[pct-l] Re: dehydrating food

[mardav at charter.net (Marion Davison)]

I have been using an American Harvest dehydrator for about 20 years to
produce about 50 days of food per year for two people.  Here is what I
routinely dehydrate:
I cook a mixture of brown rice and whole grains, then rinse it and
dehydrate it to produce "minute rice"  It rehydrates standing in boiled
water, in my serving cup.
I cook a mixture of beans, rinse them and dehydrate them, to make
"instant beans"  These also rehydrate standing in boiled water, in the
serving cup.
These two ingredients become the base for about 10 different dinner
recipes, with added vegetable flakes, spices, nuts, and TVP or
dehydrated meats..
I dehydrate a number 10 can of ready-cut diced tomatoes.  These turn
into flakes, and rehydrate into chunks.
I make salmon jerky.
I also use it to dehydrate canned chicken, canned turkey, canned clams,
canned roast beef (shred it first), canned tuna, and frozen shrimp.
I don't bother to dry fruit, unless I get a bunch of really cheap ripe
fruit.  The dried fruit I can buy is much tastier than anything I have
produced.  My dried fruit tends to come out like bark chips so I guess I
never learned how to do it properly.
I think the amount of money I save making salmon jerky offsets the cost
of the electricity to make everything else.   I can't buy it for less
than a dollar an ouce, but I can make it for under 50 cents an ounce,
and I make about 10 pounds of it every year.
We get 100 degree weather daily starting in May, when I am doing lots of
dehydrating.  I run my dehydrator in a little used bathroom, with the
door shut and the window open, so it doesn't heat or stink up the
house.  I use the appliance timer so I can  go off and leave it all day
or overnight.
I cook and dehydrate round the clock for the month of May, then I sit
down in June for a day with all the ingredients at hand and can package
up 50 days of food all at once.
Marion Davison