Today we’d like to introduce you to Annabelle Lee.
Annabelle, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Even though I always thought of myself as a ‘healthy’ eater when I began having joint pain and gut issues, I initially thought to avoid gluten. As a mom who enjoyed making good food for my family, I began experimenting with gluten-free recipes and found myself quickly gaining weight! With a little research, I realized that grains, starches and sugar caused my weight gain and made my symptoms worse. So, with a bit of trial and error, I created lots of yummy meals and treats for myself and my family that we all enjoyed.
Growing up in Encinitas and Escondido, I was healthy and active, enjoying the beach and avocado groves. Later in life, doctors told me I was experiencing ‘auto-immune symptoms’ that could be diagnosed as any number of ‘illnesses’. I began learning more on this subject and how our country has an explosion of ‘auto-immune’ illnesses these days. While the research and doctors are still in disagreement and offer little but pharmaceuticals to help control symptoms, I learned there are many people who benefit greatly when they eliminate grains, refined starches and sugar from their diet.
Bread can be a tough one to replace, and finding one with truly healthy ingredients is near impossible, so we decided to begin packaging my bread mix and offering it for sale, which launched California Country Gal. We package Sandwich Loaf, Rustic Bread, Burger Buns and Cinnamon Roll mixes. We’ve just launched these as Certified Organic/non-GMO Verified and will also be launching a Pancake/Waffle Mix soon. Our plan is to follow with several more mixes in the near future. We are also offering some baked breads on our website. The keto store, California Keto on Genesee Ave. carries our burger buns, which are vegan and come individually wrapped (perfect to take to a restaurant for swapping out their bun). Our baguette and loaves are made with all organic ingredients and all of our products are grain/gluten-free with no added starch or sugar.
Has it been a smooth road?
Funny you should ask, it has definitely taught me the exact meaning of the saying ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’, and I say this after raising four boys! On our most recent production, the facility we have co-packing for us over-filled our product and had to re-fill 10,000 pouches. We also had a nutrition lab send us inaccurate nutritionals that were printed on the label before we caught it. Starting a food business can be a very expensive endeavour with many up-front costs that take time to catch up with, so I would say that juggling the financial side has probably been the most challenging part for us so we haven’t been able to grow as quickly as we wanted to. I get very excited about expanding my ‘real food’ mix line because I have so many more delicious, easy mixes to bring to everyone’s cupboards!
We’d love to hear more about California Country Gal.
I really enjoy developing easy baking mixes for busy families to enjoy breads and goodies that not only taste great but actually nourishes their bodies. The mixes will be launching in the SoCal area early next year with our new distributor. We also sell baked loaves on our website. I also wrote a book called “the Ultimate Grain-Free Cookbook” (available on Amazon or our website) which uses a lot of whole foods from the produce section and your blender or food processor to make all kinds of goodies from breads and pancakes to tortillas and desserts. This was definitely a labor of love for me because a lot of the recipes were developed when we were raising our four boys. The recipes are fun to do with kids because you just chop the veggie (or fruit) and add it to the blender with a few other ingredients, then bake, no need to cook it ahead of time. I was inspired to pursue these things when I found out how much consumers (myself included) had been duped over the years. Decades ago, big food businesses discovered they could very cheaply add sugar, wheat protein and casein (a dairy protein) to their products to make them taste great and keep people coming back for more. All of these trigger addictive behaviors when they attach to the opiate receptors in the brain. As time went on, chemical additives and flavorings made things worse and now we are a nation full of sick and obese people, and are, unfortunately, spreading our way of life across the world.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
The Southern California area is an awesome place to start a healthy food business because this area is full of people that care about their health. We also have terrific magazines and journalists like you that help get the word out. Also, as bad as things have gone with processed junk foods, we’re seeing a plethora of new companies popping up with much better ingredients. The problem is many of these ingredients are more expensive to source and a lot of the companies are small mom and pop startups so, often the products are more expensive than people are used to paying; but I think more people are beginning to understand that good food costs more than junk food.
Contact Info:
- Website: CaliforniaCountryGal.com
- Email: hello@californiacountrygal.com
- Instagram: californiacountrygal
- Facebook: calcountrygal
Image Credit:
Jacob Lee
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