Yes, it’s true, the human body requires hydration. When we take in too little liquid we get dehydrated and our body starts to rebel. When you get dehydrated you can experience headaches, lethargy, constipation, thirst, dry mouth, dry skin, dizziness etc.
So, why on earth could I be enjoying getting dehydrated? No, I’m not a masochist.
It’s not me getting dehydrated. It’s my fruits, vegetables and more.
It’s my sister’s fault. All her fault, she’s the one who got me interested. She’s had a dehydrator for many years. Not sure how much she’s used it until recently. I had considered getting a dehydrator but until recently hadn’t bothered. Being able to dehydrate foods lets me broaden the range of food choices I currently have.
Since the pandemic started, I receive groceries once a month. I have friends who will pick things up during the month but I hate bothering people to do so. I try to make sure what I get at the start of the month works for me during the month. The drawback is that I need to limit fresh fruits and vegetables to quantities that I can consume before they spoil.
With a dehydrator in the house, I can order what I want and then dehydrate for future use what I don’t use right away.
Now, having just bought the dehydrator, I’m in that let’s test this thing out phase. Getting a feel of what works and what doesn’t for me. And, it’s near the end of the growing season so there is lots of freshly harvested items to do testing on. But, my first items were treats.
The first thing I dehydrated was mini marshmallows followed by bananas. If you’ve ever had the Lucky Charms cereal, the marshmallows come out as a much nicer tasting version of them.
I didn’t go for the banana chips that are the most common to make in the dehydrator. I was intrigued by instructions for banana leather I found. So I tried that instead. It was really simple. Peel the bananas, cut in three pieces (two if you want).
Bananas will break apart lengthwise into three sections. I took each piece of banana and gentle pressed on the end until they started to separate and then pulled them apart. Then I laid the sections on the dehydrator trays and let them dry for about 14 hours at 160F. The result was a beautiful chewy treat.
This past week, the store I normally get my groceries from had 25lb boxes of roma tomatoes on for about $8 and 11lb red shepherd peppers on for $10. When my friend went to pick them up she found they had the tomatoes marked down to 50% off the already really good price. Some of the tomatoes didn’t look the best so she texted to see if I wanted two boxes which I did. So, I now had 50lbs of tomatoes that needed some pretty immediate attention and the peppers would not wait forever.
When I got my end of month groceries I had ordered some cucumbers, mushrooms, celery, oranges, limes and lemons to get my dehydrated stock started. Not tomato and pepper quantities but enough to get me going.
I ended up in a definite race against time on the tomatoes. They were not as bad as I had anticipated when my friend texted me, but, if I was going to keep the waste to a minimum, I had no time to lose. I dehydrated about 15-20lbs of them over the weekend, put another roughly 20lbs whole into the freezer to be dehydrated later, about 5lbs into tomato sauce that is in the freezer and had to toss about 5-10lbs due to spoilage.
The peppers I did much better with. One pepper at the bottom of the case spoiled and had to be tossed, the rest of the case has been dried or was used in the tomato sauce. The cucumbers, mushrooms and celery have all been done as well. As I write this, the lemons, oranges and limes are dehydrating.
Yesterday I decided to make crackers in the dehydrator. Wait, crackers? Yep.
I don’t keep bread in the house. I do on occasion get a loaf in but then I feel I need to get it eaten up and well, I don’t need to be eating a lot of bread. I tried getting it and putting it in the freezer but once I bring the loaf out, I feel it needs to be eaten before it goes bad. But, I like being able to have something sort of like bread at times.
While I was exploring how to dehydrate foods, I found there is a whole world of ‘convenience’ foods I can make at home using the dehydrator. I don’t need to use carb heavy flour to make crackers. I have other options. Things I normally keep in the house.
Soaking flax or chia seeds in water gives me a glutinous like mixture that can be used as a binder. Not to mention I like the flavour of both. I can grind up dried chickpeas, split peas or rolled oats to make flour. And now with the veggies I’ve dried, they can also be ground into powders and added to things like a cracker mixture.
Who needs to buy commercial crackers with the chemicals and preservatives when I can know exactly what’s in the crackers I make? Now that’s a win. First, I had to try this out and see how hard it is to make.
I soaked flax seeds and chia seeds in a mix of 1 part of seed to 3 parts of water. Then I ground up my other ingredients and stirred them together into a paste like consistency. I have some teflon sheets that I trimmed to the shape of the dehydrator trays. Laid one sheet on a tray and spooned the mixture onto the teflon.
Using a spatula, I spread the mixture as thin as I could. The trick is to get it thin but not so thin they wont stay together when dry. It was going to be a bit of trial and error. I had enough mixture for two trays. A sprinkle of pink himalayan salt finished off the process.
I placed them on the dehydrator for 12 hours at 135F. Around the 9 hour mark I flipped the pieces over so the air could get at the bottom side of the crackers. At that point the crackers were firm but I could feel moisture on the bottom.
And voila, I now have some very tasty crackers. Had I taken the time to score the mixture before putting them on the dehydrator I could have broke them into more uniform sizes an shapes but I kind of like the rustic look on them.
OH and those dried tomato pieces — well, I found a new candy without added sugars.
NOTE:
Header Image -- originals from Pixabay.com edited by me into the current image.
All other images are mine
