Dehydrating-You wanna?? I'm so excited I could DRY!!

[chicks4kids]

So glad to hear that I can dehydrate watermelon!! That's one of the things my son misses in the winter and I'd love to have some on hand for him to munch on! And I'm definitely gonna try the yogurt.....thanks so much for that recipe!! As an avid canner, I'm really excited about dehydrating....so much less space to be taken up...

 

[chicks4kids]

Quote:
Hubby was asking if there were any plans for this as he is quite interested. It seems I'm loading up the dehydrator faster than I can dry stuff...just wait til I start harvesting the garden!

I've done the morels for the season and currently have some pineapple in (that was on sale) for tea............

 

[CoyoteMagic]

Oh I love my dryer! I dry a lot of stuff to take backpacking. It's easier and cheaper than buying prepackaged foods at the store.

I've got a couple of recipe books with great things to make for backpacking trips as well as eating at home.

We make zucchini and squash chips--great for dipping in hummus. Much healthier than potato chips!

Dried 'maters are wonderful addition to a salad come winter where there is notheing but those store bought cardboard things.

Strawberries are great to add to trail mix or even sprinkle on cereal!

ETA--- Check out this book. Was written by a backpacker. It's food that she (and her kid) eat while out on the trails.

http://www.trailcooking.com/store/freezer-bag-cooking-trail-food-made-simple

 

[Marie1234]

To Chicks4Kids:
We were there when a neighbor was getting rid of stainless steel screens and changing to more modern ones. They were already attached to 4x8 frames. We put some posts in the ground, nailed 2x2 to the posts to hold the screens shelf style, and put a tin roof over the whole thing. In the off season we store the screens and let the kids park the bikes in there. It is a very "redneck" operation and could easily be duplicated.
My Step-Father tells me that you can do the same thing with bedsheets. He was raised (60+ years ago) in Moose Heart as an orphan and says the Nuns would do bushels of apples by slicing them thinly and laying them on racks made out of sheets with loops sewn onto them and hung on poles in the ground. Again, redneck and seasonal depending on where you live, but when it comes to things like bumper crops of fruit and vegetables it is highly effective because they are seasonal too. I kind of like his idea because it would be so easy to clean the sheets in the laundry and I am a big cross contamination freak. (Don't put your hands in the potato chip bag and pass it to the next person kind of freak.)

If anyone wants to check out the link at the bottom for SufficientSelf.com I'd bet there are plans and discussions about this.

 

[TerriLaChicks]

DEHYDRATED WATERMELON?!!! I NEVER thought about trying that! Definitely will be on my list this year!!!

 

[chicks4kids]

I'll be trying that watermelon too! Marie1234....thanks for the info-redneck or not,

what a capacity!

 

[arabianequine]

I would think you would need really big chunks of watermelon otherwise will dry up to nothing. Watermelon is almost all juice.

 

[alabama49]

I did try drying watermelon and it was kind of a disappointment to me. It never seemed to dry out good & the pieces were sticky even after drying longer than recommended. Maybe I didn't do it right since my tomatos seem to dry out ok, and they have a high water content like watermelon does.