Through a pair of savoury sauces a Salmon Arm entrepreneur has been turning people on to the flavours of Trinidad.
During the summer, Cecelia of Cecelia's Flavour Fusions can be found Thursdays at the Market by the Bay at Blind Bay's Centennial Field, and Saturdays at the Downtown Salmon Arm Farmers' Market at the Ross Street Plaza, selling her Herbaceous Fusion and Zesty Hot Fusion sauces as well as food and drink, all inspired by foods she grew up with in Trinidad, but with her own flavourful twist.
"I grew up in Trinidad and everybody grew their own herbs and fruit trees and whatever 鈥� These are some of the products that we make," said Cecelia (who asked only her first name be used), explaining the vibrant verdant Herbaceous Fusion is her spin on a traditional Trinidadian recipe for green seasoning, adapted into a product that can be consumed both raw, such as a salad dressing or made into a dip, and as a marinade.
"It鈥檚 good for any dish except for the sweet stuff," she said.
With her Zesty Hot Fusion sauce, made with habanero peppers, Cecelia wanted to introduce the Shuswap to a hot yet flavourful experience made with a Trinidadian kick.
"Some people say they have hot sauce but it鈥檚 not hot; but mine is hot and it鈥檚 not just hot, it has flavour鈥�," said Cecelia "Because I grew up in Trinidad鈥� We go with flavour with everything. You put stuff in there to flavour it up so you don鈥檛 just feel the heat. It鈥檚 tasty.
"People keep talking about it and I hadn鈥檛 been using my hot sauce that much. But lately everybody talks to me about it so much, I鈥檓 like, Im going to use it every day and see if I get fed up with it. But I鈥檓 using it everyday and I'm like damn, this is good!"
Having been producing the sauces for about a year now, Cecelia's sauces have grown in popularity, in part through word of mouth, and she now has the products at Salmon Arm's Askew's Foods and DeMille's Farm Market. She said she'll often see return customers and people picking up bottles for others. She said she's even had people with Trinidadian roots stop by her farmers' market table who wound up praising her product.
"I've met quite a few Trinidadians, people who pass though the market from the States and from different parts of B.C. and stuff like that, and some of them have Trinidadian parents and some of them grew up in Trinidad," said Cecelia. "So they tried it and they鈥檙e like, this is better than the one from Trinidad!"
With an entrepreneurial spirit, Cecelia said she's had many businesses. At 18 she started a Montessori school in Trinidad. She moved to Canada about 30 years ago and started another school in Winnipeg. Five years ago she moved to Salmon Arm, where she took a different route with the opening of a bed and breakfast. While doing that, she also started Cecelia's Hair Designs. With the pandemic forcing her to put the bed and breakfast on hold, and the hair business slowing down, Cecelia said she needed to do something.
"So I dipped into my wealth of knowledge, stuff that I did, and I said, OK, let me introduce these sauces to Salmon Arm, and then spread it out," said Cecelia, who produces her products at the Zest Commercial Food Hub. She said her goal is to expand her products' reach to store shelves across Canada.
"When I start a business I want it to go places鈥�," said Cecelia. "I never start a business thinking it wouldn鈥檛 work. I always look for it to work."
The key thing holding back that expansion is financing, as everything Cecelia puts what she makes back into her products. From both the farmers markets and demonstrations at Askew's, she said she knows the demand is there.
"When I did my first demo as Askew鈥檚 I sold out everything they had on the shelf in half an hour because the whole thing about demos, people see it, they like how it looks and stuff. They try it and they love it!," said Cecelia, who has other food and drink items she'd like to introduce, each a flavourful fusion with a Trinidadian foundation.
For more information, visit Cecelia's Flavour Fusions on Facebook.
