Doing Business the real good, real food way.
— Tina Brooks (originally written, 8-5-2018, updated, January 2026)
When we branded the Peppermaster line in 2004, Greg and I weren’t thinking about the planet, or the farmers or anyone else, we were thinking about good tasting pepper sauce and good tasting food. It was far too easy to notice the inability for anyone in Canada to get anything other than Frank’s Red Hot, or Tabasco original at the grocery store, and the only product available via ethnic stores was Matouk’s. If you wanted fresh peppers, you had three options. You could get Banana peppers (pickled) and occasionally jalapenos. Fresh scotch bonnets, more properly called “field peppers”, were available at the ethnic grocers — THAT was it! Other options included “Hot Sauce” imported from the US; those, more often than not, were just bottles of pepper flavoured vinegars and many came with far cooler names than the hideous tasting concoctions inside their bottles. Given the experience of those “hot sauces”, the words “Generally Recognized As Safe”, in my never humble opinion, should NEVER be allowed to be used in reference to food; but that’s me.
By 2008, we became more globally thinking in our methods. Having connected with so many farmers in so many different locales, by then, we were slowly learning the concept of “food security”, and realizing it had very different implications depending on where you lived.
To compare how things have changed since then, you can click here to read
an article I wrote about Slow Fair Trade in 2008.
It is August 2018 and, as you might expect, things have changed somewhat.
This year we have a list of organic and natural AND conventional farmers across Quebec that is so large, we have had to build a database to know them and their pepper growing abilities apart.
Over the last decade, Greg and I discovered that if we purchase our production requirements at the usual vegetable exchanges, then the local farmers don’t get to participate in that market, unless they’re essentially “Big Food”. So, we didn’t simply spend the last ten years putting the word out that we wanted to buy peppers, we got even more active in putting together a food network that connects us to the food and the growers who can provide it, making local produce available, not only to us, but to our neighbours, as well.
Having participated in establishing the Rigaud’s Farmer’s Market in 2006, we participated in a pilot project with the local CLD that had us set up local food producers’ market online, where Farmer’s could more readily assure their weekly sales. Unfortunately, that market group fell apart due to lack of organization.
We very quickly thereafter had the honour of meeting a local multi-services cooperative known as
Coop CSUR. They are well known in the region for bringing internet services to folks who don’t otherwise have access. They were exploring the idea of bringing a food market incorporating local organic food producers into the fold. So, Greg and I joined the cooperative, and begin actively working with them to make the food market a reality. We are still members today and the market keeps growing and growing.
In 2012, I was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, which is no longer considered a stand-alone diagnosis and is now simply diagnosed as Autism Spectrum Disorder. What that meant for me, was life changing, but it came with it a legitimate understanding of why I am essentially a canary in a coal mine when it comes to VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) of a variety of sorts.
To read about my diagnosis and how important food had started to become, for me by 2013, read
the article that launched the idea of the Real Good Real Food network.
Autistic bodies, it turns out, are susceptible to things that don’t necessarily affect the non-autistic body. As a result, Greg and I started really looking at what goes INTO and ONTO the food products that we eat, and by extension, I couldn’t help but look at what was going into the food ingredients that go into the food that we make for other companies, because, as you may or may not already know, Brooks Pepperfire Foods, our company, has grown to become THE PLACE to have a commercial product packed if you want it made with real good, real food ingredients. Because as a result of my diagnosis, it wasn’t only important for the farmer, the planet and the consumer, NOW, it was personal.
The other thing that we started doing was implementing HACCP 22000 manufacturing principles, but THAT is a WHOLE NOTHER blog. (I’ll update THIS page with a block quote when I finally write it. It is on my to-write list.)
Ultimately what we have done and learned over the last decade is key to our ever expanding and ever evolving philosophy today.
Four key things that we recognize and would like to share with you:
1. Whether a “chemical” is a laboratory produced neonicotinoid or an all-natural organic certified compound, like a 100% pure lavender oil, is irrelevant to the reaction it causes in people, plants and animals.
VOCs — I react to volatile organic compounds. They can be deadly to me. So we have worked to remove the chemicals and organic compounds that I react to from my diet. We have as a result ensured we do not use those which are not natural, like lavender, from our ingredients’ list available to customers of Brooks Pepperfire Foods. That makes it easier for me to look at the products my company makes and proudly think; I can eat ALL of that, and it won’t make me sick (except the lavender). So, on days when BPFI is cooking with lavender, you won’t find me in the Peppermaster shop, I’ll be out somewhere or likely sitting with my laptop at one of the local cafes where they have wifi. Some people are going to react to compounds, and maybe won’t most, but the more we limit those compounds in our food, the better all of our health will be. —
2. Farmers really love doing what they are doing. They grow really amazing Food and they do some really persnickety things to do it. — Google how to harvest broccoli seeds. You’ll see what I mean. I have a garden, I also have black thumbs. But I really like harvesting the few tomatoes or peppers or squash (okay, squash flowers), that I do get. I grew a pot plant that I harvest three buds from, once and I currently own a “plantation” of five pineapples — ONE, that I grew from an organic pineapple top! So, they’re going to put heart and soul into the produce that they grow and will, oddly enough, grow EXACTLY what you want them to grow for you, if you contract with them, in advance. And, bonus, they’d really rather use one of the six original organic growing methods (that’s a blog for another day), than spray ANYTHING on their produce. Farmers will hand weed, and hoe their fields weekly, and some farmers will even go so far as to WRAP their fruit trees, so they don’t have to spray pesticides. Those are the kinds of farmers we want to work with. —
3. If we can get EVERY farmer, and EVERY food producer in Canada following organic growing methods, whether certified or not, the whole planet wins, not just me. — Push the Real Good Real Food network: So, it behooves us to practice and push these concepts as much as possible. Thankfully, we have also discovered that Canadians are more and more seeking out all-natural and organic foodstuff to the detriment of the old Big Food concepts of feed as many as possible for as little as possible by creating non food to feed them with, so, we may be prescient, but if we’re not, we’ve got immaculate timing. —
4. We live in a wonderful geographical climate, here in Canada. We enjoy VAST tracts of arable land that global climate changes are going to invariably render either more arable, or less arable, depending on how we as food consumers proceed. We understand intrinsically, that the more severe storms that these changes bring bear the power to destroy entire farms and even shut down food distribution systems for upwards of weeks at a time. It behooves us as consumers and most specifically as Canadians to demand that the food we are offered in the grocery stores does as much as it can to protect the environment and the farmers and failing that, to do as little harm as we can possibly allow.
So, in 2018, Peppermaster is adapting our Slow Fair Trade philosophy to a Slow Organic Fair Trade (SOFT) philosophy so that one day soon, we will no longer see toxic volatile organic compounds on nor in our food, unless they are fully organic themselves.
It is our experience that the cleaner the food, the more heart and soul the farmer puts into the growing of it, the better it tastes. Which as an update brings us full circle, and right back to our roots when our primary goal was great tasting hot pepper sauces. Now, it’s all about the real good real food, and we hope that shines through the facade of commercialism that a food company has no option but to wear.