From mission work to meal prep: How Kassidy Noto found her calling in the kitchen

Convenience is everything, especially with the hustle and bustle of the world we live in. Local foodie and entrepreneur Kassidy Noto saw a need for convenient yet clean food options in the Capital Region and jumped into the kitchen. 

Her small business Siding with Citrus is a prepared meals company she started three years ago. Its mission is simple: to provide people with clean, organic foods that nourish the body and soul. 

“One thing that I really see as my long-term mission is teaching people what organic is and how it’s not just for the rich, but it’s how our grandparents used to eat,” Noto says.

With every meal that Noto makes, she focuses on clean ingredients, with no seed oils, no gums and limited artificial flavorings. She sources most of her ingredients from Costco, Trader Joe’s, Sprouts and Whole Foods. When she steps into the kitchen, she wants to provide her customers with food that not only tastes good but is also good for them. 

“It’s not just what we’re putting into our bodies, but it affects nature and it affects the animals,” Noto says. “It’s all like a puzzle piece that is put together. I think that part of so cool because it’s so much more than just us and what we eat.” 

Every Tuesday, Noto drops her weekly menu on her website. Customers can place their orders online before Wednesday evening for delivery the next week. The meals that come are a mix of frozen prepared meals and ready-to-go ones. 

Noto has around 50 to 60 main recipes in her meal rotation, which she switches up every two months. Her favorite recipe is a Korean beef bowl with ground beef in a simple sauce paired with whole grain rice, cucumbers and edamame and topped with a drizzle of spicy sriracha.

“That’s why I’m constantly experimenting, because I want every meal to be a few people’s favorite meals,” Noto says. 

Other meals she offers are white bean chicken chilli, hot honey chicken bowls, Greek meatball salads, roasted sweet potato salads, barbacoa beef bowls and apple cinnamon parfaits. 

Every other week, Noto trials a new recipe to add to her rotation, the longest part of the job. She researches to find recipes that have the potential to be recreated with clean ingredients and are lenient to substitutions. She will then create the recipe and test it out on her friends and family. When she’s perfected it, it goes on the menu for the following week. And if it receives glowing reviews, it becomes a main recipe for the menu. 

A Baton Rouge native, Noto grew up eating “healthy-ish” but was always super active and is a runner. While a student at LSU, Noto started learning how to cook and would often share meals with her friends. She would save her favorite recipes to a PowerPoint slide. 

She graduated from LSU in 2016 with a degree in business management and a minor in entrepreneurship. She worked as a missionary for the Catholic organization Farm of the Child in Honduras for two years after college. It was there that she discovered her knack for experimenting with limited ingredients to create hearty meals. 

“I lived with eight other missionaries,” Noto says. “That was a totally different kind of cooking because we didn’t have many ingredients. I always felt like as an adult you have to learn the kitchen and you have to learn the different flavors.” 

Noto left the mission field to work an office job but realized it was not for her. 

“Just being in the office setting, I knew this wasn’t God’s calling for me,” Noto says. “I was brainstorming what I could do, and I’ve always cooked. I’ve always sent my friends my recipes and just realized that not many people like to cook or know much about it anymore.”

Three years later, Noto works full-time doing what she loves and spreading awareness about clean eating to everyone who purchases meals from Siding with Citrus. Noto’s goal is to add a gardening component to her business to help supply her with homegrown vegetables. 

“I don’t know what that looks like right now, but that’s always been a huge love of mine,” Noto says. “And where I find God is in the garden.”