Welcome to Order Up! Our One Potato Interview Series. We’re featuring Latino/a chefs, founders, and community members during Hispanic Heritage Month.
Regina Trillo is a startup founder and former human rights lawyer, the owner of Nemi Snacks – crunchy sticks made from seeds and nopales (a.k.a. prickly pear cactus).
Originally from Mexico City and now based in Chicago, Regina felt unrepresented the moment she stepped foot in Chicago grocery stores. Regina found brands portraying Mexican cultura in a stereotypical way and mostly using artificial ingredients. Nemi Snacks was founded with a mission to elevate Mexican cultura in the U.S. through high-quality Mexican snacks in sombrero-free branding.
You know what WE loved? How absolutely delicious and kid-friendly these snacks are, and Regina’s connection to her family and passing down those flavors and traditions. In this interview series, we’re loving meeting new members of the community, discovering new ingredients and flavors and sharing them with you all – growing our community. Nemi Snacks are crunchy sticks made from seeds and nopales (a.k.a. prickly pear cactus) in Mexican-inspired flavors like Mexican Lime, Smoky Chipotle, Chile Turmeric and Churro. Nemi works directly with Mexican farmers, uses real chiles and spices and no artificial colors or ingredients.
We’re super conscious about the ingredients we cook with and use in our recipes. In this interview, Regina also shares how her own physical health journey and need for unprocessed ingredients fueled her journey to developing a healthy snack option. Read on for her mom’s salsa recipe!
Introduce Yourself: Regina Trillo, Nemi Snacks founder, launched in mid-2019
At One Potato, we talk a lot about how food and cooking is a way that traditions are passed down through generations. As a Mexican immigrant currently living in Chicago, do you have a favorite memory of cooking with your abuela, parents, or other family members?
Yes, so much revolves around cooking in Mexican households! In my family, the whole process of making food was a ritual. It started with planning menus since we were kids, and age didn’t matter: my siblings and I started cooking when we were 3 years old. We went to the mercado with my mom, learned about ingredients and how to select ripe avocados and fruit at the mercado. We loved cooking Mexican food, but we were exposed to other cultures through food and were always interested in trying other spices and flavors. At home, it was all about colors and flavors. We had people over every weekend and not helping at the kitchen wasn’t a possibility but we could choose what to make (always savory for me, I cannot bake). I remember I always liked making “cochinita pibil,” a Mexican dish from Yucatán made with slow-cooked pork in an achiote-based broth. Still one of my favorite Mexican meals! This was the meal I asked my mom to make every year for my birthday and the first dish I made for my now-husband.
Getting kids involved in the kitchen at a young age is something we talk about all the time at One Potato, so we love to hear this story about you and your siblings. We have heard over and over again from parents that when their kids help with dinner, they complain less at meal time, and express pride in what they’ve done – it’s so wonderful to see the joy in their faces!
For customers unfamiliar with Nemi Snacks and nopales, and especially families with kids who are picky eaters, how do you encourage them to give Nemi Snacks a try? We know that people rave about Nemi Snacks, and that kids love them! We love to encourage our community try new ingredients and expand their food horizons:
Nemi Snacks are the best way to try nopales! I love nopales, what they mean and what they represent. As you know, nopales are the most sustainable plant in Mexico, they thrive in hot weather, need little water to survive, they represent resilience because they can grow anywhere and have stood the test of time for more than 1,000 years. Nopales are a kind of cacti, so they’re slimy and a bit bitter. I want to share this amazing plant in a fun, crunchy and snackable way (no spikes or slime!). Nemi Snacks is a way to share this amazing ingredient in a way that’s more approachable and fun to eat. The snacks are made with different seeds like flaxseed, chia seeds, amaranth seeds, nopales and we only use real ingredients, spices and no sugar. Kids who love Nemi Snacks say that they love the crunch, the colors and call Nemi Snacks Churro “sugar sticks”, which is amazing because we don’t use sugar!
We think this is a great place to share that Regina has sent over an exclusive One Potato promo code – Grab some Nemi Snacks here:
Let’s talk about cooking in general – outside of making delicious snacks, do you like to cook? Do you have a favorite Mexican dish that you want to encourage the One Potato Community to make? (We’ll share the recipe with our readers!)
I LOVE to cook, it’s one of my favorite activities in life. My husband and I cook at home daily and it’s one of those experiences that is multidimensional because you have to use all your senses in the kitchen. At home, we know when meals are ready by its smell, the way it sounds, how it looks or how it feels when you touch it. It’s a meditative experience and an act of love because the intention behind cooking is always to make someone smile or bring joy to the person who eats our cooking. Something the One Potato Community can try making is the salsa my mom used to make that inspired our Nemi Snacks Smoky Chipotle flavor and can be used for so many different things:
Ingredients:
4-5 roma tomatoes
1/4 white onion
2 garlic cloves
2-3 chipotles (canned, in adobo sauce)
1 tsp olive oil
salt (to taste)
Directions:
- Roast the tomatoes, onion and garlic on a “comal” (a flat, round Mexican griddle) or in a pan until the tomatoes are charred.
- Blend the tomatoes, onion, garlic, chipotles and salt, then transfer to a saucepans and cook about 10 minutes over medium heat.
You’ll have a smooth and slightly spicy red salsa that can be used to dip Nemi Snacks, serve on tacos, as salsa for chilaquiles, as a base for tortilla soup (just mix it with broth), on fish or for enchiladas!
Thanks for sharing, we can’t wait to whip this up!
Bonus Question: We know that you’ve spoken in other interviews/podcasts about the health benefits of all the ingredients in Nemi Snacks, and about your personal fight with endometriosis. We talk a lot about how the topic of food (and dinner table conversation, between friends and family) can be an outlet for deeper conversations. A lot of our readers follow GF or vegan or allergen-strict diets. Could you share a little about the ingredients in Nemi Snacks, and how you intentionally and mindfully select your ingredients?
For about 7 years I started having symptoms that I knew were not normal. I had intense cramping during my period, heavier bleeding, lower back pain, and bowel movements during my period, particularly the heavier day, were extremely painful. I went to different OBGYNs and was told it was normal or I had IBS. I knew it wasn’t IBS because it only happened during my period. I started reading about it and connecting with other women who experienced similar symptoms and realized I probably had endometriosis. In 2018, a doctor in Chicago believed me and I had excision surgery. He confirmed I had endo on my bladder, rectum (hence the digestive issues!) and appendix. Unfortunately, endometriosis takes around 7 years to diagnose because it doesn’t usually show up on scans, it’s hard to “see” and symptoms are mistakenly regarded as “normal”. It took 8 years for my diagnosis and during this time, I took a deep dive into helping myself as much as I could. One thing I did was anti-inflammatory diets and had to steer away from my favorite snack – chips! I didn’t start Nemi Snacks at that time, but I started reading labels, learning about ingredients (real and artificial) and feeling how my body felt after eating certain foods. I knew I wanted to find an alternative for chips, the ingredients I wanted in them, and the ones I didn’t. I wanted crunch, flavor and real ingredients – and that’s what we made.
Any other fun facts that you think our One Potato family would like to learn about you?
I would love to share more about our mission at Nemi Snacks – I started Nemi Snacks to elevate Latin cultura in the U.S. through better-for-you snacks with sombrero-free branding. I felt unrepresented at the grocery store after seeing brands showcasing our cultura rooted in stereotypes, so a lot of sombreros, bullet vests and an outdated representation of Mexico. We’re pushing back against the stereotype that if something is Mexican or “ethnic” is unhealthy, cheap or low quality…
Not only that, but we wanted to jump in here to share that Regina is also a former lawyer. She has spent her legal career advocating for human rights by providing legal services to immigrants and implementing programs on a range of global human rights issues in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and the United States. What a powerhouse female and Latina owned business to support!
