I went all out this year, I meant to just grow a couple tomatoes from seed and some basil I had from years ago and it exploded into a whole thing, we’ve got peppers, a rosemary bush, lavender and a fig tree that is a cutting from my friends fig tree.

My tomatoes are just starting to come in!

What have y’all got growing?

I used to make soap and body products, and I really enjoyed it. I loved making nice-smelling things that people really liked. We were really on the verge of online sales, so we went to markets and sold that way. Didn't end up taking off just because we really didn't get the sales base. Online would have helped.

I was talking recently to my wife about making her some gatorade-type hydration beverage with electrolytes. Because we're trying to save money where we can.

I was looking up what goes into most electrolyte products, and pricing them out. What's annoying is that it would be around $75 to get what I needed. But that would give me around 1000 ½L servings, give or take.

And with that, I went down the rabbit hole of "Why not see if I can package some up and sell?"

At the most basic level, it would probably cost around $1.50 to create a 100-serving jar, which I could probably label and sell for something like $10 - which sounds like huge profit, but I think is probably around a reasonable level. Which would mean around 10¢ per serving to my customers.

As I've been expanding on the idea, I feel I could offer mutiple versions:

• The basic one that has no flavor or sweetner, just the electrolytes
• Flavored cersions with sugar for energy, artificial sweetener for folks like me who don't want the sugar but might want the electrolyes
• Custom blends on demand, i.e. since I have to limit my salt and potassium but could benefit from the magnesium and calcium, I might have a flavored artificial-sweetner one with just two electrolytes. I could have main flavors with color (as it makes them taste better, yay silly brains) but offer no-color blends for those that preferred

Paired with an online shop, I think it might be enough to be interesting to people - being able to offer more flavors than the norm. And things I'm not sure some have though of - being able to add this to a protein shake, so flavors relevant to that might be interesting (i.e. getting to play with some "dessert" flavours that would be weird in a drink).

I've got a ton of research to do - and to see how I could start hopefully under cottage food laws with less registrations and fees.

But I'm curious to know if this sounds interesting, what ideas you have, and most importantly, if you've run your own small hobby style business in any relevant sort of way, what advice and ideas you might have to help me as I look at this possibility.

Basically, I'm trying to keep afloat here, and I'm not picking up business clients as quickly as I need, and I think doing this would not only be fun, but perhaps profitable as well.

In a few weeks, I'll be making a short trip (3 days) to Palo Alto, working in the Stanford Medical Center area.

I'm hoping for some local or experienced insight into "don't miss" destinations for food, culture, history, and sight-seeing. It's likely I'll only have Sunday afternoon and weekday evenings free, so the personal tour may have to be more focused than local guides might otherwise suggest.

My home area has great food, but I'm really starving for Eastern cuisines. I'm willing to go beyond what a corporate travel budget permits if there's truly extraordinary, "can't get anywhere else" dining available.

Your insights are greatly appreciated!