The work that it takes to turn raw wood into a custom handwriting piece or a Montessori kitchen tool all serves as a metaphor for life’s journey at Umbrella Custom Woodworking. 

Kerry, a Certified Cheese Professional, and Mike, who works as a Global Dairy Technology Manager for Cargill Animal Nutrition, create custom events that take you on a tasty tour of the delicious world of cheese.  Both are graduates of the University of Wisconsin who grew up in our neighbor to the east. Minnesota, however, has been home for nearly 30 years, giving them lots of time to discover a plethora of favorite cheeses throughout the land of 10,000 lakes. 

That’s how Red Wing’s Sturdiwheat sources the ingredients for their beloved pancake, bread, and dessert mixes. It’s what they’ve done for more than 80 years. Today Sturdiwheat is family-owned and operated by mother-daughter team Suzanne and Missi Blue.

Caroline Houghton of Carobeans knew that she was serious about chocolate when she bought her own melanger to grind cocoa beans into chocolate. Carobeans is an artisan bean to bar chocolatier based in St Louis Park, MN.

For Emma Crutcher of Cool Trash in South Minneapolis other people’s trash is literally her treasure.  Emma discovered the Precious Plastic project, which was founded in 2013. This project hosts a suite of open source plans to build machines to recycle plastic on a small scale. “This movement challenges us to think about plastic as a valuable resource for building and creating,” explained Emma

Tahir Sandhu and Gwen Williams of St. Cloud, Minnesota’s Artisan Naan Bakery found that the easiest way to eat the naan and other flatbreads they enjoyed was to make it themselves.  “We started the bakery for purely selfish reasons,” laughed Gwen. “My husband was quite dissatisfied, and had been for years, with the frozen naan, roti and pita that we found in stores.”