306. How can we keep our food safe AND healthy? | Melissa Kagiyama | Key to the Mountain | Missoula, MT

Melissa Kagiyama from Key to the Mountain I buy all my food from local farmers and then cook it.

How do we connect with you?

I love sharing with everyone

so grateful you are all listening

again, my name is Melissa Kagiyama

keytothemountain.com

want to share

just hit the contact us

I respond to all emails!

I love getting requests for new food and flavors

have an Instagram key_to_the_mountain

On Facebook at Key to the Mountain

Are you a millennial born between 1980-1995?

Yeah Millennial!

Awesome!

Today is Friday August 2, 2019!

So I am so excited to introduce my guest today who I met at the Farmer’s Market when I was in Missoula for the 1/2 Marathon in June. And she gave me something that not only did I love but helped me complete the Missoula 1/2 Marathon standing up! From Key to the Mountain in Missoula Montana here’s rockstar millennial Melissa Kagiyama!

KeyToTheMountain.JPG

I have had guest come on and talk about food they cooked from the farmer’s market. You said when you first moved to Missoula, you were blown away by the quality of food available at the farmer’s market and then you started cooking with it. People often wonder about those things. I am more the organic eater at my house and I feel like you as we were saying the pre-chat that you struggle with water. 

Tell us a little about yourself.

I really appreciate all our local farmers that are doing all that work. We cook it so we can preserve that amazing food that we grow for all year.

Tell me about your first gardening experience?

A brief background, grew up not cooking, eating everything from a can, not cooking dinner, which is a way a lot of millennials grew up, with both parents working, it takes a lot of time to cook fresh food so we didn’t eat a lot of fresh food. 

When I got into college, I got really exhausted all the time, I felt like something wasn’t right, like I was sick, I went to the doctor. 

I was sleeping like 16 hours a day because I was so tired. Going to the doctors telling me I’m fine and it was all in my head, was very discouraging and disempowering. I said, I’m gonna find something out and I’m gonna do something about it.

After much searching I found indian holistic medicine called Ayurveda what that is in a nutshell is directions on how to live and eat on a balanced life

Tells you how much to 

  • eat
  • exercise
  • sleep

Ayurveda: It’s really about entire lifestyle

IMG_7265.JPG

Really for me, what shocked me so much was about the food I was eating, I thought for me if I was eating canned green beans, I was getting my vegetables, but that is not necessarily true sometimes its true it depends

I felt completely healed, I learned all this knowledge about how to eat. I finished my degree really great! I started teaching, so at this point I was 

cooking all my food

basically really simple recipes

  • salad
  • spaghetti

But I was actually cooking my food. A book I really love is Mark Bittmans’

How to Cook Everything―Completely Revised Twentieth Anniversary Edition: Simple Recipes for Great Food

How to Cook Everything―Completely Revised Twentieth Anniversary Edition: Simple Recipes for Great Food

That’s where I learned how to cook

I really recommended that book

I started teaching and I taught music

I had all sorts of kids

  • young
  • old
  • poor
  • rich

whatever background

I noticed after lunch I couldn’t teach the kids, they weren’t focused. They were acting crazy bouncing off the walls. For me I personally decided it was because of what they were eating. 

I felt the same thing happening to me in my childhood, eating food that wasn’t actually supporting me was happening to my students.

Then I moved to Montana, when I got to the farmer’s market I was like imagined! I was like:

This is what food is supposed to be! When you get something fresh from your garden!

I felt even better

We have such a short growing season and I wondered how can we take this amazing high quality food and keep it for the whole year?

So we’re a really high quality food manufacturing company

KeyToTheMountainMelissa

We believe everything we do we feel food should, that food should not just fill your belly but it should

  • make you feel amazing!
  • help you think clearly!
  • empower you in everything that you do!

Everyone in the food chain should benefit from eating 

Taking from the earth, so we source locally, we really trust our Montana farmers and organically that’s always better all the way! All the way through the chain till we get to the person who is eating the food so we are supporting that person to living a healthy organic life!

That’s sort of a long answer to my first gardening experience but that’s how we came to be!

That’s why I love millennials so much! I think that what you are doing is so important. It reminds me of this little cartoon I saw on Facebook it’s these 2 carrots talking to each other and the once carrot says, why do they call you food and me organic?

IMG_7391.PNG

Also Andrea Catherine who used to come on my show and talk about Ayurvedic healing and taught us some of those tricks and how to eat from the Farmer’s Market. What I got fromMelissa was this EnerGHEE, and I also had this packet of gel I bought. I loved this so much more it was natural, it was easier to carry and just so fantastic for the half marathon!

EnerGhee.jpeg

I was surprised to hear you say, I find I have a hard time at 2-3 in the afternoon. I get a lot of sleep, I go to bed early and get up early. We have our first potatoes from the summer finally because we have been eating store potatoes and are so excited to have garden fresh food.

Let me start with that since you are talking about it.

The EnerGhee is like a snack bar but it’s actually food

  • walnuts
  • raisins
  •  and GHEE which is clarified butter

Ayurvedically it’s actually super healing for your digestion

  • heals your gut and 
  • boosts your metabolism

Super healthy been around for thousands years. It’s getting popular with 

  • KETO
  • Whole 30 diets

We’ve taken food and blended it in the proper proportions. Taken the food so you don’t need a ton of one thing to get you through the day

you get protein from the walnuts so you don’t need more protein

that’s just a misconception that a lot of people have

You also get the sweetness from raisins which are also natural! 

Healthy

easy to digest

balanced portions of real food

people love it

it’s flying off the shelves

we put it in some grocery stores and we struggle to keep up with the orders

we do a lot of jam

so, we get all of our produce from local farmers

we don’t put a ton of sugar in our jams, so what other manufacturers do

First if you are gonna make this at home

your gonna mix some:

  • fruit
  • sugar
  • lemon juice
  • pectin maybe
  • boil it
  • can it

What manufacturers do is they add sugar, extra sugar is much less expensive then fruit, 

you only need so much sugar but if you add extra sugar you increase your profits.

that’s what manufacturers do

sometimes add water

that super dilutes the products

by doing that it’s so watered down 

more pectin

corn starch

whatever

by then it has not got enough flavor so that’s where the natural colors and flavors come in

we argue food is already flavored

high quality food

don’t need to add flavors

  • jams like you make at home
  • barbecue sauce
  • relish

plenty more products in the works

same ideas that there’s no fillers because we want to eat food.

How does it stay on the shelf? Isn’t the reason so it will stay preserved?

I get that question a lot, I have to be careful how to answer this? When you are making food to preserve at home, it’s going to last years and years but because of the sugar, so for example, honey is shelf stable and never goes bad because it’s sugar. 

sugar is a natural preservative

but you only need a certain amount of sugar. I think 60% is is a good safe amount of sugar, you don’t need 90% which is what so much on the store shelves is!

Yes you do need sugar but not that much sugar, that said a lot of our jams are low sugar and we do use a low sugar pectin which has calcium but that’s just because we are going extra low sugar. If you are making jam at home you are going to get that high quality super flavor of how it’s supposed to be made.

And the flavors of the jams are:

Flathead Lake Brandied Cherry

Wild Huckleberry Habanero Jam

Just Peachy Jalapeno Jam

Huckleberry Chipotle BBQ Sauce

 

It’s basically what relish should be. 

whatever you have at the end of your garden season

  • squash 
  • cauliflower

doesn’t matter

  • take it
  • chop it up
  • put it in a brine
  • put it in your jar

great way to use leftover vegetables

it’s very creative. So delicious because it’s actual vegetables, anything home canning would do.

Brian Moody AERO MT

Yesterday, I did an interview with Brian Moody From AERO about cooking things using up vegetables in the garden at the end of the summer! I think listeners will be interested in how to use food from the farmer’s market and things they are making!

Mike's bread Cottage Foods December 19, 2017

One of the most downloaded episodes on my show is Ed Evanstan from Helena talking about the new cottage food bill.

Enabling people to sell value added products to the farmer’s market, the start has to be a hand to hand sale, can’t go in the store and you are example of someone who started out that way and now has a business solving a problem that a lot of us have that food that gives you energy and enables you to live a healthy life. 

people ask me, when you are eating organically, is so expensive how do you justify that?

how can you put a price on your health?

I would argue to take a look at your priorities and decide what you think what is most important.

This is a choice that individuals should make

do you value

  • your health
  • your self
  • the earth
  •  nice cars
  • big houses?

You probably hear my opinion when you are eating well, you’re gonna save so much money on medical bills and you are going to have so much more energy to go out in the world and create value and therefore create more money for yourself.

You are not going to pay for more food, it’s almost hard for me to wrap my head around that

I used to think that way

But it’s more about how can I create myself to be the best version of myself to create more prosperity for myself. Then I can afford not just what I want but the other things including the houses and cars

You don’t have to choose between those, but it starts with taking care of ourselves.

Another thing you were talking about processed food.

processed just means cooked, so we have to be careful how we think about that

changed some sort of way, if you get lettuce from your garden, and you chop it up, you have just processed that lettuce

if you spear some fish and it’s almost raw you have processed the fish. 

Over-processed food

What happens, what you are talking about, you’ve shortened the word is over-processed food

what we are getting on the shelf sometimes is overly processed is it has extra preservatives, the reason why that happens is its meant to be safe, I’m all for safe food.

First I’ll talk about we’re overcooking our food

I’ll give you an example.

In order to make pickles, I don’t recommend starting with pickles because it’s a really big process because vinegar is added.

If you are going to go to the farmer’s market to sell something I would start with, I would do a jam or baked good

there’s a couple other simple recipes that you can do, that are not super risky, so they’re very easy to get into the market. 

With pickles you have to send them to a processing authority and they send them back to you how to cook them, to make sure your food is safe. Which is awesome, I’m all for safe food. But when I sent in our squash pickle

They sent the squash pickles back:

I have to cook them for 18 minutes and when I did that, they got shriveled up, basically all the life and nutrients is cooked out of them. The reason for doing that is they are thick you have to cook them a certain amount, so you have to make sure that anything potentially hazardous is cooked out of the pickles

food safety

laws are to keep us safe which is really good. 

But when you cook something at home you’re probably gonna cook them for 6 minutes, maybe 15 minutes top, you will preserve all of that nutrition. I am an advocate for cooking this at home, just follow the recipe and you’ll be fine!

The other thing that we do is add a whole bunch of preservatives, I’m saying we as a society, so that the product will last a really long time.

When you cook these foods at home, they’ll stay fresh for 2 years.

Our season for growing until we get to the next season is only one year so it doesn’t even need to last 2 years. But putting all those preservatives lets it be on the shelf, it last forever, it’s great for shipping really far, there are so many reasons to do that. But we don’t need to do that , it doesn’t support our health. When you put preservatives in excess in products it’s killing any potential bacteria that can grow in the food but when you eat that you are killing stuff in your gut health. 

When we eat food hopped up on preservatives you are doing that. 

If you make it yourself or buy form your farmer’s market

bigger manufacturer practices

label you can see what’s in it then your good to go!

Awesome, have you ever thought about teaching at the Good Food Store they have that classroom there. I think people would like to learn this and then they would say this is too much work and they would by yours.

Interesting idea, usually at the farmer’s market I explain and people say, oh, that makes sense so it becomes sort of an easy sell because people understand the value that they are paying for!

something I’ve learned that kind of surprised me and I love sharing it

when you look at the label, we pretty much all know that whatever is first in the ingredients is what is the most in the product so what we are starting to do as a culture

want to make sure that food is the first ingredient not sugar. 

What manufacturers will do is split the sugar

I’m a big label reader. 

What the label might say is it might be blueberry jam,

  • blueberries
  • corn syrup
  • sugar
  • brown sugar
  • sucrose

Separately they are less then the blueberries so they split up but if you put them together it’s still sugar!

That is not always the case!

Sometimes for example there is sugar and brown sugar in cookies is for flavor

You can tell if it’s very neutral sugars you wonder why is it being split into different sugars.

You can also look at the added sugars. If one tablespoon of someone’s jam if the sugar content is 18 grams there’s no way blueberries is the first ingredient!

an interesting thing about labels

what I have found, I’m not that big of a manufacturer yet, it’s like the wild west in labeling, you can almost put anything you want on your label and there’s no one enforcing it or verifying it. 

So if I did put more sugar in that blueberry jam but I did list blueberries as the first ingredient, it’s not like there is someone in the kitchen actually measuring what sugar I am putting it. What they tend to do is you give them the recipe and they check it against their labels.

The other thing is the KETO police

So you can put that on anything and it’s really just a way for that manufacturer to market if you are on the KETO diet you can eat this, now if that person doesn’t know anything about the KETO diet, it might be, you don’t know until you look at the panel. 

you just have to read the label you can’t just trust the front label, you can’t outright lie or do anything misleading, but it’s so gray that, you really want to be careful about when you listen to the marketing.

Make sure you’re

  • flipping it over
  • looking at the ingredients 
  • deciding for yourself if that is what you want

Which is different for everyone.

I’m just gonna go through some facts that I learn.

This is great, my step-daughter and I were just talking the other day, there is this brand that is called Simply Organic and we are wondering, because their prices are so low, is this really Organic? How are they doing this?

GrainByGrain

Grain by Grain: A Quest to Revive Ancient Wheat, Rural Jobs, and Healthy Food

And Bob Quinn talked about he joined and helped form the regulations to start in Montana they wanted to make sure they were going to label their stuff organics, make sure that it meant people were following certain practices. I found myself just looking the other day looking at cranberry juice that was almost all sugar. 

to be fair cranberries are pretty tart so I would want quite a bit of sugar.

If you want an organic is a certification

it is better then other marketing

  • if you are organic certified
  • you go through an audit
  • they will come to your farm

make sure everything is organic

so that is a label that can be trusted more

If you are buying a jar of pickles, let’s say are you buying a jar of organic pickles or a jar of organic sugar?

It can be certified either way, you just have to know what you are buying, by turning it over (and reading the label.)

so I want to put this in a way that is encouraging. 

Yes keep going, you’ve been super inspiring.

Sometimes when I tell people this there’s like I don’t ever want to eat food again!

  • grow your own food
  • go to the farmer’s market
  • when you buy food from your local farmers

You can ask them how are you doing this?

For example I was buying, I’ve been doing this survey around town

Would you rather eat cherries that have been sprayed with poison? So they don’t have any worms in them, 

or would you rather that at some point may have had worms in them.

What do you think?

I’m a total worm girl. I talk about this a lot about kale that I grow, I don’t care if it has the bugs! My husband is always on my case, when I open strawberries, are you enjoying your toxic chemicals this morning?

So, with that said would you put an organic pesticide on your fruit?

I don’t think Mike would put any kind of anything on our apples, we are having a problem this year with our apple trees, have some kind of disease.

I would argue, I want to have this conversation

points of view

an organic pesticide it’s still an organic poison, whatever could be hurting the fruit

not to do at any point

There could be certain situation where you do want to take antibiotics

is there a healthier way to get rid of the worms in the cherries that support the trees and supports our health rather then defaulting to spray it, even though its an organic spray it’s fine. 

When I ask this question, people say, well of course I would rather eat worms. Some people are like that’s disgusting. And not even eating the worms

if at some point, I use an organic spray

you just told me you didn’t want to eat poison then you tell me you spray your trees with a poison

We have to really think about what we are doing but we need to make these decisions on what we value, not on what we think our best thing. If you think you are being healthy by using an organic spray.

That’s what we are saying about this Simply Organic Brand, are they spraying those OMRI supported sprays? How are they doing this, when you get those big plastic things in the store. I did talk to this guy in NY, from Young’s Farms they said they couldn’t grow peaches that they could sell as a peach but they can make them into pies that they sell thousands of at thanksgiving, then they just turn them into value added products by cutting out the brown spots etc.

So when I visited Japan, we went to a peach farm, what they do, they wrap each peach on the tree in a little paper bag that will protect it from anything that would hurt it. It may seem very tedius. So when you buy a peach they are like $5-8, they are expensive but instead of buying 5-8 peaches you just buy like one. There are other options. 

with cherries

you just soak them in water then the worms come out

The consumer has to be willing to pay a higher prices for the cherries and peaches because it takes extra time and care in order to grow them that is a little less convenient for the farmer. Takes more of their time but is healthier for everyone.

When we can explain why organic is more expensive they are totally going to be willing to pay for it

it’s all good

When you buy locally you can ask your farmers all these questions

I love buying local wherever you are

even if you are in Tennessee at the farmer’s market ask how they grow their peaches?

interesting thing about food that is shipped really far it’s not picked ripe!

  • needs time to ripen
  • so it’s not squished
  • lower quality that way

I found this out when I was looking for a commercial kitchen, I was at this one kitchen. They were showing me the facility.

  • this is where you can chop your vegetables
  • and wash them
  • this is where you can bleach them

I said wow! Did you just say bleach them?

They said yes, this is an extra precaution to make sure they stay safe

It also because it’s killing anything on the lettuce for example, it also increases the shelf life. Then we can grow lettuce out of the country so we have a nice salad in winter

it’s great if you do want to eat salad in winter that’s how you have to do it.

if you are buying locally that’s probably not happening and you’re getting all the extra flora that is on the produce that is helping your gut health and digestion.

I talked to some local farmers and asked them if they bleached their produce? This is what I actually heard from another organic farmer here in Montana, they said it’s actually encouraged to do that it promotes food safety. 

Again, I would much rather safe food then get e-coli. I am definitely an advocate for safe food.

They get points on how they grow everything before they take it to market. 

  • how it is sent to market
  • good agricultural practices

They were able to not bleach and lose those points and still maintain the organic certification.

That was interesting . IDK anyone who does it around here. It’s just something when food is shipped far away. You can sometimes smell it in the little baggies of carrots.

Even if they are organic

the argument is that the bleach actually dissipates when it touches organic matter and it becomes not bleach. So you are not eating bleach theoretically but you are also not anything alive anymore and we need to think more about food that has that microorganisms that support our digestion!

eating bleached food is better then getting sick, but I argue that isn’t there a better way that we can grow our food that is so clean we don’t have to do that. Can we make sure we are using clean water to grow our food?

Having the restroom facilities as far away from the food, make sure everyone is washing their food.

buying local as much as you can

you can taste and feel the difference

I remember when I ate that first lettuce from the farmer’s market, I thought I didn’t like salad! I didn’t know why until I learned more the lettuce I was eating that was packaged

lettuce I was eating probably didn’t have much nutrients but getting fiber

if you want salad in winter

which Auyervedically I don’t recommend, but if you are choosing to do thn enjoy your salad

as much as we can asking these questions about our food. 

I have a question for you, I know I’ve been to the Missoula Farmer’s Market, I know they are not organic, I always assume everything is organic but that is not always the case.

I also assume everything is organic, I do trust when you are talking to someone that they are going to tell you that they are grow it

But I have found people think they are being organic and they don’t even know they are not because certain things are ingrained in our culture we don’t always know we are doing it.

I still totally eat food from the farmers’ market

wash it and it’s delicious. You can feel how good you feel when you are eating it. I really trust it. 

Here are a couple of examples

the cherries are a big example, when I ask if the cherries are organic, and they say, yes, we spray them with an organic pesticide

But for me that’s not organic, they usually are using something called 

spinosad I think which 

  • can kill a whole bunch of bees
  • wait for it to dry before you can touch it

which for me doesn’t seem very organic but to that farmer it was organic

another thing with food manufacturing, even if you re buying all organic produce, you can un-organify it by processing it. 

So what I learned, I was sanitizing my surfaces wich amonium, 

which is just called Quat Ammonium Sanitizer

it’s basically like a bleach to make sure it’s sanitized to make sure we are keeping everyone safe

with the organic certification what I learned is that actually leaves a residue on the food if you put this on your surface then you put your food on there

now you are eating that

who wants to eat this bleach stuff?

I thought I was buying organic food but when I found out 

 

When it evaporates thats when it leaves the residue

I found 2 solutions

you can do an organic sanitizer that doesn’t leave a residue which isn’t so mainstream but it is becoming so with organic food handlers

rinse off the residue with water

no one would know that? How would you know that?

Isn’t there a food safety handling class?

the thing about the food safety class, I really appreciate this, it’s about keeping our food safe now, how is that affecting ourselves in the future. it’s not about nutrition or keeping our food safe in the future

if I bleach my food it’s safe, but is it necessarily healthy?

how can we keep our food safe AND healthy?

They just want to make sure we aren’t gonna get sick?

if we buy jam with sugar it’s safe but is it healthy for you in the long term, it has no pathogens but is it nutritious? 

If we cooked it ourselves or tracked where it’s coming from then you’re doing really well

The best way is to grow it and cook it yourself

but I don’t do that even!

Mike's Green Garden Pickled Beets Canned

I know my husband tries to grow as much of ours as they can. We’re struggling with storage with the potatoes and carrots that the mice etc don’t get into. There’s nothing like pickled beets in the middle of winter instead of tomatoes. There’s no comparison, because I am a salad in the winter type of girl.

SaladWithBeets

when I originally did the caffeine one my kids wouldn’t stop eating this

kids love it

it’s so delicious it’s sweet because it has raisins

super wholesome snacks for anyone!

It’s so convenient, I wish I had it when I was teaching because as I said, I was always having that burn out around 2 in the afternoon!

I believe you are gonna be like Adams peanut butter or Smuckers some day

Which activity is your least favorite activity to do in the kitchen?

I really don’t like cooking, which is why I’m all about canned food, it’s so easy to open a can and put it on something. Which is ironic. I like cooking for my job, but when I get home, It’s been a long day, I have 3 kids, I don’t want to cook a huge meal fro them. I do simple meals.

I think that’s a good answer, prepare the food.

Cooking’s over-rated.

My mom says why don’t people like cooking, I think it’s the clean up after. 

It’s the time thing, most people are working an 8 hour day, then a commute, when you get home you may enjoy cooking, but adding another hour to my day it’s al ot.

I found I do a couple recipes

pick a couple that you like that are simple

just keep rotating those. It doesn’t have to be a fancy lobster dinner

It could be

  • sautèd vegetables
  • baked chicken
  • fried potatoes
  • spaghetti
  • simple balanced

My mom used to make fried spaghetti with leftover spaghetti fried in olive oil.

What is your favorite activity to do in the kitchen?

I love creating new recipes

now that I found out how our food is manufactured I know

I can do anything better!

it’s so easy!

simple ways to make food better

I’ve been talking bout blueberries alot because just last week we made blueberry jam. 

I through some cardamon in it and it was so delicious.

another thing we did was put a worsterhre in our barbecue sauce. I was like I’m buying this organic gluten free sauce, why don’t I just make my own? I did that and it’s just so delicious

so good

love creating my own recipes.

I’m all about being creative,my

what effort that goes into thinking up what to cook for dinner.

That’s a struggle. I know the other day I was thinking I don’t even have the energy to look up on the ipad, what to cook for dinner.

Blue apron the reason they’ve done so well, you just click on a picture

Wasn’t that steve jobs big thing he didn’t want to waste the energy to put into picking out clothes wanted to put that energy into other things.

What is the best cooking advice you have ever received?

I really like,what you just said about adding fresh herbs

I remember the first time I made spaghetti with fresh herbs, 

It’s spaghetti, it’s nothing special, but adding fresh herbs it was so good!

we do that all the time!

using fresh high quality ingredients and simple recipes.

The other thing I love about herbs, they don’t take a lot of maitenance, they don’t really need a lot of water even in Montana, they just keep coming back and they are prolific, my oregano spreads like crazy and the bees love them the butterflies. I alwys have a basil plant in my window, they are good for me, I usually don’t have the greenest thumb, mostly cause of the watering thing.

A favorite tool that you like to use for cooking?

A cherry pitter you love? What’s your favorite implement?

we’re still getting those large manufacturing items

Right now our cherry pitters is our hands

I really love

mmmm…

I don’t think I have a favorite, I just cook stuff at home.

pan

butter

olive oil and fry whatever your cooking

I don’t really do anything special. I don’t think we need anything special?

Not even a favorite knife?

And some fire! That’s my favorite tool.

Having the luxury of being able to cook our food!

A favorite recipe you like to cook from the garden?

this is not a canning recipe it just happens to be my favorite recipe from the garden

Cooked radishes

You have some radishes throw them in a skillet with

  • butter
  • brown them
  • add some chicken stock over them
  • salt and pepper
  • cook it down
  • get really tender and delicious

you have this amazing chicken stock butter glaze you can put over them!

I’ll eat like 10 of them and my kids will eat like ten of them. We have to buy like 5 bunches of radishes when we do that recipe. 

everyone eats them! 

So simple and so yummy!

That’s sounds totally awesome! What kind of radishes? The icicle type?

radishes you usually think of as eating raw which is great! I highly recommend cooking that recipe!

 

I never heard of cooing radishes till last summer megan cain recoommend it, i would make a saute of radishes and kale and maybe some swiss chard. 

Yours sounds decadent.

A favorite internet resource where you like to surf on the web?

 recipes I usually just google it.

do you find you go somehwere? I go to all recipes first and then that kitchn site. I find I go there the most .

I’ve just found that at least with cooking it’s less around the recipe, same as when I taught music it’s the quality of teaching and attention that the kids getting.

With the recipe, it’s not me, it’s not so much the recipe it’s about the 

quality of the ingredients you are using

If you are using fresh from your garden it’s gonna be delicious!

anything

what about your research on nutrition?

I’m trained in Ayureveda

Deepak Chopra has a lot of books out. He has a lot of great books. 

The Complete Book of Ayurvedic Home Remedies: Based on the Timeless Wisdom of India's 5,000-Year-Old Medical System by Vasant Lad

The Complete Book of Ayurvedic Home Remedies: Based on the Timeless Wisdom of India’s 5,000-Year-Old Medical System

the Vasant Lad

they have really good introduction books to Ayereveda

how to learn more about living a balanced life

basically what we talked about here having high quality fresh food amongst a whole bunch of other things!

If you have a business to you have any advice for our listeners about how to sell extra produce or get started in the industry?

Yes so, before I started I was really intimidated by the whole process.

  • health department
  • get a business license

When it’s done the only thing really stopping you is your mind!

the health department here are hear to help us and so easy to work with! Reasonable!

They really take pride in getting everyone who goes in there to get their product at the Farmer’s Market

on the shelf

wherever they are going to get you there! They are really proud of that. They have so much help to offer.

don’t be intimidated by the process!

go to the famer’s market and set up a booth and see how it goes

you’ll be surprised how much you are learning along the way!

how much you can do

really a matter of committing to that!

My mom is always telling Mike to sell his baked goods and I am totally intimidated by the process! The other thing, was I just released an episode that I am not going to buy oats that are not organic oats.

Organic Oats are a MUST

I took some cookies to work the other day and was bragging about how good they were but then I was like are they because I didn’t have organic oats and I talked to Judy Frankel who had a daughter who was really sick and she found the traces of glyphosate in her daughter from the oats. And the other is peas, I find I buy a lot of peas and they are not organic. Frozen ones. 

Thanks for all you are doing to change our world and helping people in Missoula and now online get food that is good for our world and health.

Final question-

if there was one change you would like to see to create a greener world what would it be? For example is there a charity or organization your passionate about or a project you would like to see put into action. What do you feel is the most crucial issue facing our planet in regards to the environment either in your local area or on a national or global scale?

the one change we can all make is whatever we choose to do is choose it consciously

ask yourself am I doing this because it’s supporting me because it’s supporting the planet or because it’s a habit? 

When we make choices that we are happy with and that are based in love and supporting each other we’re gonna create an awesome world!

People are already doing that and I am so excited to be part of it!

A rockstar millennial after my own heart!

Do you have an inspiration tip or quote to help motivate our listeners to reach into that dirt and start their own garden or reach into the cubbard and cook their own food?

listen to your own body

it will tell you exactly what you need!

That is so true. I go through periods where I just crave lettuce. I think our bodies do they’ll us those things!

How do we connect with you?

I love sharing with everyone

so grateful you are all listening

again, my name is Melissa Kagiyama

keytothemountain.com

want to share

just hit the contact us

I respond to all emails!

I love getting requests for new food and flavors

have an Instagram key_to_the_mountain

On Facebook at Key to the Mountain

The Organic Gardener Podcast is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com

If you like what you heard on the Organic Gardener Podcast we’d love it if you’d give us review and hopefully a 5 star rating on iTunes so other gardeners can find us and listen to. Just click on the link here.

Let’s take a minute to thank our sponsors and affiliate links

Please support us on Patreon so we can keep the show up on the internet. It cost close to $100 a month just to keep it up on the internet for the website etc so if you could help by supporting it with an $8/month contribution or $10/month to join the Green Future Growers Book Club where we can delve deep into some of the best gardening books that have been recommended on the show! GoDaddy even is bugging me for dollars just to have the domain name…

OGP Patreon Page Green Future Grower Book Club

https://www.patreon.com/OrganicGardenerPodcast

 

Health IQ Logo

The Organic Gardner Podcast is sponsored by Health IQ, an insurance company that helps health conscious people like runners, cyclists, weightlifters and vegetarians get lower rates on their life insurance. Go to healthiq.com/OGP to support the show and see if you qualify.

Over half of Health IQ customers save between 4-33% on their life insurance.

Health IQ vegetables celebrating the health conscious

  • Health IQ uses science & data to secure lower rates on life insurance for health conscious people just like you green future growers! Like saving money on your car insurance for being a good driver, Health IQ saves you money on your life insurance for living a health conscious lifestyle.

Vegetables2

To see if you qualify, get your free quote today at healthiq.com/OGP or mention the promo code OGP when you talk to a Health IQ agent

Good Seed Company Seeds

The Good Seed Company

Now Let’s Get to the Root of Things!

 

Organic Gardening Podcast Group

We’d love if you’d join  Organic Gardener Podcast Facebook Community!

The Organic Gardener Podcast is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com

If you like what you heard on the Organic Gardener Podcast we’d love it if you’d give us review and hopefully a 5 star rating on iTunes so other gardeners can find us and listen to. Just click on the link here.

and don’t forget if you need help getting started check out our new 

Free Garden Course.com

FreeOrganicGardenCourseCVR2.jpg

 Free Organic Garden Course 

Remember you can get the  2018 Garden Journal and Data Keeper to record your garden goals in ourhttps://amzn.to/2lLAOyo

You can  download the first 30 days here  while you’re waiting for it to come in the mail. 

Organic Gardening Podcast Group

We’d love if you’d join  Organic Gardener Podcast Facebook Community!

If you like what you heard on the Organic Gardener Podcast we’d love it if you’d give us review and hopefully a 5 star rating on iTunes so other gardeners can find us and listen to. Just click on the link here.

 

About the author, Jackie Marie

I'm an artist and educator. I live at the "Organic Oasis" with my husband Mike where we practice earth friendly techniques in our garden nestled in the mountains of Montana.

Leave a Comment