Tassos, in conjunction with Chicago Magazine, is pleased to participate in the upcoming Northwestern Memorial Hospital Fund Raiser to be held at the Mueseum of Contemporary Arts in Chicago, IL on Friday June 18th from 7:00 pm to 10:30 pm. More details on this event can be found at The Auxiliary Board of Northwestern Memorial’s Website.  

At this event, Tassos will provide a food station offering a Kalamata Beet Wrap, which includes beet carpaccio, Tassos Skordalia (with Roasted Garlic), Tassos Pitted Kalamata Olive served up on a toasted pita chip and garnished with chives. The preparation below was created by Executive Chef Gaetano DiBenedetto, of Gaetano’s restaurant in Forest Park, IL. All ingredients shown (everything but the plate and chives) are available on Tassos.com.

Tassos has also donated several gift baskets to be auctioned silently and will be providing Tassos amazing stuffed olives for the spirits sponsors as well. It’s an excellent cause and we hope to see you there!

We are very pleased to be able to support the fine arts, particularly in our home town of Chicago. Recently, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) hosted a Subscriber Appreciation Reception. Each attendee received complimentary products from Tassos. The items they received were our Red Pepper Coulis, Organic Green Olives and a bottle of our Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

Allison Faetz, Marketing Coordinator of the  Chicago Symphony Orchestra, said “The event was wonderful and the guests greatly appreciated the very lovely gifts you donated. Thank you again for your support and gracious donation. You helped make our event a great success!”

Congratulations to the CSO! And keep the music coming!

More Products: Yesterday and today we expanded our selections of olives. Our new items are larger sized olives and larger size bottles. These include 1 liter and 1.5 liter sized Pitted Kalamata Olives , 1 Liter Sized Garlic Stuffed Olives and 1 Liter Pimenoto Sutffed Olives. The olives in these larger jars are larger than the olives in the smaller (13 oz) jars. You might also find these items at either Costco Wholesale Clubs or BJ’s Wholesale Clubs. These items were added in addition to “By Popular Demand” item, Super Mammoth Garlic and Jalapeno Double Stuffed Olives (also in 1 Liter jar). There are more new items to come, so stay tuned!

More Music: Today we went live on our new website’s homepage. In this update we added music. The Title of the track is ”Meep Meep” and features salutations/greetings and or common festive expressions in seven languages….English, followed by Spanish (later there is also some some Spanish in the Puerto Ricaño dialect), Arabic, Italian, Greek, Russian, (then Greek again) and finally French. The “Meep Meep” is meant to imply a car traveling around the world, and honking, as it were, “Hello!” to the world…can you identify what is being said in each of the seven Languages? We’re offering one free case of Tassos Extra Olive Oil (17 oz) with free delivery to the first person who can translate all seven languages correctly. Send your answer’s here! It should go without saying that the music was created specifically for Tassos.com

More Tassos: You also notice that the three icons now have titles when you “mouse-over” the objects and that the Tassos logo has flashes of light associated with it. Hope this helps everyone navigate a touch more easily.

Alright…alright…alright already! We got your message.

By popular demand, we have made available our Tassos® Garlic and Jalapeno Double Stuffed Super Mammouth Green Olives on line for the first time.  Enjoy!

It was about 9:oo pm Chicago time on a Thursday night, as I entered into Gaetano’s restaurant with my box of Tassos® ingredients. With me I had a host of Tassos® olives, red pepper coulis, several tapenades, sundried tomatoes, extra virgin olive oil, feta cheese stuffed florinas peppers and blue cheese stuffed florinas peppers and who knows what else. I handed the box over to Chef Gaetano and asked, “What you can make with this?”

The Chef and his Kitchen spun off into a frenzy of energy and activity. In no more than 20 minutes, the Chef had created 4 unique dishes, starting with a salmon Carpaccio drizzled with the red pepper coulis, finished with chili and soy oils and finishing with a recipe that will be featured in Bon Appetite’s on-line Recipe box.

November 2009 starts our promotional campaign with Chicago Magazine On-Line. With this promotion code (PREMIUM) Chicago Magazine Readers will save 15% off their purchase.

And if our new guests register with Tassos.com, by simply providing their name and e-mail address, they will save an additional 20% off their on-line order! That’s a total of 35% OFF! Once you’ve registered with Tassos.com every order placed (that’s right, every order) will receive an “Honored Guest” discount of 20%.

In addition to this (as if it weren’t enough), if you are one of the first 100 orders in November 2009 you will also receive a free Tassos T-Shirt with your order!

Don’t forget to check out our click and pick, fully customizable gift baskets! Here you can select any TASSOS® item buy the unit and have these baskets built especially just for you. In addition to the award winning products of your choice, you get a very handsome gift basket! And you will still pay less than you would expect to at retail.

Both the culinary and print media worlds were aghast at yesterday’s news that Conde Nast would be shutting down their “Gourmet” brand of food magazine. I have been a subscriber to Gourmet for several years, and only just recently got the gumption to place advertisements in the October, November and December 2009 issues (see below).

In addition to the advertisement, we at Tassos were particularly excited about participating in the Gourmet Institute, featuring the likes of Anthony Bourdain, to take place later this month in New York City, New York. At this event, we were planning on giving a special 20% discount to the attendees of the event through a special promotional code “GMI2009NYC,” sampling and tasting many of the Tassos products, and giving away five (5) gift baskets as well.

Over the past year, I have come to know some of the people at Gourmet Magazine. They are spectacular people.

So, in appreciation for their hard work and as a salute to the 70 years of Gourmet Magazine’s contribution to the culinary world as well as their staff and editor, Ruth Riechl, we at Tassos will select 5 (five) Tassos Guests (at random) which enter the promotional code “GMI2009NYC” at the time of placing their online order with us during the month of October 2009, to recieve a FREE gift basket along with receiving a 20% discount on the order.

We wish all the people at Gourmet Magazine the very best, and look forward to hearing about their new successes in wherever their journeys may take them.