From candy to ice cream, to fruits, vegetables and cheese, Maggie Parker Ginot freeze-dries it all.
“Skittles, Jolly Ranchers, all kinds of candy. I do fruits, I do vegetables, I do carrots, I do tofu, plant protein. I do it for people with guinea pigs or small rodents as pets, they love those. I do watermelon, I do spinach. If you want to add something to a smoothie, I do peas, I do corn, I do a lot,” says Parker Ginot.
There is a lot of science behind freeze-drying food.
“It concentrates the flavour and it makes everything crunchy and gives everything a beautiful texture. It gives shelf life to fruits, vegetables, you know, you’re a back packer, you can take freeze-dried cheese, I don’t do the meet proteins but I do the vegetables and fruits and those kind of things to make sure there isn’t any cross contamination,” says Maggie Parker Ginot.
After 30 years in banking, Parker Ginot took a chance and started MLR Freeze Dried Treats. The name came from both her own as well as her two sons.
“I have my financial planning designation, and I took that as far as I could, and then I realized I love to learn and experiment and I love the part of this work that I can play,” says Parker Ginot.
After her father passed away in March 2022, she decided to put the inheritance into the purchase of her first machine.
“When the money landed in my world, I thought, first off, I can’t just put this into my account, it’s going to get spent on bills. I don’t want that to happen. He was this adventurer, and he would have fun and I thought, ‘Gosh you know, I feel like freeze-drying is happening.’
“I need to spend it on something that has purpose, so I bought a freeze drier. When I bought my first machine, it was like dad was a part of it, he’s here.”
Once the machine arrived, Parker Ginot was eager to start her next chapter.
“It arrived and I started doing skittles and I tried them and thought everyone online was right, these are amazing,” says Parker Ginot.
So how does freeze-drying work?
“Question I get asked all the time is, how does freeze drying work? The machine cools the outer tray, outer rim, it has trays inside it. What is happening is once that’s cooled and reached a certain temperature, it’s all programmed and the trays will now start to heat and they go to 150 or depending on what I set it to, but anyway 150 is what I set it as. And what it is doing is vaporizing the water. Simply, cooled outer rim, heating up the trays to vaporize the water, the vacuum attached to it, which is where all the noise is coming from, the vacuum attached to the machine is pulling the air out, completely removes all the water, it’s amazing,” says Parker Ginot.
All foods require different temperatures and lengths of time. For items like skittles, it could be around four hours but for other fruit items, it could be an overnight process.
Parker Ginot opened her first store in Dartmouth this past July. There are freeze-dried sweet and savoury treats as well as healthy snacks and options for pets.
“I’m proud, very, very proud of it, and I want my boys to see that, and I want them to know that it doesn’t have to be complicated, it can be fun and people enjoy and just go for it,” says Parker Ginot.
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