If you could flavor your own pasta, what might you choose?

How about sun-dried tomato, fresh herb, mushroom, roasted garlic or spinach?

One of the Bluffton Farmers’ Market vendors, Alee Gratz-Collier, will have several of those options for sale most Saturdays.

Alee and her boyfriend, Mike Anderson, recently formed River Valley Pasta and each week create a fresh batch of their secret recipe for sale at the market.

“We started making it commercially four months ago,” said Alee. “Before that we experimented on different flavors, sharing with our friends.”

“Our pasta is a 50-50 blend of unbleached all-purpose flour and semolina flour and eggs,” she said. The couple has a home bakery license to create their product and sell it at the market.

“Mike loves to cook,” says Alee. He works at Stix Restaurant, Findlay, and on weekends at Black Kite Coffee shop, Toledo. Alee, a 2004 Bluffton High School graduate, is a social media marketer and also works at the Wine Merchant, Findlay, as a server.

The pasta flavors available at the Bluffton Farmers’ Market may vary from week to week. Generally, the selection includes regular, sun-dried tomato, dehydrated mushroom, fresh herb and roasted garlic.

“We puree the ingredients and then mix them into a blend,” she said. After that, the process includes rolling out the pasta, cutting, hanging to dry and bagging.

If there’s a flavor you like, you can special order it. For example, one customer asked for an all-organic pasta and Alee and Mike created it.

If you miss Alee at the farmers’ market, the pasta is also available at The Food Store, Bluffton. It is also available at Miller's Meats, Findlay, and in a dish at Stix.

Very reasonably priced, the pasta is $3 a bag for plain and $4 a bag for flavored. Each bag is 4 ounces and serves two.

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River Valley Pasta
419-302-9251
[email protected]