Inspiration

 

When I was 18, I spent a few months in Missoula Montana on a forest fighters crew, digging trenches and spraying roots to stop the spread of a large forest fire. During our breaks we had MREs to eat for lunch. My first taste of an MRE was horrible and disgusting, bland and sloppy eating out of bags with a fork. My First MRE had a cookie of some kind for desert, stale and gooey kind of wheat bar with chocolate, if you can call it that.  

My second day was very hard and rigorous movements on the side of a steep mountain. I’ll never forget that Meal! The first time I opened the desert and pulled out a foam block! What the heck I exclaimed!!! Why would they give us foam to eat as part of our lunch? I turned over the Green Brown package and it said “Fruit Cocktail”. Later I learned that you’re supposed to add some water to the pouch and let the fruit absorb the water, but the texture and flavor of the dry foamy fruit was so flavorful and powerful!!! I immediately fell in love with them and for the remainder of the battle I often traded my desert if anyone had lucked out and gotten the Fruit Cocktail one. A few times I even traded my main meal for them.

 

Fast forward 30 years and I meet the woman of my dreams who happens to be an awesome cook to boot. Nithima cooks so many wonderful Thai Fusion Dishes. When we met, she was cooking and home and selling to friends to earn a few extra bucks to help pay the bills.  One evening while talking about life and such on the patio, she mentions to me that a friend of hers wanted her noodle soup so bad that she would pay shipping to San Francisco! Trouble is, 3 days to San Fran and the soup would spoil, not to mention probable break and make a mess.   So, being the solutionist that I am, we spend the next two weeks talking about packaging with Ice, Foam, Paper, Heat Sealing, Weight, Water content, Dehydration ( I have a nice machine that my previous employer provided to me, Thank you JF!) then it hit me about 4 beers in and 10:32pm. I needed a way to keep her soups for upto a week, reduce the water content while reducing weight and volume! FREEZE DRY THAT SH*T !!!! FDTS TM*

 

It took me a week to find a used machine (During the COVID 19 Outbreaks I might add) get it up and running, trained myself how to use it, got the bugs worked out and her brain on what we would try first. 

 

Now thanks to her artist and culinary background, and my mechanical know how, we are providing you with the best Freeze Dried creations there are. Hope you enjoy the flavor packed, light weight, easy to take, nutritious snacks we create everyday for you!     

Thank you,

James Bench