When Nana was born – is it possible, it was way back in the 1940’s?

O My. Nana’s mother, a very beautiful woman with hair the color of burgundy wine and eyes like a green sea glass was getting older herself in the mid 1940’s. In those days being age 40 was ancient. She married late as she had so many suitors she couldn’t decide which one to marry.

Finally, a Washman with that musical brogue entered her life and she was stricken with love. She got married & had two children in sixteen months and then the love of her life suddenly died.

Left with two toddlers and a deaf mother to support, Nana’s mother went off to work in a bargain basement store for rock bottom wages. In those days, not that it has changed that much, women made very little money for their labor.

Nana knows that everyone loves candy but she wanted these candies to be different and she also knows people like choices so you can buy her Pillowmellows® covered in chocolate called enrobed Pillowmellows® or not enrobed, she has dusted roasters that can be stuck on a stick over a campfire or plopped into steaming hot chocolate or even coffee.

Nana’s has chocolate enrobed Pillowmellows® but not just any chocolate, she uses the best chocolate in the world created in the old Belgian tradition and some with fancy decorations like real strawberry or banana topped mellows.

There are candy cane Pillowmellows, sour apple, Matcha ( green tea) which is full of natural anti-oxidants that fight cancer and other diseases. Chai tea flavored and even a little lemon tea pillows that turns a cup of tea into something like a cappuccino, Nana calls teacaccino. Most of her candies include these wonderful pillowmellows® in some form. Check out the extensive list and choose as many kinds as you wish. The holidays are here and it is time to celebrate life!

Together, someday soon there will be a sister to Nana’s Gourmet Comfort Co. called ‘Nana’s Planet” where part of the revenues generated from the sales of these scrumpous, healthier candies will be invested to help other people around the world and animals as well who need our help. And because we love our Planet Earth, Nana uses eco-friendly materials and processes whenever possible.

And that’s not all – people say that life is not fair but Nana is trying to change that too by using fair-trade ingredients so other little children do not have to go to work so young to help their family and can spend their childhoods toasting Pillowmellows® and making up their own dreams under a clear, cleaner, star lit sky.

Our Nana wanted to help her mother for her mama could hardly afford food for four people. By the time Nana was in grade school she was already making concoctions from cans of this and bags of that to “stretch the dollar” as her mama used to say. “We’ll have to stretch that dollar for a week” she would say.
This made Nana think of stretching things, making them bigger.

Once our Nana got into real trouble because she used a whole dozen eggs, the family month’s supply, to whip up a yellow mountain of what she called “lemon fluff.” Her grandma was so angry Nana had to eat the whole airy mountain raw. Yuck.

But she learned something. She liked the way air could be whipped into things like eggs and grow like a cloud as she whipped the eggs separately into a fluff of meringue and then whipped the yellows with sugar into another pale light cloud. Folding them together was a real amazement and she had no idea she had discovered how to almost make what could be called a soufflé.

By the time Nana was in the third grade her teachers were paying her to make cookies and pies for holidays. She was earning money by baking! She used her growing skills many times like helping to pay her way through college. And later by entertaining many people in her home for fund raisers.

But when she was a child she loved to think about marshmallows. Fluffy things, stretchy things. “Taking a dollar and stretching it.”

There was a little store owned by her best friend’s grandmother and she and her friend would buy a box of 6 “Campfire” marshmallows for 10 cents and build a fire in the vacant lot by their house and toast them on a stick under the stars of a summer sky.

She used to dream that someday she would have enough money to get the Campfire Company ® to make her the biggest marshmallow in the world and have them drive it up to her house on a flat bed truck. It would be like a giant pillow that she and her friends would jump on; it would be like a big soft playground.

In 2002 to 2007 Nana fell onto hard times. Several tragedies occurred, one after the other. Then she was diagnosed with cancer. But Nana was not going to let this stop her from creating something. She saw that no matter what bad things happened to her there were many people and animals that were worse off.

She remembered her pleasant dream of a giant marshmallow one night and decided she would create her own large dreamy marshmallow, but of course not one as big as a truck. She now dreamed of making truly gourmet marshmallows and building a company that could grow and make dollars “stretch” and grow that could be put to use to help people and animals. But she had no money. How could she possibly do this with all the expenses of treating cancer.

It is often said that when a person is in real trouble they find out who their friends are and Nana found this to be true in her struggle against what could be a deadly disease. She had also worked for nearly thirty years researching a cure for children with cancer. She couldn’t stand the thought of children suffering and dying from this awful illness.

A dear friend came forward and said he would help. Chandler Young was Nana’s friend. He had gotten an MBA from Harvard and a PhD in Economics and had taught business for over 30 years. He fell in love with Nana’s idea. And when he tasted her creations he said , “ I will help you make this dream come true.”

So he invested the needed monies to create what is now called “Nana’s Gourmet Comfort Company,” He loved Nana’s candies so much he built a candy store and coffee cafe in the small city of Auburn Hills.

It is said, that when someone needs an angel one will appear. And this really happened. You see, Chandler had a dream too. As a professor of business he had always dreamed of “doing well by doing something good for others” and this was his chance.

Nana was not going to let cancer and hard times stop her from her dream of helping others either. So together Nana and Chandler started what seemed to be the impossible.

Some three years later we have a company, but it is a company like none other. Nana began inventing flavors of marshmallows which she called “Pillowmellows” because they are soft as pillows and she often wanted to lay her tired head down and mellow out. She also wanted these Pillowmellows® and her other candies to be healthier so she created secret recipes that did not use unhealthy ingredients.

Nana’s Gourmet Pillowmellows® do not contain high fructose corn syrup. She uses all natural organic flavor and has created some 40 different delicious flavors And they are big 2” x 2” x 2” squares like an angel pillow.