RIVERSIDE – Food from Kittie’s Kitchen on the edge of Highway 39 in Riverside is wholesome and hearty, and if you arrive to pick up an order and find her wearing cowboy boots, Wranglers and a baseball cap instead of a chef’s coat and hat, her manner of dress could explain the fare.

Kittie Peterson is a transplanted cowgirl. She was raised on the ranch of her parents, Alma and Fred Reid, at Lower Presto, where jeans and boots were everyday attire, and she finds them more comfortable than a white hat and coat as she prepares and dishes up the type of food she grew up on — home-style meals free of preservatives and the myriad incomprehensible additives you’ll find listed on prepackaged food from store shelves and freezers.

Although hers is a take-out business, it’s far from fast food. In this modern day era of quickie meals, her aim is to offer a choice to people who have neither the time, inclination, nor ability to prepare a real dinner every night – families with children where both parents must work to make ends meet, older people who live alone, those who are housebound due to injury, poor health or infirmity, or just anyone who’d enjoy a tasty healthful meal.

“It may sound arrogant,” Kittie said, “but I’ve lived in this community for 40 years and I wanted to do something that would bring comfort and joy to people. I think a good, wholesome meal does that.”

She does most of the cooking herself, but hires high school girls to assist with dishing up and serving food. The recipes she uses are those of her mother and aunts, she said. “They’re my inspiration.”

Seating and tables are available for folks who prefer to dine on site, but it has to be from takeout containers.

Still slender and lovely after 40 years of marriage and raising four sons, Kittie is a walking advertisement for sensible eating as she bustles about her kitchen getting ingredients together.

She doesn’t do hamburgers, and avoids fried foods. She doesn’t do steaks because the price is so high and the market so volatile she would have to raise her prices which are, minus tax, $8.50 for individual meals, $32 for a family of two adults and 3-4 children or four adults.

She also prepares dinners on order for funerals, weddings, and businesses.

Her kitchen is open Monday through Friday. So that people who want to call and order a meal will know what the day’s offering is, she advertises the menu on Facebook every morning. Ordering is best done by 2 p.m., Kittie said, to ensure she has plenty of food on hand.

With the help of her husband Steve, Kittie opened her kitchen in May 2017, and since the second day has prepared and served up 12,000 meals, all made from fresh ingredients, whether it’s chicken, fish, pork, or beef. Each meal includes some form of potatoes or rice, a vegetable, bread or a roll, and dessert. And she only prepares one type of main-dish per day, so everyone who orders gets the same meal.

Offering the type of food she cooks was an idea that hatched in her brain several years ago, but a dream was all it amounted to, she said, until the little building that houses her business came up for sale. It’s the former Peterson’s Store that was built and operated by her husband’s great-grandfather, followed by his grandfather and later a son-in-law.

It was sold long ago and put to a few different uses, but came on the market again a couple of years ago. “My husband wanted to put the property back in the family, so we bought it,” she said. As they were considering how to put the building to use, Kittie realized that the opportunity to make her dream a reality was at her fingertips.

How did a cowgirl raised on a ranch at Lower Presto become a chef in a little townsite west of Blackfoot? It was simple. She fell in love on a blind date.

“One of Steve’s friends was married to my sister. Steve asked him to set up a blind date with one of his wife’s sisters; it didn’t matter which one,” she laughed, but said it turned out to be love at first sight.

It was hard for her to leave the ranch, and the man she loved was not a cowboy. “But he had lived on a dairy and been around animals all his life, and as far as I was concerned, he was a cowboy.”

Kittie’s Kitchen is a work in progress, she said. Their plan is to put in a drive-up window and a soda bar so they can serve lunches as well as dinners, and hire a second cook.