By Nancy Chuda founder and Editor-in-Chief of LuxEcoLiving and co-founder of Healthy Child Healthy World
When you walk in the doors of the Brown Butter Cookie Company you are met with aromas that take the senses to new heights. It’s not ordinary cookie dough. It’s the smell of your childhood.
I had a chance to meet the two entrepreneurs. They dropped cookies in my gift bag and said, “tell me what you think of our flavors.” I could hardly finish my taste test without one more coconut-lime combo.
Traci and I are sisters working together and loving what we do every day.”
Christa Hozie and Traci Nickson are sisters who love their day job. Baking brown butter cookies with sea salt. And they are perfectly poised to understand that cravings of any kind usually combine ingredients that are polar opposites. Thus, the Original Brown Butter Sea Salt Cookie was born in 2008. Located at 98 North Ocean Avenue in the little seaside town of Cayucos California, the girls execute their passion with meticulous hand-rolling care. When was the last time you baked cookies from scratch?
The secret to their success and recipe is not such a big secret. Bakers have been browning butter for decades. The slightly burnt aroma of the butter does not necessarily translate in the taste. What translates is a sumptuous, rich morsel of chocolate, or coconut-lime, expresso, just some of the original flavors which are truly delectable. And don’t let the size fool you. Just because their round and small doesn’t mean they pack a wallop of cholesterol. That’s the bad news. But what about the good cholesterol? Skip lunch, forget the lean meats on the Subway and splurge a little…the Brown Butter Cookie Company is as good as it gets.
Nancy Chuda is a seasoned broadcast journalist, television writer/producer, talk show host and author. Her career spans over three decades having appeared on both national and cable television.
In 1971 she authored one of America’s first low-calorie cookbooks, How To Gorge George Without Fattening Fanny, published by Hawthorn Books. Appearing as a regular guest on Dinah’s Place, Dinah Shore’s ABC daytime talk show. And later on The Johnny Carson Show, The Today Show with Barbara Walters, Merv Griffin, Phil Donahue, and David Frost. In 1972, Nancy and ABC’s Good Morning America co-produced Michael Krause produced a cable program, The Low- Calorie Gallery, based on her best selling cook book. In 1975, hired by Warner-Amex as part of a creative team, she was responsible for hosting and producing content for Columbus Then and Now, a program, the invention of QUBE, an interactive television system which played a pivotal role in the history of American cable television. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QUBE
In 1978 she developed a series for ABC’s Good Morning America based on an article which appeared in Mother Earth News magazine. The Integral Urban House, a case study project and model for a sound urban habitat sponsored by the Farallones Institute in Berkley California was the first example of green architecture ever to be televised.
In 1979, Nancy co-produced and hosted Sunnyside a Los Angeles based public affairs program viewed on the CBS affiliate station KNXT, From 1980-1984, she appeared on KABC’s Eyewitness News as entertainment reporter and film critic.
Her environmental advocacy began when her daughter was diagnosed with cancer. In 1990 she co-produced an Emmy nominated ABC Variety Special, An Evening With Friends For The Environment to benefit Mothers and Others for a Livable Planet one of the first national children’s environmental health advocacy groups in which she served as a volunteer.
Currently, she is the co-founder and President Emeritus of Healthy Child Healthy World, a non-profit organization established to honor the Chuda’s only child, Colette, who died in 1991 at the age of 5 from Wilm’s tumor a nonhereditary childhood cancer. She is also the co-founder of The Colette Chuda Environmental Fund, a donor-advised fund which supports major epidemiological research on children’s health.
Nancy has won numerous awards for her advocacy. In 1996, the California League of Conservation Voters Environmental Leadership Award, The Healthy Schools Heroes Award, presented to both her and her husband James Chuda by California Governor Gray Davis for their legislative efforts in securing The Healthy Schools Act which was signed into law in September, 2000. In 2003, Parent’s Magazine published an article Mom’s On A Mission and awarded Nancy for her environmental leadership for children’s environmental health.
She serves as an associate of the Director’s Council of Public Representatives of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and was appointed by President Clinton’s Health and Human Services Secretary, Donna Shalala, to serve as a member of the National Advisory Council for the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) a position she held for four years.
In 2010, along with her husband James she founded LuxEcoLiving.
