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Thursday, January 6, 2011

Loving my new food dehydrator & Food Saver!!

This past weekend I went grocery shopping and got a great deal on some apples! So, of course, I had try out my food dehydrator and my new foodsaver!! So far all that had been done in the Dehydrator has been the beef jerky that my son has been making. So I got the apples , diced them up, and treated them for a few minutes in some lemon juice. Then I remembered that I had some leftover strawberries and pineapples in the fridge and decided to do them too. I started the food dehydrator at 9:30 am and by 3:30 pm the apples were done and about 2 hours later the pineapples and strawberries were also done. Yay!!
Then the fun part - I hooked up my Food Saver and got out the roll of bags that came with it. You have to make your own bags with the rolls, but with the heat seal thing on the Food Saver it was a breeze. I made 3 bags - put the stuff in them , stuck it on the machine, and sucked out all of the air. When the vacuum is done it automatically seals the bag with the heat seal. I love it. I had a little assembly line going on.
I can really see how this summer when I garden and go to farmer's markets these two items are going to be heavily used!!! I knew when I bought these at the time of year that I did , that I would not use them a lot. My son has been using the dehydrator a lot for beef jerky , but this time of year is not really a economical time to be buying fresh fruit and veggies. I do want to try some other type of things in it when I can. Like , for example, whenever I buy canned refried beans , we never use the whole can. Well , I have seen online where you can dehydrate them and powder them up. The add water to them when you want to reconstitute them. That could really save some money in our house. Usually a quarter of a can of refried beans gets thrown away in our house.
I diced the apples up because we love oatmeal in our house. Sometimes we add apples, strawberries, and bananas to it. Makes it yummy and gives you something different than just plain old oatmeal!!





Simple: Just Add Water - Outdoor Gourmet Meals - WiseFoodStorage.com

2 comments:

  1. Since Instant Rice is supposed to be dehydrated cooked rice, I plan on working up some rice/bean/meat/veg meal packs for my emergency kits (BOB, Vehicle kits, camping, etc). The just heat the water, add the packet, and cover.

    JP in MT

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  2. Thats an awesome idea!! Thanks for sharing!

    ReplyDelete