River View offers tasty treats

BY BRIAN WILSON

THE STAR NEWS

“Tinker - (verb) attempt to improve something.”

A Gilman-area family has turned tinkering with food preservation techniques into a new business offering sweet treats for sale at area businesses.

Andrea Westaby runs River View Freeze Drying, located at 20669 CTH S North, in Gilman. The company offers freeze dried candies, taffies and fruits which are available for purchase at The Haymow in downtown Medford, Village Vault in Gilman and at the Retro Queen Boutique in Thorp in both resealable individual snack sizes and sizes meant for sharing with the whole family - even if you might want to keep them for yourself.

Andrea Westaby has been a stay at home mom for the past 16 years and says that she has been going through all the regular canning and gardening sorts of activities with food preservation. Then her husband, Isaiah, had a suggestion.

“My husband said, ‘Hey, let’s try this freeze dryer for our own personal use,” Andrea said.

Andrea explained that they started freeze drying different things for their own use and to see how things went with it. Freeze drying using low temperatures and near vacuum conditions to remove water from materials resulting in products that, if properly stored, can have shelf lives measured in years or even decades. In addition to long-term shelf storage, freeze drying also has the benefit of retaining and concentrating the natural flavors present in the food. Things like strawberries and bananas gain in intensity. She said they have done things like rhubarb and even made maple sugar from maple sap.

“This is a really cool machine,” Andrea said, of the freeze dryer and its versatility in helping store fresh and prepared foods.

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BRIAN WILSON/THE STAR NEWS She said her husband was the one to suggest trying freeze drying Skittles and other types of candies, following what has become a popular trend.

“People seem to really like it and enjoy it,” Andrea said, saying they would share the results of their trials and errors with family and friends as they perfected the process to use.

Once they got started though, they just couldn’t stop and decided to make it into a business to produce and sell the freeze-dried candies and snacks.

Freeze drying is a process that can take time. “The candy is relatively quick, and when I say quick, I mean like 4 hours,” she explained. Fortunately she doesn’t have to be watching it the entire time, but noted that it takes a while to get set up and prepared especially if it is something new they are trying. She said things like bananas or strawberries may have processing times of 12 hours or longer.

When they made maple sugar, the process took a few days to go from liquid to the powder form of the sugar.

“It is fun to play with,” she said, describing freeze drying things like kale and cabbage for use in soups and stews.

She explained that they are always trying out new things and tinkering with the process to see what they might want to do next. Those experiments stay for personal use, while River View focuses on producing and selling a line of candies and snacks. In the future they may expand to other items.

“We don’t offer that in the business yet, but we would like to expand to that eventually,” she said, noting that they recently expanded from candies into including fruits like bananas and strawberries into the lineup. “It is not just all sweet sugar snacks, but some healthy foods too,” she said.

Andrea explained that the freeze drying process intensifi es flavors, whether they are of the fruit or of candies.

“We call them fruit bombs because they’re just like an explosion of flavor. They’re really intense, but people really like them,” Andrea said of their candies.

“Another nice thing is for the bananas and strawberries, they retain so much of the nutrients,” she said.

According to Andrea, their Fruit Bombs come as either Berry Bombs or Sour Bombs are their most popular candies. “Students love them, but even adults tell me they’re addicting and they buy bags for themselves,” she said.

She explained that the texture of the Fruit Bombs is a nice crunch right at the beginning but then they kind of melt in your mouth. She said the texture for the other items varies between the crunch or melt in your mouth depending on the type. She said the fruit is more of a melt in your mouth texture similar to an after dinner mint, but with more crunch to it. She said her personal favorites are the variety of flavors of taffies that they produce. “I love them,” she said.

“I am a sucker for sweets too, so I really like the chocolates and coffee flavored ones,” she said. She said that around the holidays they will do packages of peppermint flavored candies also.

She said that if people don’t want to eat the entire package at one time, they should make sure to reseal the packages. “If they are left open, they will want to rehydrate,” she said.

While the packaging of the candies and fruits is not intended for long-term storage of decades as with other types of freeze drying, Andrea said they will remain fresh for at least several months in someone’s home pantry. This can make them handy for parents to want to have the occasional sweet treat at home, but who want to limit sugar intake.

Andrea said they find the smaller-sized packages make great treats or gifts such as stocking stuffers or in Easter baskets.

Andrea said she thinks that the freeze dried candies are here to stay despite starting as a trend. “I think that its going to stick around,” she said.

She said with there being so many things that can be freeze dried, there is a lot of potential for expansion in the future.

In addition to buying at the local stores, River View Freeze Drying is in the process of developing online options for people outside the area, but that remains in development at this time.

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BRIAN WILSON/THE STAR NEWS