Thirty years ago, Carol Emeruwa began searching for an alternative to the standard chocolate chip cookie to put in a care packages to her daughter at college. “I was looking around for something, but she didn’t like chocolate chip cookies,” Emeruwa recalls. So she started fooling around with different recipes and developed a ginger cookie made with natural ingredients and three kinds of ginger.  “She moved to New York after college and I still sent those cookies.”

Then Emeruwa was downsized from her accounting job two years ago. New job prospects looked bleak. “My daughter said, ‘do something you enjoy doing,’” Emeruwa says. So she decided to devote her time to baking and crated Red Head Artisanal Ginger Cookies in December of 2014.  She sells gift boxes and subscriptions through the Red Head website and AHAlife. Prices start at $24 for a dozen cookies. Emeruwa now has a two-pack of cookies that she plans to distribute to area stores.
 
The business has taken off. Emeruwa now offers five different flavors of ginger cookies that she bakes in the Cleveland Culinary Launch and Kitchen. “It’s really exciting down there,” she says. “It’s a great place to learn and taste other people’s products. There’s a great atmosphere down there.”
 
Emeruwa says she thinks she’s found her true calling. “I want to spend all my time building the business,” she says. “This is something I really enjoy doing. Now we’re working on new flavors, more savory items, and I’m tinkering with bacon.”  Emeruwa recently recruited 15 customers to taste her new flavors, and she still sends the new flavors to her daughter.

Cleveland has played a starring role in several blockbuster films in recent years, creating an economic boom in the local film industry. Can local filmmakers build on that success?

"Proprietor Paulius Nasvytis and the bartenders of The Velvet Tango Room are 'torchbearers of tradition.' Since 1996, the bartenders here were serving classic cocktails long before it was trendy. There are more than 80 cocktails on the menu; about 30 of them are house creations, including the India Lime Fizz (a rich, creamy, and powerful cocktail that combines gin, rum, flora India limes, vanilla, and a whole egg). The bar is housed in a space that was once a speakeasy — bullet holes can still be seen in the ceiling. The bar and back bar are made of refinished mahogany and the front room feature a baby grand piano at which music is played nightly by a three-piece jazz combo and a late-night pianist. The second room is reached by walking through a mirror in the coatroom. There's another baby grand piano there, along with a cozy fireplace, comfy leather chairs, and, further beyond, a patio where some of the bar's cocktail ingredients are grown. Both rooms have an old-fashioned black-and-white TV that shows classic movies with no sound. There are limited snacks, like speck, which is locally sourced smoked pork belly made by a German family in Cleveland."

Read the full story here.

This weekend, celebrate history and social justice at Station Hope, bowl with Clevelanders that have big ideas at Bowlectivo, relive the dream of the ‘90s at Mahall’s MTV Spring Break Dance Party, run four miles to support clean water and more.

Three new creative studios, BRICK Ceramic + Design Studio, Praxis Fiber Workshop and Ink House Annex, are set to open just in time for the summer season.

Back in 1982, Jerry Mearini was all set to study guitar at Berklee College of Music when he abruptly changed his mind. “The day before I was supposed to go, I realized that I couldn’t play guitar for the rest of my life,” he recalls. Instead Mearini earned a degree in physics from Ohio State and a masters and PhD in experimental physics from CWRU.
 
Mearini’s decision to study physics paid off well. In 1998 he founded Genvac Aerospace, a company in Highland Heights that produces materials and components for the aerospace industry using diamond-like carbon.  
 
But music was still in Mearini’s blood. He has played guitar in a local classic rock and heavy metal band for 40 years. Two years ago, he began merging his love of rock and roll, physics and diamond-like carbon films into one to create Rock Hard diamond guitar picks.
 
The stainless steel picks are coated with a thin layer of carbon. They provide a smooth but hard metal surface, but without friction, that won’t wear. “The last few years I’ve been looking at opportunities to put some of this diamond-like carbon in picks,” Mearini explains. “It just does not scratch. The coating resulted in a fantastic new guitar pick.”
 
Now Mearini has made a few hundred picks, launched a Indiegogo campaign, and is about to open an Amazon store. The picks range from $20 with an Indiegogo contribution to $30 on Amazon. And he says all manufacturing can be done in Cleveland. “All of the facilities necessary to make this product are probably best found in Cleveland,” he says.
 
Mearini says musicians have praised the picks for their properties. “So far, every guitarist I’ve given them to has liked them,” he boasts. “I have to admit, this is a lot of fun.”

On Tuesday, over 500 guests gathered at the Victory Center in the Health-Tech Corridor to celebrate the sold-out Vibrant City awards, hosted by Cleveland Neighborhood Progress.

CNP President Joel Ratner told the crowd, “The facts are there. Data shows that our region is gaining brains and income, our city schools are making terrific improvements, and Cleveland’s population loss is ending. We are headed into an era of exciting growth.”

City of Cleveland Community Development Director Daryl Rush was honored with the inaugural Morton L.Mandel Leadership in Community Development Award. Other recipients were:

CDC Catalytic Project/Program Award
Fairfax Renaissance Development -- Intergenerational housing

Urban Realtor Award
Keith Brown and Dave Sharkey – Progressive Urban Real Estate

Developer Award
Keith Sutton and Dave Territo, Sutton Builders

Neighborhood Branding & Marketing Award
Downtown Cleveland Alliance – You and Downtown Video

Community Collaboration Award
Gordon Square Arts District (DSCDO, NWT, CPT)

Corporate Partner Award
Third Federal Saving

The orchestra's residency, which continues through May, is an amalgamation of free concerts, community service efforts, educational collaborations in local schools and health and wellness events over a three-month period.

This weekend, celebrate the opening of BRICK Ceramic + Design Studio, clean up Euclid Park with Erie Art Treasures Kid’s Adventures, check out CMA’s MIX: Design, learn the history of your favorite University Circle pub and more.

Through turning inventors' ideas into medical products and services, CCI has created 73 spinoff companies in the past 15 years, including some that have become recognizable entities in Cleveland and worldwide.

As vacant factories, schools and homes are torn down or remodeled, Rustbelt Reclamation is saving materials that would otherwise be thrown out and using them to build sleek, new furniture.

This week, taste traditional Somali fare at Kafaya’s Kitchen, support independent journalism at Belt’s bar crawl, take a moonlit bike ride on the Towpath, learn to construct a pinhole camera and more.