Everyone likes to eat, well, everyone I know. People’s lives often find meaning around the event of a meal. Take Thanksgiving, Christmas, Birthdays, Rehearsal Dinners, The Last Supper and Happy Hour; all these are special times when people get together around a meal (and beverage!) to celebrate a special occasion in their lives.
Granted, sometimes there are people at those meals one might rather not be present. The family drunk may act out after imbibing a bit too much. But for the most part we enjoy the company of those with whom we break bread. This has been true for centuries.
How, then, can anyone take something that happens every day, somewhere, and turn it in to an entrepreneurial exercise? Entrepreneurship is not necessarily inventing something new. It is often taking something as simple as eating and looking at in in a new way. Entrepreneurs see the world through different colored glasses. Individual entrepreneurs each have their own unique color through which they see the world and it gives them a special vision.
Bob Blumer is one such visionary. He has taken food, not to a whole new level but, to a completely different dimension. When is a birthday cake not a birthday cake? When it is meatloaf with mashed potato icing. When is bacon a dessert? When it is the prime ingredient in maple bacon-crunch ice cream. Who would combine licorice and shrimp? Bob Blumer.
Those three recipes are all from his book, glutton for pleasure (Whitecap Books, 2010). I won’t call it a cook book, though it does have actual recipes for your enjoyment. It is more of a culinary adventure travelogue. Blumer is kind of like a cross between MacGyver and Indiana Jones with a spatula.
When you read his recipes the first thing that comes to mind is, “How did he think of that? Who would do that? Is he right in the head?” OK, that is three things, but my point is entrepreneurs take risks, they try new things, they think outside the baking pan. His recipes all look fun and exciting and delicious. But these are the successful ones. I wonder how many failed? How many things has he tried that just did not work? If he were to compile all his experiments that did not result in a gastronomic victory into one book, how big would that book be?
Edison is credited with saying, “I have never failed, I have only discovered 10,000 ways that do not work.” Blumer keeps trying and experimenting and, fortunately for us, sharing his successes with the rest of the world.
If you want to learn more about Bob Blumer you can check out his book. And go to his website at www.bobblumer.com.
By the way, I was going to tell you about his Airstream Toaster Trailer that he built, but I will let you discover that on your own.
