Thanks for visiting; it’s good to see you here.

I will tell you a little about myself.  First of all, I’m a Dad of three girls, ages 18, 18 and 20.  Nope, I didn’t stutter, those are twins.  Their names are Tahra, Breanna and Brittany.  They are each good girls in their own way.  They all have their own personality, and sometimes more than one.  We also have one son, but that is another self-help/intervention blog subject by itself.

I also have my lovely wife Pam.  It is by her graces that I am able to communicate with the world on my blog.  She has tolerated countless hours of my working to set up Home Food Gourmet and this blog.  This includes too numerous to count conversations where my part was to nod my head as I typed away on my computer and she pretended that I was listening.  I’m not foolish enough to think that I got away with it, since it will catch up with me.  Destiny is written.

She is a better person than I, though.  She pulls me back to reality when I attempt to do a dawn to midnight webmaster marathon on a Saturday.  When it gets a little crazy around here, she pulls the 3 girls and their 6-7 personalities out of the house for awhile so I can get some things done.  Without her, this website and blog wouldn’t have happened.

At my day job, I am a Marketing Manager at a global building products company.  I won’t put the name of my company, since there may be some secret HR policy that prevents me from doing so.  My former life at this company was in New Product Development as an Engineer.  About 4 years ago, I crossed over the wall and joined Marketing.

I manage 4 different product categories that encompass our “technology suite” of products.  I am a member of CEA (Consumer Electronics Association) and yes, I get to go to the Consumer Electronics Show each year in Vegas.  I could create an entire blog about that place.

I am also involved in the “green building” industry.  I am a member of ASHRAE, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers.  A group of mostly very boring engineers that discuss things like how much energy it takes to dislodge extremely small particles from surfaces to which they have aligned their electrical fields.   (That almost put me to sleep just writing that)  This group develops recommendations for the green building groups for the above mentioned specialties.

I have the dubious distinction of being a member of the United States Green Building Council’s LEED program.  I sit on a number of corresponding committees whose subjects are too boring to list here.

I live in Wisconsin about an hour northwest of Milwaukee.  It is out in the sticks, but that is the way I like it.  My daughters would argue otherwise.  We have many places to fish, hunt and grow gardens which I love to do.  (I am getting me closer to why I am writing this blog, so please bear with me)

I have a really cool neighbor, Darryl; with whom I fish, hunt, help each other with gardens and scheme future projects.  His wife Becky and Pam will do some of these things with us, but for the most part tolerate us and leave us alone.  We love them both.  Pam does like to fish though.  That is worth a couple of stories later.

Darryl and I like to go hunting for deer.  For those not familiar with this, in Wisconsin it involves spending a week out in the woods during the week of Thanksgiving.  Darryl has a great spot that we go to about 3 miles from my house.  We go out there at 5:30 am and freeze our asses off until the sun goes down.

We have taken quite a few deer over the years and it gets expensive to process.  We normally divided up some cuts like roasts and chops, and had the rest turned to venison sausage.  The bill could run $500 or more.  We made the fateful decision to try it ourselves.

Like most of the projects we get into, we jumped in with both feet.  We bought all the gear that included butcher saws, meat grinder, sausage stuffer, all kinds of books and spices.  We also built a smoker in my garage.  That by the way got mixed reviews from lovely wife Pam.  It is a cool contraption made from an old metal freezer and a couple of hot plates that works really good.  It still needs some tweaks to it, but we will get there.  Darryl by the way, took it upon himself to build another one in his garage over this past winter.  That’s a real cool one.

Sausage making is a fun hobby.  After seeing how some deer are processed, it gave us a sense of safety as well.  I occurred to me that I probably better off not seeing how meat we get at the store is processed, but that too is another topic.  Making sausage gives you total control over the process.  We decide the amount of spices and smoke we want to use.  We can experiment with recipes to see what we like, what we don’t.  And it is not that hard.  An afternoon of reading and some shopping, you can be making sausage in short order.  You can see some old standard recipes as well as some really interesting ones by visiting Home Food Gourmet Recipes.

I also like to can food.  I first became interested when I was a little kid and saw the rows upon rows of jars of canned food in my grandmother’s cellar.  I knew that you could get similar items at the store, it never tasted as good.  Of course, during my teenage years and my 6 years in the Navy, I didn’t think about it much.  After I got out of the Navy and returned home to settle down, I decided to take it up again.  It is fun, delicious and again, I have total control of the final result.

Over the years my hobby expanded to include dehydrating.  You can do things with a dehydrator that would amaze you.  Herbs that you get from the garden or the farmers market can be saved for cooking year round at a fraction of the cost and 10 times the taste that you would get from the store.  Favorite snacks like jerky, fruit leathers and even desserts like cookies and bars can be made in your dehydrator.

After spending countless hours scouring the internet and stores for gear, supplies and recipes; the business side of me took hold.  I decided to start Home Food Gourmet.  It has been an interesting road; sometimes the road to hell as lovely wife Pam would say.  I have put together a group of recipes, how-to’s, tutorials and the Home Food Store where a ever growing group of great home food preservation gear can be found.

In the last couple of weeks, I decided to start the Home Food Gourmet Blog.  This gives me the chance to have my stage and share it with you.  I always wanted to write and now I have my opportunity.

I hope you share your time, ideas and fun with me and everyone else that wants to be a part of this experience.  I look at this not only as a chance to share my ideas and experiences, but to make new friends.

So new friend, thanks for stopping by.

Sincerely,

Tom Heidel

P.S.  Thank you Pam, I LOVE YOU