'Food prepper' is ready for anything Freeze drying food is tasty and nutritious, says Carlson

Laurie Carlson was at loose ends after she finished renovating her cabin a couple of years ago. But then she met someone who told her about freeze drying foods, and she found her new passion.

"It was a lady that I had met through my cousin that told me about freeze drying foods," the Holyoke resident said in an interview earlier this year. "I have always been preserving foods by canning, dehydrating and drying."

Carlson ordered her first freeze dryer in the spring of 2017, and now she has two. The freeze dryers are going constantly as she dries a variety of foods. The dryers remove the water f...