Ep 587: Rooted in real food with Jenny Wright and Chad Sterling

Podcast Introduction and Guest Overview 0:00

Welcome to the Health Fix Podcast where health junkies get their weekly fix of tips, tools, and techniques to have limitless energy, sharp minds, fit physiques, or life. Hey, health junkies, on this episode of the Health Fix Podcast, I have two of my pals on, and we're going to be talking about food. We're gonna be taking about their meal prep business, we'll talk about the gym a little bit. And really the goal of this podcast is to help inspire you when it comes to food and thinking about different ways to get out of The Mundane when is comes your meal prop.

So, Chad Sterling and Jenny Wright are two pals of mine, they are in Boone, Iowa, and they own the gym called the Sixth Street Underground and Raticado, which is their meal service business. They don't want to be referred to as just meal prep because it's so much more than that. It's two foodies geeking out. And so now we're going to add in the third foodie. In this podcast, we talk about making mushrooms taste amazing to the point they're like chicken and you don't even know it. They fooled some of their customers and in a full taste test on it, they are going to talk about that.

Now, we're also going talk how when food is used seasonally from local farms, how it just tastes better and how there's some little intricacies that may be happening with the dirt that can help these foods taste even better. We talked about how these guys look at making new recipes. and how they use market research to do it when they go out to eat and dissect different meals and just get the essence of the flavors. And so the idea with this podcast, it's a little twist from my usual, but this one is really to help you think in a different way about your weekly food and making food that is considered healthy, tastes better, fusing comfort food with healthy food in a way that it just works so well and it keeps you wanting to eat healthy because it actually tastes good.

Now, we're gonna dive into where these guys are located there in Boone. If you are in the local Iowa area or you have family there or friends, please share this podcast because Chad and Jenny are really growing amazing thing there and they're combining their gym with with the meal service, so cool. So you can check them out. And I've got that in the podcast notes at the end, Raticado Nourishing Boon on Instagram. You can head over to 6th Street Underground for their gym and check that out as well.

I'll have all the details in podcastnotes at drjkrausnd.com. Let's introduce you to Chad and Jenny.

Gym and Meal Service Origins 2:53

Jenny and Chad, welcome to the HealthFix Podcast. Thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks. You guys, this is fun. I have been watching the evolution. i got to meet Chad a little bit later in the journey.I've been watchin Jenny's kind of transformation here as things have gone on and it's really exciting to see where you guys are at now. And you just told me you've got new space for meal prep, no longer in The Church basement, I hear. Yeah, coming soon. We're still working in the church basement now, like we have for about, I think it's a little over three years now.

But within the next, we hope several months we will be in our own space, no more sharing with church ladies, which will a whole new experience for us. Progress, right? Progress. Always, always. So of course, I had to ask about names because you guys have the gym and then you have your meal prep service. And we were kind of joking that your guys' big mission is to prevent people from getting six feet under. But you're actually called the sixth street underground on the gyms side of things. Was it basically when you were thinking about that, did your mom's influence of the six-feet under have anything to do it or you already had your name ahead of time?

We already had the name, so the gym name took us not quite as long as it did to name our meal prep business, Raticato, but the building that we're in is really great. It's an industrial building. partially underground and resides on sixth street. So when we decided on the name and I was announcing that to my family, my mom thought that I said instead of sixth Street underground, she thought I had six feet underground. And I'm like, no, we're doing the exact opposite of that actually. But that was a great play on words.

I love it. I think, you know, it's something, games of why we call, like our businesses make a huge difference and I thinks energetically it is just perfect. So, Raticato, where did this come from? Tell us a little bit more about that one. That was a journey. We, you know, our mission was around trying to make healthier foods accessible to more people in our community. And we, I think we tried about every word in the English language to come up with something that described it without making it really super long.

And eventually we said, well, let's, uh, Let's try other languages. And so as we were looking through some synonyms for the core words, which are rooted in our community, we came across a word that we both liked that was based in Latin or Italian. That was Raticato, Which means deeply rooted. We both kind of liked it right away and rolled with it. Yeah. We knew pretty early on that we wanted some play on the word rooted because our mission with Raticado is deeply rooted in our community. It's deeply-rooted in beliefs around food and nutrition.

And we just wanted to kind of use something that was a little different, sounding a bit catchy, but maintained that sense of value and mission that drives everything we do with our business. Side effect is we get to hear all kinds of people try to pronounce it in lots of different ways. And it's pretty entertaining. It is. One of our favorites is radicchio. There's a handful of. People that think it. Which we're on board with you trying that food in addition to our business, but yeah. Oh my gosh.

Yeah, when I saw it in a quick blip through, I actually, my mind first went to that, and then I was like, no, that doesn't say radicchio. That says radikato. And I'm like wow, what a fun word. It's almost rooted, but also radical. Radical roots is what my brain was kind of thinking about when saw that. I like it. We're very much on board with that translation too, because there was a lot of that play on words that we were hoping for. Again, kind what we stand for, our mission is, it is a little bit radical, Yeah.

I mean, the number one thing as a doctor that I see for most people in the barrier from fitness and health is food prep.

Making Healthy Food Taste Better 6:54

It's the No. 1 barrier where people are like, I don't have time to cook. You know, even think about what I'm going to make for food. So you're really covering the two most I would say the biggest barriers, because of course I believe fitness is the number one thing that we have to have of some sort in terms of be healthy. Because otherwise we can eat as hostility as we want, but if we're sitting on the couch all day, what's it all for? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Really, honestly, that's, Janine, both of our businesses, you know, one of the things that got us interested in both is making being a healthier version of yourself accessible to people and almost thoughtless.

the goal there is helping people kind of get from point A to point B. Like they know they want to eat a little bit healthier. They know that they need to move their bodies and we kind provide those stepping stones so that the whole process is a bit more thoughtless. And I don't mean that it's not still thoughtful. That is not something that their intentional about, but that its made so much easier for them because the most difficult part that have to do is literally step into the gym. Once they do that, it's a program that has been planned out every step of the way.

There's purpose for, and then you've got coaches that are leading you through the process. When it comes to the food business, the same way, you know you want to eat a little bit better, but maybe you don't have the time or the ability to prep that food, to think about that. You just know that it is something that you maybe need to focus on a bit. And we make it as simple as open a menu, choose what you and then it's ready for you and you can grab it from your refrigerator. It's faster and more convenient and oftentimes cheaper than even fast food.

And it is locally sourced, chef-prepared meals that taste nothing like standard meal press. You know, you mentioned something that makes me laugh. Yeah, standard meal prep. Because a lot of people are like, healthy food doesn't taste good. I don't know how to make vegetables taste, good unless I drowned them in butter. Right. And so what kind of fun things are you guys doing to help the food not be so healthy tasting? Well, we're not afraid of cooking with seasonings and we are not affraid of cook with healthier fats.

We believe they both play a big role not only nutritionally, but just in the enjoyment of the food that's put in front of you. So we don't go overboard with anything really, But we make sure that we use things that maybe are otherwise ostracized in some circles, things around fat or salt. Those play a really key role in taste and texture and the things that maybe keep people from thinking they can enjoy even steamed vegetables, you know, if you just add a little bit of the right ingredients that suddenly turns into a delicious thing.

Yeah. And where we get them matters too, right? Like we are, I think we struggle with being called meal prep because when we, when think of meal, prep, we think have like ground meat and rice and somebody's frozen vegetable blend that they eat in a box on repeat every day. They have the same lunch or the dinner for every single meal. Neither of us have any interest in that. That works for people for like a week or two. and then you tend to hate life a little bit and you don't really want to eat that anymore.

You know, you can make vegetables taste a lot better if you're getting them from your local farmer. And that's where a lots of our stuff comes from. We're, trying to avoid things like thinking of vegetables as the only option is from a can or that has been freezer burned in the back of your grocery store for the last year and a half. The choices you make in how you source your food matters in terms of quality, in term of taste and lot of other reasons. I mean, we've done some unintentional experimentation, if you will, where we'll make the same dish when a vegetable is out of season and people will enjoy it, but then we will get that in-season vegetable from a local farmer and put it in the dish and not tell anybody sometimes, and the feedback is amazingly more positive.

when we do that. They can tell a difference without knowing what we did and it's really just about sourcing it from a fresh, local place that, you know, we just went and got it yesterday and cooked with it today from the farm. Huge. I don't think many people think about that No, and like bonus, again, in that whole realm of like, I want to do something better for me, but make it a little more thoughtless. so that it doesn't feel like I'm adding one more thing into my life that's already busy and crazy.

The nutrient value of locally grown foods is just plain higher than what you're going to get from a grocery store or a bulk wholesale store, or restaurant supply place. So in a way, we're helping them be healthier, again, without them even having to think about it. eat the portion of vegetables we put in their containers for their food, for the dishes. They're already getting a leg up than if they were just grabbing a can off the grocery store shelf. Makes sense, makes sense. Tell me a little bit about how you guys found your farmers.

that you work with and like how you've developed relationships with them. And you can tell us what farmers, if you want to, I mean, it's all whatever. I just very curious how he made the relationships and how are you were like looking at their quality.

Local Farmers and Ingredient Sourcing 12:14

Did you go visit the farms? Did he talk with him? How'd you meet him. Yeah, It's been a long trial and error process when we first started. We maybe knew of two or three farmers in the local area within, you know, short drive that we wanted to try out. And so we did, we immediately noticed the difference. Then as we've gone, one way or another, either had them referred to us, seen them on Facebook, noticed a sign when we were driving down the highway. It's amazing the different ways we have come across them.

What is our set of people that have used off and on? It is like 40 or so now. Yeah, across the couple of counties around us. Yeah. And a lot of times the schedule of our business is a little problematic for like, say, something as simple as going to a farmer's market and making a connection. So we do our, the way our schedule runs, we cook all of food on Fridays and then our customers pick everything up on Saturday morning. most farmers markets happen on Saturday mornings. So we're a little preoccupied.

And so we had to get a lot more creative that way. Sometimes it was really actually as simple as following a sign or having another small business owner say, hey, did you know that there's this small farm that does microgreens in this county over here? And we were like, no, we've never heard of them. sounds like they're doing cool things. And then we just reach out. It's been a really positive experience across the board. We've been able to visit many of the facilities and everyone has something really unique about it that we really enjoy.

Will probably give a shout out to a couple of our favorites. I would say I'm going to all talk about Red Granite Farms. That's a place north of Boone. Not only do they really have a pretty beautiful setting and a great operation. We've repeatedly said to Nicole, the farmer that runs the place, there's something about the soil, something that she does out there with the way that cares for her soil that just makes everything we've ever gotten from there taste different. and taste better. Like, we've talked to her about what her practices are.

We've seen the operations from a pretty intricate detail, and we just come down to the conclusion that maybe nothing really is done a lot differently other than the soil. Something is happening in the soils. And then Chad, I bet, wants to talk about Joy Girl mushrooms. Yeah, of all the places, there's this guy that used to live here in Boone that relocated so that he could find a property where he can build a big like metal Morton building. And inside of there, he's got it all set up to grow mushrooms.

So you can grow mushroom year round. You walk inside it. Have you been inside? Yeah. Yeah so you walk in side of it and it feels like you're walking into a cave. He's go different grow rooms that are really well temperature and humidity controlled where it grows. dozens of varieties of mushrooms. Turns out he's serving some of the top end restaurants in the Des Moines metro area with some these mushrooms and, you know, he just loves the fact that we're doing this in Boone, which is his hometown.

So he loves to partner with us and he'll even reach out to us when he has got a few extra mushrooms, and say, hey, could you figure out a way to work mushrooms into your menu? But we've, not only done Things with them around oyster mushrooms is a pretty standard thing, but we've discovered different varieties of mushrooms that we can't believe how much different they are, and yet they add a different dimension to dishes when we use them. So that's pretty fantastic. And then we got just recently another one that, we discovered, which is the roterize farm, has been pretty cool place for produce and seasonal vegetables too.

Okay, now I'm intrigued. I geek out on the farms, geeked out, you know, I also want people to hear this because you, is how many people are in Boone? It's 12,000 people. And I think a lot of people will sit and go like, I don't know where to get healthy food. I'm like boon is not that big. There are 40 plus farms you're working with. We've got a guy that's got big building with all these mushrooms. Now, let's talk mushrooms, not just a guys. Talk about the most interesting person. One of the more interesting people you'll ever meet is the guy who hangs out in the dark with mushrooms all day long.

Oh my gosh, does he play music to him? I've heard that they grow better. If you've got to ask him, I'd have no idea. But if so, i would just want to know what music he plays. He's also a really good cook in his own right too. Like he'll send like Instagram videos of what he's doing with different varieties of mushrooms on his grill or in is in this home kitchen. And it all just looks fabulous. Yeah, he's a foodie too. Oh my gosh. So, okay, different varieties of mushrooms you guys didn't know about, adding different dimensions to foods, because I think a lot of people will be like, mushrooms are kinda, you know, unless you really love them, it's like a...

What am I? Why? And let's talk about benefits of mushrooms, like what you guys like about them in terms of health benefits. So I'll let you, guys, take over on that one. Tell me what kind of dimensions, what kinds of recipes, and what flavors and why you like mushrooms so much. I think a big knock on mushrooms if I'm being honest with the people that really Don't know what to do with them or they've only ever had them out of a can is is texture I think texture is a huge deal for mushrooms for people and they believe that all mushrooms have the same texture and a lot of it comes

Mushrooms, Sweet Potatoes, and Recipe Experiments 17:28

to How you cut them how you prepare them and also how do you cook them? It's not just a throw some throw. Some mushrooms out-of-water into a dish. So for example, the oyster mushroom, I don't know how many people are familiar with them, but we just used them a few weeks ago in a chicken filly bowl. We sliced the chicken breast a certain way and we tried to emulate that with the mushroom too. In a way, they were hidden in the dish in terms of visually hidden. And so many people didn't even mention the mushrooms, which is a good thing because it added a dimension that made it more flavorful and more delicious and nutritious in some of the minerals that it adds to your diet, but they were sort of invisible in a way.

So that was one. And then I think we've done it in soups with chestnut mushrooms which was pretty fantastic too. chestnut mushrooms, they look like chestnuts or they taste like them? I've never had them. They're chest nut in color. There are little tiny mushrooms but chest nuts in the color and they add kind of a roasty flavor to a dish, which is pretty fantastic. they're super interesting and tasty and like they don't have as much of the textural. If people are off put by thinking mushrooms are slimy, right?

Like chest, not the chest not mushrooms really don' have that. It's more of, uh, more on the end of maybe like a portobello, like that meaty Our favorite story, though, has got to be where we took the oyster mushrooms and we cut them into little tiny strips and baked them in olive oil and salt and spices. And this was a thing that Erin from Joy Girl told us to do. We cooked them to the point where they were crispy. And then we had one of our customers try them and these people are anti-mushrooms.

Like they will ask us to leave mushrooms out of their dish if they order it. Yeah, we asked them to try it and we didn't tell them what it was and it did not resemble a mushroom at all. And they were like, well, this is really good. Is it what? Chicken skin? I thought it chicken skin or bacon. And they were mushrooms. And I loved them. So again, it's how you prepare them a lot of the times. Okay. I've got so many things I could say, because I used to teach kids cooking classes back when I lived in Colorado.

One of biggest things moms would say is like, I can't get my kids to eat the vegetables. Well, number one, getting them involved in cooking, of course that helps. But like you said, incorporating it in. You know, much like not knowing if it's chicken or if its bacon. And we don't even talk about the fact that mushrooms are in there. Or we talk mushrooms and we put them in a way that the kids are like, oh wow, that's a mushroom? Same with the dogs. Because like you said, canned mushrooms, I mean in the Midwest, let's be real, in Wisconsin I'm pretty sure most of us associate canned mushroom with what's on top of a pizza.

Right, absolutely. That's exactly what we think about here. So, you know, thinking about mushrooms like a chicken, what? Okay, now I am intrigued. What other things have you guys had like blew your mind about different ways you could prep certain foods that maybe people wouldn't normally eat? Or they'd be like, please don't put those in. Yeah. Well, this is not a mind-blowing one for those of us who've probably eaten a lot of these in our lifetime, but sweet potatoes were something that were surprisingly foreign to a I don't like sweet potatoes.

The only time I've ever had them is at Thanksgiving covered in marshmallows. And that version is okay, but, you know, they'll tell us like, oh, I have tried sweet potato fries at a restaurant and those I didn't them. We have had, we can no longer count on two hands how many people have said I really disliked sweet potatos until we tried yours. They were just in there, so I had to try them and I kind of like them now. And that's simply a matter of maybe giving them them in a way that they've never had before.

We do a lot of spice and savory mix on those. So maybe it's something as simple as roasting with cinnamon and a little bit of cayenne. I see you both are foodies and you light up a whole lot when you talk about food. Did you guys meet? How did you meet to work together? Because I'm super fascinated and I never asked in any of our conversations we've had. Chad actually started as a student of mine. Both used to work and, well, train first and then work at a facility in Boone that has since closed.

And while we were there, Chad came in as client and he was my first. long-term nutrition client. So when I first started doing nutrition coaching, Chad was with me for a full year and had already done a lot of things to improve his health and have already lost just an enormous amount of weight and then put in all kinds of work toward that process but wanted to just kind of tweak things a little bit and shift his focus a bit, and work on some longevity-style nutrition focus. And so we met on a weekly basis.

We chatted often and realized, well, we both really like food and we really both like the habit change that's involved in this process. Chad was a coach by profession at that time in a different realm completely. And so we just really clicked in that regard. Then he started doing some nutrition coaching. He took all the same certifications that I had taken. In that process, we were like, man, were working with people who are doing great things, but they are continually stuck by you know, bridging this little gap between like where they are and where want to be.

And a lot of that's lifestyle stuff or, you now, the time that they have to devote to that. So we were like, how could we further help them? And that is kind of where Raticata was born. I mean, the other part of that sort of journey was once I discovered that I had a passion for nutrition in working with Jenny, and then as we started talking about what are the things we could do with that, even from maybe a side gig or something to sort a compliment, scratch an itch that we both had to like help people with nutrition.

I think circumstances just lined up in a way that helped us get to the point where we can start the business then because we weren't. burdened by the other facility that we were working on, we had time to dedicate to really think through how we wanted to express our mission and move forward with it. I, at the same time, had been in a corporate job for 25 years, and even though I was doing a lot of coaching professionally in that job, I really wanted step back and do something for myself. And Jenny was the perfect person to do it with.

We had interests that were aligned and the sort of mission, an outlook on things. So it just kind of worked out. And we both do really geek out about food. So like one thing we've done since even before we officially started Raticado is we will have almost weekly market research where we go and find like really interesting dishes that we want to try at other places, other restaurants or, you know, whatever the place may be. Or we to a farm stand or somewhere and we get something that never had before in terms of a vegetable or piece of produce or a type of meat.

We just we play with our food a lot and so it's really fun to kind of go through that process together and help figure out what are the things we really like. We pick things apart as we eat them, not in a judgmental way, but like what is it about this thing that we love so much or what it is we don't like and how could we replicate something like this or make it more user-friendly because we have pretty adventurous palates and We serve a pretty wide range of people.

Food Memories, Comfort Meals, and Balance 24:58

We have people who would be willing to jump on that adventure with us, and we have who think black pepper has a kick to it. So we kind of have to find some middle ground. Oh my gosh. It's pretty fun to go on some of those little adventures where you're trying to expose yourself to new flavors. I think it's maybe we've twice ever resorted to asking the server what's in the dish. we're always sitting there trying figure it out. Like, what is this? What is that? I know there's a flavor in there. tasted these two things together.

It's pretty fun. Gosh, how cool. You know, I see this as something that, you know folks can kind of take some inspiration from because, let's face it, probably the average American has like maybe four or five recipes they put on repeat every stinking week. And they may be excited about going out and doing the foodie thing and getting to a restaurant and finding something new. And then they try to replicate it at home and maybe it doesn't go so well. So thinking about like, how can we bring this back, that joy back to food?

And also looking at how you guys pick things apart. Give me a story. Tell me one of the, what was your favorite food market research experiment? That's hard. There are a few, a lot of them actually. Well, I mean, we had one fairly recently that we haven't yet done a full recreation of that really caught us both off guard. So we went to a Nepalese restaurant in Des Moines and we were fully there expecting to get some of the best Indian style food we could imagine. Both of us had been to the restaurant before and yet somehow never had seen on their menu that they had a Nepalese version of chow mein.

And let me just say chaw mein would not be the thing either of us would order. Like it wouldn't be that thing that stood out on a restaurant menu. I think Chad was the one who saw it and was like, we have to try this. Like it has to be something that we try. And so we did. It was so unexpected that it was really fantastic and so different than anything we would have ever thought it would be. We almost forgot about the dish that I had ordered, which was delicious in its own right, but it very much masked by this surprising version of, you know, like two different cultures kind of coming together and creating something that was just pretty magical.

Yeah. It was surprising to the point of being almost shocking how different and good it was. So we're still in the background process on our end of trying to recreate an experiment. That definitely is a complex enough flavor that we have to play for a while before that one hits our menu. I think most of us have kind of lost imagination, creativity, all those things around food. And so now I'm like, well, heck, I need to go out and try different restaurants and tried things not to. You've inspired me to think about it and how I can, you know, replace, not replace.

What am I trying to say? Like recreate it in my own repertoire. But okay, let's talk a little twist because obviously a lot of folks are going to be thinking about chow mein, right? And they're going be like that's not really healthy. You know, you guys always are going to twist it so that you've probably got more veggies in there. You've got different things that your thinking about. Now, because you're still on the working process of that one, I recently saw something about a tamale bowl on Instagram.

So, a lot of people will be thinking of tamales as like the tamali and really it's more corn than anything when you get a Tamale, but yours looked like it had a bunch of other things. Talk us through how you guys think about a dish like that, and how, you're like, I'm gonna add more veggies, so I'll add this, add that. How does that work for you, guys? What's the process? Well, honestly, something like That Dish usually starts with a food memory for us. And that's one of those, y'know, You just happened to see my Birthday Week menu, right?

So, yesterday was my birthday. And we chose a full week's menu, which normally it's much more collaborative than that. But we do this for each of our birthdays where we just pick some of out favorite things and put them out there. And, you know, growing up, I was lucky enough to have parents who grew a lot of their own food, they canned a little bit of stuff. They were just a couple of hippies raising children and so my dad was always the one who was My mom could, you could pretty much put anything in front of her and she would figure out how to make it.

My dad was the one who was like, hey, let's really explore with flavors. And one of the things that he and I used to do is there was a place, there a little tamale stand in the town that we worked in and we would go there and get tamales every Once and again, we would travel to other towns that weren't too far away. And eating out was a rarity in my childhood, like a big time rarity. But when we'd go to places, We would look for things that were shared favorite flavors like my dad and I both loving tamales.

When we put that on the menu, we decided that we wanted to maintain that kind of like amazing, warm, comforting, delicious flavor of the tamale itself. But as with anything, it's about balance and moderation, right? So sometimes we'll have things like this amazingly delicious cheesy polenta as the Tamale base of our bowl, but we know we have to balance that out with some reality. Like a whole container of cheesy polenta would be like dream world. Reality is, you throw in some protein, some vegetables that have a little acidity that are going to balance out the creamy and some fiber that's going help your body digest all of this stuff that you're that you're taking in and then cilantro on top to make it just taste amazing.

So those are kind of the ways that we try to think through it. Like have something that feels a little bit more indulgent, but like balance it in a way that doesn't make you feel like you are going without. You know, we just had a dish we did like a salmon dish with mashed potatoes. You could put a bowl of mashed potatos in front of either one of us and I think you would be perfectly happy to just stuff our faces if there was no, you know, nothing stopping us. But understanding that you can then take some really healthy things and add it to that really yummy decadent thing.

you won't feel deprived. In fact, You'll feel better in the end because you didn't eat a whole bowl. Of mashed Potatoes alone. And take a mashed potato napkin. Right. It's a mashed potato coma, for sure. I've been in a few of those. You're speaking my language, like mashed potatoes, polenta with cheese. Gosh, yes. Especially as it's getting cold for most of us, we just kind of crave more of comfort foods. And again, it is just about how do you balance that out.

Lifestyle Change, Habits, and Long-Term Health 31:58

Like you know me, I'm always cold, right? I could walk around in a blanket and a hoodie and stocking cap and still be cold. And so it's easy to gravitate toward those things that warm us up. We just have to do it a little more. You know, and I think this is great, I mean, inspiration again, for a lot of folks to think it, you know like, when we are moving to eating healthy, the first and foremost thing everybody thinks is like You know, there goes my mashed potatoes. There goes this. They make a list of all the things they can't eat instead of the thing they CAN eat.

And now, just hearing you guys talk, I'm like, all right, what other things? Chad, like I gotta hear from you. What's your favorite thing on the menu? What on your birthday week menu. I don't know if I remember, that was April so long ago. That's like 30 menus since then. I will tell you that I, I have a very specific meal, but I am very much on board and intrigued by the constant attempts by us to find things that are otherwise known as comfort foods and try to make them healthier or more nutritionally balanced in a way that maybe surprises people.

I don't know if I have a good one off the top of my head, but we have things like pot roast and Philly cheesesteak bowls and things that people look at and they say, Oh man, that that seems like a really great comfort food, But boy, it doesn't sound healthy. We don' necessarily make it perfectly healthy, bu we certainly make i delicious, more balanced and more nutritionally complete. And then we properly portion it. Like to me, that's the puzzle part of this that I really get into. I may not nerd out over a very specific dish, although Jenny, you probably could list a couple that have nerded out.

It does. Curry. Yeah, curry is like a really big thing for me because again, it's one of those things I was exposed to as a young person. So I, I think. in that range when I had my first bowl of curry and sticky rice and I fell in love with it. And I've been on a lifelong search for something that measures up to that. So like, I love cooking curry, and finding different flavor combinations that make it more accessible and approachable for people that think it's just a spicy dish they get at their local Thai restaurant.

And we've been trying to do that without doing like, you know, there's a lot of hacks out there right now. Um, and I use that term in a couple different ways, but there are a of like cooking hacks to make things healthier that include dumping in, inordinate amounts of cottage cheese or protein chips and things of that nature. And, we're really trying kind of still make. True to their original form and super tasty. So like, you know, if we make a mashed potato We're still gonna use real butter in the mashed potatoes and it's not gonna be You know We are not going to be hiding strange things in there like it we're not having you.

Yeah, like yes, none of that collagen in mashed potatoes? Nope. Yeah. I mean, it's like oatmeal with protein powder, right? And at the end of the day, you know, yeah, in a pinch, I recommend this stuff, but it still processed. Right? Like, what did they do to get to that format? You know I always look at them and go, wouldn't real food be better? Yeah, like for us, it's, again, that whole balance issue of like, focusing on eating healthier is great, but like if the bulk, if your main focus, for example, is just get in gut-busting amounts of protein and not give a thought to what you're taking in with it, and so therefore not taking into any consideration how your body's absorbing it.

You're not going to feel good. And if you are not gonna feel, good you probably not continue that same healthy focus. And if it doesn't taste good, I mean, if I don't know about you guys, but if you've ever dumped protein powder into oatmeal, it's not like the most epic thing ever. Nope. Hmm. No. Again, It's that whole textural thing, right? It is. It Is. So I like, you know, the idea that you are still remaining true to the foodie aspect because so many folks with the health kicks. I've said this probably three times down the podcast, But it is something that I really want to get the point.

Like we're not going to eat, continue to as healthy as we can for ourselves if it doesn't taste good. And if we are human, we cannot block the desire to have the food for something to comfort us. I'd be lying if I even said, oh, I rewired myself to not want comfort food. Well, and I don't even know that it's necessary. You know, if we're talking about a lifetime of health, which is what most of us are aiming for, you're not probably going to be able to sustain eating things that don�t taste good, things are zero calorie but like a hundred percent science in order to zero calories.

It may serve you for a short period of time if you have like some really hard fought aesthetic goals, or if you are just absolutely in a pinch where you feel like you have to do something really extreme for a short period of time. Those kinds of things all play a role in that process, but they don't necessarily play role and the kind of thing you're going to and maintain for the rest of your life. And back to Chad and I and our stories, both of us have had really big transformations in our lives.

Neither of athletic in our youth. Neither both of us spent a large portion of our lives overweight and not moving our bodies and feeding them well. And unlike many people that we know personally who've had big body transformations, we have been able to maintain the things that we did to get to where we're at for 10 years into middle-age stresses. The stress of owning two businesses is a reality in our lives right now, so neither of us are exactly where want to be in the moment. But we are also not so far off that, you know, we've had these big fluctuations of like both of around 100 pounds or more or just less, and then having, you know, gone up and down and up, down, up in that process.

And the big key there is figuring out how to make it the kind of thing that you're willing to. Make a lifestyle habit more than just to get you to that next goal and not have it just be like all or nothing. No pass fail here. We're just all trying to, make as long as we can. You guys have such a straight, just a straightforward look at it and it's such an insightful look because I think so many people are struggling with the ups and downs. And like you said, like, oh my gosh, in the world of GLP-1s and all these things, we are all now programmed for quick fix.

Then it is like and then what? When you come off of these. And that's the biggest thing I'm worried about people coming off the JLP ones. What are they going to do when they haven't figured out that right thing? And you guys did it without any of it on board. Yeah. We've, I mean, if JLP ones are the thing that you need to get yourself moving in the right direction, like. We have no issues with that whatsoever. But again, it's the now what, where do we go from here? And 100% of the time, whether it is GLPs, just somebody working on body recomp, someone working in getting into healthier habits to benefit their mental health, no matter what that thing is, the habits that get you there.

And if we can help with those and make those easier to implement into your life and, make it the kind of thing you don't have to think so much about, like, we know from personal experience that that's how it happened for us. When we automated some of those things, when we were able to enjoy the food we are eating, even if it was healthier, that is what made us want to keep going. So, so huge. And that's definitely the message that I want folks to hear today is that, you know, You can automate this stuff and what you guys have going on with Raticado.

I mean, I wish it was in every city. So when, so when are you expanding to every City? When are we taking this even further? Well, we got to multiply us first. Right. We need an employee. That would help. A single employee would probably be useful. Well you got kids, right? I mean, Jenny, you know? Yeah. His son has a culinary degree. He keeps trying, but he's got other ideas. He's getting lots of good kitchen experience right now, so maybe someday. Well, you can always help, right? And hey, I love what you guys are doing.

It makes it so much easier for folks. I wish that you weren't six hours away from me because I would be like, send them my way. Now with your meals, are you guys doing, and forgive me because I'm now forgetting, Are you doing every breakfast, lunch, dinner for folks? Can they do everything or is it lunch dinner? What are typically covering? Yeah, they're designed so we have a very specific breakfast meal every single week. The rest of the meals there's a snack in there as well. the rest the meal are designed, so they could be consumed for either lunch or dinner, honestly.

So yeah, They could cover their day if they really wanted to do that. And you can do something as simple as purchase one meal from us, or we do meal bundles. There aren't a lot of people who probably use it for every single breakfast, lunch, and dinner that they do. But there's, there are several that use it every day for lunch. For example, we have a few working professionals here in downtown Boone that they come in and get enough food that.

How to Find Raticado and Closing Remarks 41:28

They, and maybe one other person in their office sometimes can have lunch available all week long. So they don't have to go get something like Jimmy John's or take out food from a local Chinese restaurant or whatever it is they do. Um, they just. Have a healthy option right there. I mean, how crucial would this have been for you guys when you were going through the process of the weight loss? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. It would have been a great supplement, I think, to the things that we were already doing.

And we have a number of people who, just like us, like the two of us really enjoy cooking and people are amazed and maybe sometimes a little appalled. that we spend as much time as we do all of our cooking on a single day since we also own and operate the gym. So everything we is done from like early, early in the morning on Friday until very late into the night into sometimes Saturday morning because of the space we have available, the time we available. And so there are a lot of people who can't believe that then When they come in for like, now we have a Sunday night pick up too, sometimes they'll come and we'll be cooking when they coming in because we're like making our food for the week or we are practicing the next experiment.

They're, like oh my gosh, don't you guys ever get tired of cooking? The answer is not really. Saturdays, neither of us really want a lot to do with food on Saturday's, eating or cooking, but other than that, No. I mean, we have to keep doing that. So yeah, I'm sure back in the day we would have used it, but as a supplement. Gosh, yeah. The biggest complaint I hear is dinner for most people because it'll get to the point that they'll have skipped lunch and then they will get the dinner time frame and they're like, ''I don't even know what to do.'' Now, and the whole decision fatigue thing too.

I mean, that's where I'm at. Um, I might, especially some days, but just listening to you guys talk about how you just light up so much when you talk, about creating the recipes and new meals. Maybe I need some inspiration. That's it. And coming down to Boone and hanging out with you on a Friday. We would invite that for sure. For sure, and yeah, I mean, there aren't a lot of people. It's the reality, right? Like for a lots of, people eating is sort of just the thing you have to do and maybe isn't the things that you enjoy.

And so you're not going to maybe nerd out and geek out about food as much as the two of us are, but allow us to that and then you can enjoy the spoils of that, Right? I, mean our menu changes every week for reason. it would be a, lot easier. I'll just put that out there right now. It would be so much easier for us if we didn't change our menu every single week. But again, we want to get people trying new foods. We want keep experimenting and having fun with it. And it helps us kind of stay seasonal with what we're using to keep it rotating all the time.

I can imagine you guys are gonna have quite the repertoire after a while because, you know, look at the different, like the big companies out there. You know like, the, I cant even think of them now but I know everyone probably has one in their mind. Like the meal prep delivery stuff, yeah. Yeah. It's all like you get to choose and that's what you got. And you, you know, and I'm guessing that they probably have like lunch lady chefs now just in there whipping up the stuff that, they, the creativity is gone is what I am trying to say.

and the fact that we've got two people, we could see you guys. You're like little wizards back there, working on stuff. I was like, oh. So good, so good. So we got to tell guys, folks, how they can find you and how far out from Boone, you know, like, I would guess, if they're willing to drive in, it doesn't really matter. Yeah, yeah. Tell us, tell us your Instagram I think is Radicado and then it says Nourishing Boon. I'm going to let you guys say it before I start rattling. I think Instagram is nourishing Boone.

Yeah. Um, Facebook, you can find us by looking up Raticado Boon. We, yeah, right now it's pickup only. It's pretty much if, as long as you're willing to drive, we'll have food available for you if you pre-order it. um, We typically target about with our, You know, facebook ads and things like that. we target. About a 20 to 25 mile radius. That seems to be the sweet spot in terms of people that are willing. But we have people driving from farther than that, like, uh, I Think 30 or 35 miles away is our is our big one.

And we do get on a fairly regular basis, inquiries about how soon we'll be available in, you know, cities and towns closer to the Des Moines Metro area. I have some former coworkers that I worked with down there that are waiting patiently for us to have a pickup spot down for them. So yeah, you know, that's part of why we're excited to kind of get our own kitchen space going and get that process underway. It'll change things for us a little bit, but in a really good way and expand that reach. And we are excited for that.

I'm so excited how it plays out since I've heard the journey getting there. Definitely for sure we'll get you guys back on and give folks an update. Maybe we need to do, my phone. Maybe we need to do a whole episode where we talk about inspiring people with recipes and different spices of that nature. So we'll definitely have you guys back on. Thank you, guys, for taking the time to hang out with me today. I really appreciate it. Awesome. Yeah, it's been great. We always have fun talking to you Janine.

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You have a great day, whatever you're doing.