Midori first started making Miso just to nourish herself and her family in Oregon. Then she started sharing with her friends in her community. Soon after, she finds the connection with Miso and herself so deeply and strongly. She realized that Miso was being accepted in the US in recent years, and started Miso workshops in the community to share the nourishment. She felt the strong joy through Miso workshops, and realized the passion to share her knowledge and inheritance while growing up in Japan with Miso, and a pursuit to contribute to the community’s health.

She has been discovering the feelings of being home from both Japan and Oregon. She finds those feelings a lot in foods and nature that brings her a sense of home. When she was traveling between Japan and abroad, she was usually carrying some Umeboshi plums, that her mom pickled once a year, as her medicine and comfort her in the tough times. She found Miso was somewhat easy to find if she could find Asian stores, but also she figured that Miso that was manufactured by large scale companies and imported from Japan were somehow different from feelings of home. Then she started making her homemade Miso, which is called “Temae Miso” in Japan. It refers that it may be not professional, but proudly homemade and filled with love.

Midori’s mom raised four kids, and she kept her strong belief of a connection with health and food.

She taught Midori cooking as a young child, and shared her knowledge about cooking and relationships with food. She always had the dinner table filled with multiple dishes, mostly locally grown and some of them were grown in her garden. She taught her kids how nutritious and delicious it is to have vegetables just picked out of your garden.

Of course, she had “Temae Miso” in a large bucket sitting in the corner of her kitchen the whole year long, and she took some out once every 2 weeks or so into a container for daily use.

The rhythmical sound of the knife hitting the wooden cutting board in the morning was the daily alarm for Midori to wake up to. Since Japanese houses are generally small, she never had her own bedroom, and she could hear mostly anything going on around the house. Her mom gets up early and goes out to the garden, and harvests vegetables for breakfast. Her parents were raised in the countryside on the southern island in Japan, and they carried more traditional homesteading routines compared to some of the friends that Midori grew up with in the area

So her breakfast staples were Miso soup, rice and some side dishes. A lot of times, her mom made broth for Miso soup with small dried fish and kelp, there also can be tofu, wakame, some greens, potatoes, onion, cabbage, kabocha squash. Changes depended on what’s in the garden and seasonal things. Side dishes can be fried eggs, some raw or steamed or stir fried veggies. Her parents strictly sticked to Miso soup and rice for breakfast, and if there was rare occasion to have breads at home, then they told kids to eat the toast after Miso soup and Rice. They believed and knew how nourishing it was to have a cup of Miso soup with some vegetables in the morning, and that would give the children energy and support them to have a good day.