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Re: dehydrating food

>Would anyone be interested in contributing to a thread about food
>dehydration? I recently bought a dehydrator, and find I don't know much
>about how to proceed. Would anyone care to offer advise, experiences,
>recepies, and so on?
>
>Vegetarian stuff is what I'm particularly interested in.
>
>Seems like I've got about three months to store up a lot of dry goodies.
>
>Thanks in advance.


Jim,

My husband and I bought a dehydrator last summer, and I experiment with it
a lot.  What I have found is that most of the books on food dehydration are
about _assembling_ meals using dehydrated food.  What I wanted to do was to
dehydrate _meals_.  So I experiment.  I have a great and easy recipe for
black bean soup that I use for pot luck suppers here at home.  So I made a
batch, and dehydrated it.  I had to experiment with times, and with
rehydrating it on the trail, but it was a wonderful meal on a cold night.
And required no assembly.  I also have a vacuum-sealer, so the dried black
bean soup was vacuum sealed as soon as it cooled.  Here are some
interesting statistics:  One meal of Black Bean soup weighs 18 1/4 oz,
dehydrated it weighs 3 7/8 oz.  To rehydrate, just cover with water and let
sit.  You can actually do this in the afternoon while you hike if you have
a container that seals.  All ready for heating as soon as you make camp.

The big advantage for us is being able to eat our favorite meal on the
trail.  So far I have tried, my *famous* spaghetti sauce, the black bean
soup, and a recipe we call Hamburger stuff that contains browned ground
beef, tomato sauce, corn or peas and rice.  All complete one pot meals.  I
dehydrate them on a fruit roll up tray, and seal them up.  I plan on trying
many more this summer as we do weekend trips.  I hope to have six months
worth of great meals by the time we do our thru-hike (GA->ME '00).

Hope this helps.  Feel free to e-mail me at sravan@mv.mv.com if you have
questions.

Sharon

 sravan@mv.mv.com

"Life may not be the party we hoped for,
 but while we're here, we should dance."