Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Monica Sidarous. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Monica thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a time you helped a customer really get an amazing result through their work with you.

I founded Real Food Devotee because food is medicine, and I believe we are not here to live into the hopelessness of a diagnosis. We deserve to be free of the distraction and pain of the body so that we can live into our purpose, our joy.

To me, ancestral foods are a tool to help us get there. Which is why I want to tell you about my customer Angelique – her story brought me to tears.

Angelique was referred to me because she was suffering with fatty liver disease for over a decade. 1 in every 4 Americans have fatty liver disease. Angelique had tried everything – including a clean diet. But nothing was working.

I told Angelique to drink just 4 oz. per day of our wild-fermented liver tonic called Beet Kvass. The recipe is an ancient remedy that is wild-fermented and used to detoxify the liver and blood. It is also rich in probiotics and trace minerals.

After drinking our Beet Kvass for 3 months, Angelique returned to her doctor for an ultrasound and was informed that she no longer had any signs of fatty liver disease! She and her family were elated.

I now understand our bodies have evolved the wisdom to heal if we provide the building blocks. I believe those building blocks are ancestral foods like truly wild-fermented foods, real bone broth and more.

‘Customer success story’ doesn’t fully speak to the magnificence of this kind of customer journey. The passion and inspiration that an experience like this engenders in me, my staff and our community of clients is profound. I am so grateful to get this kind of feedback all the time!

Monica, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

When I was a child my Egyptian grandparents came to live with us. I loved my grandmother’s food. I would spend hours watching her swirl around the kitchen while my grandfather and I drank too much tea and she served us little tastes of pickled vegetables, labneh, kofta and too many sweets to list.

When I became a private chef in Los Angeles, most of my clients were celebrities and professional athletes. Because of the demands of those professions, the menus began to feel restrictive and monotonous. So, I looked back at old family recipes. I noticed that immersing myself in these old recipes helped me slow down and connect more. For example, my grandmother did not pickle in the modern sense. She fermented. She did not use vinegar or a starter-culture. There was an alchemical excellence to what she did. There was a discernment. An ability to judge beyond timers and thermometers. A culinary expertise that rendered shortcuts superfluous.

I began fermenting everything. I made probiotically-rich sodas that were lower in sugar than fruit juice, naturally effervescent and more hydrating than sports drinks. I fermented kimchi, sauerkraut, sriracha, chili verde, cheese, yogurt, kefir and so much more. I fell in love with the way fermentation requires me to be fully present. You can’t just follow a recipe on a page. You must know how to judge when a fermentation is ready which can vary by the season in which ingredients are grown, temperature, barometric pressure and ingredient sourcing.

While I was coming to fermentation (and ultimately other ancestral foods like true bone broth) from a place of culinary curiosity, what hooked me were the health transformations I witnessed in my clients. From no more knee pain in my athlete clients’ overworked joints to cured eczema or improved digestion, hormone balance and fertility improvements – it was surprising and wonderful.

As my clients relayed their stories of healing to their healthcare practitioners, they in turn would refer other patients to me. Pretty soon, I could no longer go to everyone’s home to cook, so RealFoodDevotee.com was born.
While our food is healthy, delicious & effective for healing, we are not prescriptive. Our uniqueness is in our deference to the ancient food ways of our ancestors. We have reverence for the sumptuous ingredients grown by regenerative farmers we trust. We take great pleasure in crafting a good meal made to share, inspire gratitude and deeply nourish you.
As a culture, we have normalized being disconnected from food & nature. We diminish the innate sensuality and deep nourishment that quality foods have traditionally provided. We have shifted the ancestral narrative from food for pleasure and nourishment to a nutrient panel devoid of joy.

In our kitchen, time is not money. Time is intention. We craft this food using ancestral techniques like wild-fermentation and long-simmered bone broths. We are romanced by the slow ways. We never use packaged mixes or chemical preservatives. The result is nutrient-rich, functional food that has proved to be a catalyst for profound healing. And I believe that is the liberation we are all meant to enjoy.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Without a doubt, word of mouth. People love our food so they talk about us like their best-kept secret because we refuse to compromise our quality. We are unwaveringly committed to radical nourishment.

To enjoy the pleasures of life, you have to support a healthy body. And the sad truth is that most functional food companies choose to sacrifice quality in the name of profit. I’ve been in this business for 10+ years and I’ve watched the cost of goods skyrocket during COVID. You wouldn’t believe how many bone broth companies cut their broth with water and then charge double. These kinds of practices are commonplace. I understand why they do this – it’s because good, wholesome, slow food is costly. But the benefit of a rich, luxurious broth is something I will never sacrifice. If it comes from my kitchen and it feels expensive, it’s because it’s rare.

Our bone broth is made from 100% grass-fed bones, organic vegetables and pure water and we never dilute. We slow simmer our bone broth for 72 hours so you’re getting absolutely all the nutrients, flavor and trace minerals. I want to get the most bang for my bite and I want my customers to as well.

So many fermented food makers ferment for a short time or use a starter culture instead of the ancient practice of wild-fermentation. Wild-fermentation is king because it contains far more probiotic diversity than a starter-culture derived fermented food. In fact, 1 tablespoon of wild-fermented vegetables contains more strains of probiotics than a whole bottle of any probiotic pill on the market. But, wild-fermentation requires more time, skill and therefore costs more..

Things in our kitchen take time. There is ancient wisdom in each pot of bone broth we simmer. There is alchemical magic transmitted from the hands that tend our fermented foods and probiotic tonics. It is transformative to reconnect with eating as a pleasure. It is empowering to create a calmer mind and robustly healthy body just by choosing a meal wisly. This food changed my life and I get to see it change so many more daily through my work.

If you have multiple revenue streams in your business, would you mind opening up about what those streams are and how they fit together?

We are devoted to an intimate, clear line of communication with our customers. We adore and protect that relationship because we believe beauty deepens through collaboration.

We offer a full menu of functional foods and an in-depth wellness program for those who want to use the food to support specific healing goals. Our wellness program begins with an initial consult to decode the messages of symptoms and clients can choose the level of support they desire from there.

Our results are nothing short of astounding and are remarkably simple as the genius of nature always is. Once you understand how to use the food, you can transform your timeline from one lived through symptoms to one lived into your purpose.

I love sending personal notes from the kitchen. If you receive our emails and follow us on instagram @RealFoodDevotee, you’ll get to peek inside our kitchen and gain a deeper understanding of how ancestral foods are made and function in the body. If you’re part of our community of customers, you believe in the power of hand-made things, you dream of a more profound partnership with nature. This makes you our people and we could not be more grateful for your choice to join us in this revolution.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.realfooddevotee.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/realfooddevotee/

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