By Amanda Knox

Two years ago, when Malaika Stevenson was diagnosed with eczema and prescribed a diet devoid of lactose and gluten, little did she knew that it might lead to the key to her future. Having turned five only last week, she still doesn’t know it. But her parents do. Or so they hope.

West Seattle locals Lynnette Mathias and Adam Stevenson—Mom and Dad—are about to embark on a Kickstarter campaign this Sunday to raise funds for NuTiger Organics [http://www.nutigerorganics.com/] Cashew Milk, quite literally a product of love originally and optimally designed for Malaika’s health which they are now seeking to extend to the community.

Before making cashew milk her personal business, Lynnette says that, when on the hunt for milk alternatives, everything she found was “full of stabilizers and preservatives. For one thing, it’s not clean. It’s not a whole food if you’re having to add stabilizers. And secondly, carrageenan and the different gums can cause or irritate digestive issues. 80 percent of your immune system is in your gut so, for me, that just wasn’t okay to give to Malaika.”

So, like any good parent, Lynnette and Adam Googled it. Armed only with a blender and some cheesecloth, they experimented with the many and various recipes available online and, liter by liter, pumped out a raw, nutritious, safe, preservative-free cashew milk that Malaika downed and kept coming back, asking for more.

That would have been the end of the story had Lynnette not started bottling liters for her friends and coworkers as well. According to Lynette, “They told me, ‘I’d buy this.’ And I gave them a look. And they said, ‘No, REALLY.’”

From that point on, Lynnette and Adam’s has been a saga of serendipity. Hunting down the perfect squat, rectangular bottle she envisioned, Lynnette randomly picked out Rich’s extension from the Washington Odwalla office and, through him, was entered into a generous and enthusiastic network of Northwest business professionals. Matt, a friend, designed their logo, business cards, Facebook account, and website, and maintains it even while travelling extensively abroad. Jorge, a coworker, volunteered as guinea pig in testing flavor profiles and shelf life. Henry, from Johnny's Fine Foods, did research, gave advice, and called up old business associates in case they had extra equipment laying around in their garages. A food scientist at OSU and developer of the first almond milk taught them how to make production efficient and completely waste-less. Most serendipitous of all, the quest for the best vanilla extract brought Lynnette back in contact with her native Uganda, from which her family had been exiled when she was just Malaika’s age. “I had goose bumps and butterflies,” Lynnette says. “This is so random, that now the best vanilla in the world that I’m looking to use is coming from the country in which I was born. It was just like, I have to do this.”

After almost two years, Lynnette and Adam have honed their process and product, always keeping it honest to their taste and original intent. Lynnette maintains that, “I’m making this for Malaika, so I want the best ingredients and I want to make the best product. But then if we’re going to put that on the shelves, there’s no point to putting something out there that doesn’t live up to that same quality.” On their website they describe it as “rich, creamy, luxurious, like swirling velvet on your tongue,” and sign off each update with the motto, “Let your inner nut shine!”

With the funds from Kickstarter, Lynnette and Adam’s goal is to produce 100 sixteen ounce bottles of cashew milk a week to sell to local, interested distributors like PCC and Spira Power Yoga studio. It’s a humble start that they hope will lead to self-maintenance and expansion and the chance to support small vanilla and cashew farms in West Africa, offer a clean milk alternative to the Seattle community, and perhaps establish some financial security for Malaika’s future.

Lynnette and Adam's goal is to produce 100 sixteen ounce bottles of cashew milk a week to sell to local, interested distributors like PCC, Wholefoods, Chaco Canyon, and Spira Power Yoga studio. It's a humble start that they hope will lead to self-maintenance and expansion and the chance to support small vanilla and cashew farms in West Africa, offer a clean milk alternative to the Seattle community, and perhaps establish some financial security for Malaika's future.

Kickstarter is an online fundraising platform that offers aspiring entrepreneurs the opportunity to appeal to the public for financial support. The trick is, for a project like NuTiger Organic to receive funding, its Kickstarter fundraiser must reach its financial goal within thirty days.

For more info visit http://www.nutigerorganics.com/.