“Pasta is my passion,” says Aurora Echo, creator of Wildly Beloved Foods. “I wanted to eat beautiful organic spinach pasta, and it didn’t exist in stores. So I made my own!” Echo, a Californian, was living in Salt Lake City Utah 14 years ago when she went to her local kitchen shop and bought the tools for pasta making: a stand mixer with Italian-made attachments.
She soon developed her own recipe after rebelling against the instructions to “buy frozen spinach, place it in a kitchen towel and squeeze until the water is gone.” She described it as sacrilegious for someone who loves food and values nutrition. So she bought organic baby spinach, blended it in a food processor, and mixed it with her Italian organic semolina flour, as she still does today. Echo continued making fresh pasta for friends and family and it wasn’t until she had two young daughters asking for it on an almost daily basis, that she began to air-dry it on racks in her kitchen.
Fast forward to Whidbey Island, where she moved with her young children to be closer to family and live in a more climate-resilient and wholesome place. With her passion for making pasta, and friends imploring her to start selling it, she formed her company with an inspired name to describe people’s reactions when eating her pasta: Wildly Beloved.
With a background and strong interest in environmental science and public health, Echo has woven her values into every facet of her company. Not only is her flour Italian organic flour from Italy, but the organic baby spinach is grown locally at the Organic Farm School. Some of her pastas include organic eggs. She will soon be certified organic with the WSDA Organic Program.
Echo also went the distance in researching and finding compostable packaging materials for her fresh and dried pastas, and says she feels good that these materials, which cost more to use, do not contribute to the plastics and pollution in landfills or the micro plastics in the oceans. She believes in protecting and providing for current and future generations and that designing a small or big business the responsible way is the only way forward.
While no longer using her kitchen stand mixer, she produces commercial quantities on an Italian pasta extruder with bronze dies, which lend a rough texture to every shape of pasta. This texture is what grabs onto sauces for the most delectable pasta experience possible. She is now operating her own WSDA food processing facility in Clinton, where she produces a wide variety of shapes and types of pasta for sale on her website and in retail stores on Whidbey Island and beyond in a growing wave. She is also selling her fresh, fresh-frozen, and an assortment of dried pastas at the Bayview Farmers Market and the South Whidbey Tilth Farmers Market.
A current list of Whidbey Island shops carrying a selection of her dried pasta:
Grayhorse Mercantile
Bayview Gardens
Seabiscuit Bakery & Co
Hierophant Meadery
Greenbank Pantry
Sunshine Drip
3 Sisters
Whidbey Island Grown FoodHub
www.whidbeyislandgrown.com
On Camano: Kristoferson Farmstand
For more information about Wildly Beloved Foods, contact Aurora Echo at aurora@Wildlybelovedfoods.com
