Boastful bore

After my girls were born, I resolved that I would never again brag about anything except them.

Who was I kidding? I’m way too insecure to just sit back the rest of my life and let everybody figure out for themselves how smart or cool I am.

Still, what I’m about to do is gratuitous. This is a full-on boast.

Crain’s this week won a slew of awards from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers – that powerhouse organization, so revered among its legions of members, so feared on Capitol Hill. Five of those went to our website, including first place in overall excellence for sites our size (half a million monthly page views and smaller). I’m proud of all our team, particularly Online editor Mike McHugh, Multimedia Producer Jeff Hartvigsen and General Manager Terry Gallaher.

I’m also very proud that Entrepeneurs in Action, the monthly video I’ve been producing since August, won best audio/visual report for small/midsize websites. I share the credit with former Assistant Managing Editor Tom Mucha (now Managing Editor at GlobalPost), who produced the first seven episodes last year, and Mark Scheffler, the videographer and editor on all the 2008 pieces. In the judges comments, they singled out two episodes published in 2009. Those were shot by Crain’s staff photographer Steve Serio and edited by our video whiz kid, Dustin Park.

Here’s what the judges said:

“Entrepreneurs in Action” does a superb job of finding interesting startup companies in the Chicago area and bringing them to life on screen. The producers show us the reality of the startup life via revealing, in-depth interviews with their entrepreneur subjects. Impressively, they also find fresh angles on big stories such as the future of the news business (“Big ideas, small profits”) and the changing nature of intellectual property (“Callpod: Running with the big dogs”).

This is really gratifying. Since taking over EiA I’ve fallen in love with the damn thing. It allows me to indulge my fascination with entrepreneurs and to continue honing my storytelling chops in a new medium — which I’m only beginning to understand. My hope is that the series will only get better.

Then I’ll really have something to brag about.

(By the way, you can also catch EiA on Comcast Digital Cable. Go to Channel 1 or hit the On Demand button, then select Get Local, then Crain’s Chicago Business. There it is.)

We don’t cook no pizzas

Homemade Pizza Co. is the Chicago pizzeria that, like my father before it, doesn’t do any cooking. It’s also the subject of this month’s Entrepreneurs in Action video (produced by yours truly).

Homemade has 19 stores in Chicago, 5 in Minneapolis and 2 in D.C. It’s run by a smart, funny, no-bullshit entrepreneur named Eric Fosse.

Confession: We order Homemade Pizza all the time. So convenient – they deliver fast (no cooking time, you know) and we can eat when it’s convenient. The toppings are all fresh and natural, and I do think you gain flavor when it comes straight outta the oven, as opposed to out of the cardboard box where it sat for 20 minutes while the delivery guy found your house.

So this was a fun piece. Got to visit Homemade’s commissary, where they make dough and sauce for 1,000 pizzas a day in all the Chicago stores. Eric developed the recipe himself, so he could explain any little detail. For instance, they don’t use measuring cups for any ingredients – everything is weighed on a scale. More accurate.

Eric also let me in on some news: Homemade will soon have pasta on the menu (right now it’s just pizza and salads). He’s hired a classically trained chef from super-schmancy L2O to develop recipes. Look for frozen lasagna first.

And, last fall Eric bought a small farm in Southwest Michigan where he’ll grow lettuce, tomatoes and other ingredients for pizzas and salads. He wanted the farm because he wants to better understand the stuff he’s selling – and as a place where his staff can go to learn more about the secret life of foodstuffs.

Check it out.