I have a great desire to own a dehydrator. I have researched and found what I feel is the best balance between low wattage and full features. I definitely want to dehydrate liquids, so I must be able to get leather trays. The only problem is paying for it lol. I really want to pay for it without going into the household budget, so I wait a little longer. In the meantime, however, my desire to dry everything in sight will not be silenced. So, once again, necessity is the mother of invention. Here is my solution until I get a real dehydrator.
A combination of cookie sheets, cooling racks, and my woodstove have given me rather pleasing results. The kids left out some carrots, celery and bananas, so I grabbed them. A stray partial onion also got nabbed. They soon found themselves sliced thin and lined up in rows. About 8-10 hours later, the bananas disappeared, and the carrots, celery, and onions found their way into a jar now reserved for dry soup veggies. Next we tried canned peaches. I put up jars of peaches last year only to discover that my kids don't really like canned peaches. So we opened a jar and dried them up. They tasted like fruit rollups. Yummy! They also disappeared. By the way, the woodstove is also very good at drying up sprouted grains that need to be ground. I used a few soup veggies in a pasta salad this evening, and Doug was completely sold. "These are like real carrots!" Well, they are real carrots, but I didn't cook them beyond the 7 minutes I cooked the pasta. I just let them sit in good warm water for about half and hour and then proceeded as usual.
Obviously, I have big plans. By the time the real dehydrator arrives, I might just have the hang of this thing! In the meantime, no abandoned partially eaten banana is safe.
4 comments:
Good for you Heidi, when there is a will there is a way. growing up, we used to slice apples and then string them up to dry. they tasted so good!
Dehydrating is such a blessing. Recently my dehydrator (yard sale find) has been going non stop. Whatever veggies are on sale. They are now in jars in my pantry.Your creativity will continue to bless your family.
Michelle
Great idea!
I have been researching ideas for doing things without electricty. I'm adding your dehydrating to my list.
I'm hoping to build a screen dehydrator this year. When I was a girl my great aunt had one and used it all the time. It basically looked like two screen doors put together and on saw horses. Very simple and worked great in the Colorado sun.
I use to dry in the oven before I was blessed with a dehydrator. It's a great thing to have the 'know' how to dry on a woodstove. :)
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