Superior woman offers twist on zucchini relish

It took Superior resident Mary Ippisch nearly thirty years along with loads of encouragement to take a homemade creation and turn it into a product worth selling.

Bitterroot Sweet Zucchini Relish is the by product of Ippisch’s years of procrastination and a family recipe that she enjoyed making for friends and relatives.

“Every year friends would ask me, so, are you going to make some more relish?” Mary remarked.

Ippisch’s relish varies greatly from normal pickle relish because its key ingredient is Zucchini. Her reasoning behind the switch was due to several comments she’d received from people not liking the taste of relish when made with pickles.

So now when someone looks at the jar and expresses that they don’t like relish, Ippisch will protest, “Well, read the label first, it’s zucchini.”

When Ippisch would cook up batches of the relish for friends and family it was generally about a dozen jars each summer. With working a full time job and caring for her family Ippisch found reasons to put off attempting to turn her relish into a business.

However, around 10 years ago, Ippisch entered a jar of her mixture into the Mineral County Fair to be judged. It ended up winning a blue ribbon, and then former mayor Gordon Hendrick spurred her on.

Ippisch said, “Gordon told me I really need to try and sell this stuff. He was very encouraging.” This was the first year Ippisch began to market her relish.

“It was definitely a trial and process year,” said Ippisch.

She has been making and bottling her product through the Mission Mountain Food Center in Ronan.

Ippisch explained that the employees at the Center are there to assist you in making your creation go from just a recipe to a product to sell.

The location of the Center required Ippisch to make three long trips up to Ronan this summer.

The result was making nearly a hundred jars each time.

When she began selling her relish she realized she needed a name, so she came up with Bitterroot Sweet Zucchini Relish because the Bitterroot is the state flower. Next came a design.

“My sons helped me come up with the labels, that was a lot of fun creating them,” Ippisch recalled.

When the process was complete and her relish was ready to be placed on store shelves Ippisch can remember the part that excited her the most.

She exclaimed, “the first thing that really hit me was when I saw the label and I looked on the back…Oh, I have my own bar code!”

Ippisch finds the most rewarding part of selling the relish is that in the making of it, it helps creates jobs for people in Montana. Her product is now sold in Nebraska, Washington, California, Nevada, and Arizona, as well as Montana.

With slower times ahead Ippisch said she looks forwards to receiving feedback so that she can make changes and improve for next year. A major change she plans to make is to incorporate more local growers of Zucchini to buy from.

“It’s been infectious to have people be excited for me,” noted Ippisch, “I love walking into the store and seeing my relish up on the shelf.”