds of this event went to LCC scholarships.

The Traveling Stone Soup Event was first brought to life by Peppermint Jim and Chef Nick, last year before Christmas and aims to feed as many people as possible by serving soup to the hungry.

ABOUT CHEF NICK
GENERAL:
As a Culinary Professor at Lansing Community College and a Guinness Book of World Records Record Holder, he is active in our community and making a difference in many people’s lives. A Humanitarian, an educator, a volunteer, Chef Nick also has 2 non-profit organizations and wants to do great things in his community. In 2009 alone he filmed a cooking show, served food for the homeless, was a guest speaker for numerous organizations, was published in his college magazine (Johnson & Wales University Magazine), a highly respected culinary publication, and spearheaded numerous fundraisers. In December Chef Nick and Peppermint Jim began The Travelling Stone Soup, serving $5 bowls of soup with proceeds generating enough money to feed 840 p eople at VOA. What’s next on his plate?

YOUTH FOCUS:
Kids love Chef Nick. Do you know why? He is a mentor and an educator to those that are in need. In the past year Chef Nick went up for auction to raise scholarships for kids in need and was a returning guest Chef Professor at the Tri County High School Career Expo, getting kids excited about culinary arts and the path to college. At Christmas time, Lansing’s Old Town featured him in a cooking demo and raised awareness for the Big Brothers & Big Sisters of Old Town. Lip syncing? He’s done that too, all with the goal of raising money for scholarships for kids. As a mentor Chef Nick is very earnest about helping kids get their GEDs. Want to join in and inspire our local youth? Join Chef Nick at YouTube or facebook under chef nicklosovich.

LCC/HOSPITALITY CLUB
Lansing Community College is more than lucky to have a culinary professor named Chef Nick. As an advisor for the Hospitality Club, he explores innovative ways to educate his students on providing top notch service in their future industry. Together with LCC’s Hospitality Club and the Michigan Food Bank, one of their recent fund raisers was Berries & Bubbly, raising awareness and funding for a very serious topic in our state. His students joined him at Topliff’s Tara Bed & Breakfast Llama Farm to hear him as a guest speaker on the culinary field. Around Thanksgiving 2009 Chef Nick and helped makes hundreds of pies to raise money for various hospitality and culinary clubs for kids. What is the Hospitality Club and Chef Nick doing next and who will benefit?

LOCAL AWARENESS:
Have you heard of Chef Nick? He’s most passionate about anything and everything local. Especially food! He works with all the local farmer’s markets, including Lansing’s brand new facility right downtown, as well as participating in a salsa challenge at Lansing’s Southside Market September of 2009. In August Chef Nick supported his local farmer, Peppermint Jim, to save his farm during Mint Jam 09. Having been a guest chef many times at local markets, Chef Nick always makes an impression with people of all ages, even politicians! At a retirement picnic of the UAW Chef Nick worked with senators, mayors, and State Representatives, as well as other local leaders to brainstorm on ideas to bring awareness to those in need in our local area. A spokesperson for the Michigan Apple Committee, he’s been a guest judge for the Michigan Apple Pie Competition in Frankenmuth. Do you have a passion for all things local? Want to help Chef Nick educate everyone on the importance of working with our local farmers and markets?

DOWNTOWN LANSING
If you work or play in downtown Lansing, you have probably heard of Chef Nick. On the Board of the Principal Shopping District (PSD) Chef Nick and the PSD held the first annual Downtown Lansing food fight, the fight against hunger in our community, and raised 1400 pounds of food and almost $400 in cash donations. This was the most successful single 1 day food drive for the Michigan Food Bank. Chef Nick also works with some local inner city churches to raise awareness of the kids in our city, by cooking at a luncheon. The All Nations Inner City Church loves Chef Nick and was proud to support him in achieving a World Record for the largest slab of fudge the summer of 2009. He enjoyed selling this World Record fudge with a local business owner, Clint the Hot Dog Guy, by standing outside the capital and supporting small, local businesses. Lansing also includes Old Town, where Chef Nick sold fudge at the Jazz Fest in August 2009, which raised money for the Old Town Development Fund. Want to get involved in making our capital city better? Get invloved with Chef Nick!

http://peppermintjim.com/

James A. Crosby is a fourth generation mint farmer who grew up on the Crosby Mint Farm in St. Johns, Michigan. The farm is the oldest, continuously family operated mint farm in the United States, and Jim has been working it since he was nine years-old, taking over all of the production duties, there, in 1991.

Since then, Peppermint Jim has become one of very few renowned and well-respected artisan mint oil distillers left in the country, as well as an acknowledged expert and widely-quoted source on mint, internationally.

Peppermint Jim’s passions are mint, family farms, educating and creativity. And, he is a widely-respected, in-demand public speaker. His presentations include lectures on every aspect of the mint plant — from mint’s history and therapeutic benefits, to the production of his own, proprietary, organic Soil Rejuvenator and other innovative products under the recently created “Peppermint Jim, LLC” banner. His talks on ecologically friendly farming techniques, practical methods on becoming personally self-sustainable, observations and education on foreclosure and surviving the barrages of financial meltdown in these wobbly economic times, and on the creative process, witnessing miracles in every day life and keeping the faith in troubled times are crowd pleasers wherever he is invited to present them.

With his lectures, Peppermint Jim has traveled throughout the country, educating people about mint and self sustainability, inspiring and motivating thousands of people to believe in themselves, embrace their passion and to expect miracles. He says his intent is “to help people become individually self-sustainable through education and creativity”.

His new company, Peppermint Jim, LLC, was created in 2009 as a logical step in his personal evolution. Following in the footsteps of his previous company, Mint Grove, and his sister Linette’s, Get Mint Trading, which is operating out of the Crosby Mint Farm and is the repository of his world-renowned mint oils, Peppermint Jim LLC is the perfect forum for Peppermint Jim’s endless creativity.
Since its creation, Peppermint Jim LLC has developed three new and innovative products: Peppermint Jim’s Mojito Mix — a new and fresh mint take on Ernest Hemingway’s favorite Cuban rum mix; Chef Nick’s Mint Sauce — a collaboration with local Lansing legend, Chef “Nick” Nicklosovich — which revamps a culinary delight and brings mint into the 21st Century kitchen where it can serve as a marinade, a delightful caramelizing basting sauce, and a wonderfully surprising dressing for vegetables and salads; and Peppermint Jim’s Soil Rejuvenator, which has won several awards and is already a staple in the arsenals of thousands of organic gardeners all over the United States.

Between 2005 and 2010, the Crosby Mint Farm faced a lot of challenges. At one point, foreclosure reared its ugly head, as it has for so many US family farms. But Peppermint Jim and his fam ily weathered the many storms blowing across his beloved mint fields, and, as a result of his experiences surviving them, he acquired a vast array of experience and offers counseling and support to those facing troubled economic times and the specter of foreclosure and bankruptcy.

Peppermint Jim In The Media:
• Locale Magazine, August 2010;
• The Warren Pearce Show, WJR Radio, Detroit, August 2010;
• Coffee Break on LCC radio (call letters here) August 2010;
• WKAR Radio, August 2010;
• Detroit News, July, 2010:
• First Magazine, August, 2009;
• Edible Wow, Summer Issue, 2009;
• The Katherine Albrecht Show, GNClive , August 2009;
• Truth Brigade, American Freedom Radio , August and September 2009;
• Radio Free Bacon, Ann Arbor's 107one , September 2009;
• The Ed Schultz Show, XMSatelite Radio Channel 167 , October 2008
• The Solari Report, Solari.com, May 2010;
• Michigan Farmer, Fall Issue, 2004;
• Fork In The Road, National Organic Gardening Television, Featured three times in 2004 and 2005;

Peppermint Jim Awards and Recognition:
• Editor’s Choice Blue Ribbon Maker Faire Detroit 2010
• Certified Guinness World Record Holder for Largest Slab of Fudge, 2009
• World Records Academy World Record for Largest Slab of Fudge, 2009
• World Record holder for Largest Slab of Fudge in Germany and India, 2009
• State of Michigan Recycler of the Year, 2003
• State of Michigan Business Recycler of the Year, 2003
• Member of the Organic Trade Organization.
• Co-owner of the historic Crosby Mint Farm

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Scheduled Time:

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Date: Monday, February 6, 2012
Time: 7:00-9:00 PM Central

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