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Just 24 pounds of carrots until vacation

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

Sometimes when it comes to prepping, we can get overwhelmed if we start looking at the big picture rather than the day-by-day goals right in front of us. One of my long-term goals is to have a year’s worth of food for several people in several different locations just in case relocation becomes a necessity and/or the opportunity arises for anonymous charity. But this week I’m only going to worry about dehydrating the 24 pounds of carrots left in my freezer (well, technically, I’ve got 8 pounds of frozen carrots thawing at the moment, and 16 pounds of carrots still in the freezer — I just finished dehydrating another 8 pounds). Then I’m going on vacation so I can stock up on a little rest. ;)

Some people might experience brain freeze if I were to tell them that I’ve dehydrated 64 pounds of carrots in a little over two months. “64 POUNDS OF CARROTS?? How long did THAT take???” (Actual total dehydration time was just over four days, not counting time to thaw the carrots.) But just like tackling any other big task, baby steps are the key. You can’t eat an elephant in one bite — but you CAN eat that elephant one bite at a time until you finish it.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed as you try to tackle your prepping goals, step back and focus on just one facet of the big picture and work on that one thing until it’s done. Then work on the next thing. Or if you’re like me and tend to multitask, work on several things a little at a time until you finish one, then another, then another. And with steady, diligent effort, you’ll get there. One. Step. At. A. Time.

My goal for the week is fairly small: Dehydrate 8 pounds of frozen carrots on each of the next three days (1 pound per tray in two 4-tray Nesco dehydrators), then can ‘em up, label them and then it’s vacation time. What are your prepping goals for the day? For the week? For the month? What can you do to break down your bigger goals into smaller pieces so you can get them done? Like I said above, I understand that prepping can seem like a huge task that you’ll NEVER accomplish because there’s SO MUCH to be done! But baby steps will get you where you want to go, and probably much more quickly than you expect.

What do you want or need to do right now in your prepping? What small thing can you do this moment that will get you one little step closer to that goal?

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Mainstream online media post about stocking up on food

Saturday, July 24th, 2010

Some of you may have seen this article on Yahoo:

The top foods you should keep in case of an emergency

Some preppers may argue that when the mainstream media start to suggest stuff like this, things may be worse than we think. I hope that instead more and more people are just coming to the realization that they can’t rely on grocery stores to carry everything everyone needs at any given moment. The phrase “nine meals from anarchy” is a spot-on description of how far away from social unrest if the trucks stop rolling and the three-day supply of food on grocery store shelves is gone. Stock up now while you can. There’s no good excuse not to.

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Are you just planning to prep? Or are you actually prepping?

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

It just occurred to me that I hadn’t posted anything new on here in well over three weeks. Quite frankly, I’ve been so busy prepping that I haven’t had time to write. But how many of you are so busy PLANNING to prep that you don’t actually get around to prepping?

In the past few weeks I’ve dehydrated about 40 lbs. of carrots, added about 10 lbs. of spices to my pantry stash and found out that blueberries can be rather tricky to dehydrate. (More on that in a future post.) I’ve also added a couple more cases of canned mackerel to my storage pantry and am about to place a large order (probably more than 50 lbs.) for dehydrated banana chips which I can order more cheaply than I can make them myself.

Are you planning to prep? Or are you actually prepping? What are you waiting for?

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Don’t skimp on your food storage equipment — your life depends on it

Sunday, May 2nd, 2010

I came across a thread in one survival-prep forum recently where someone posted the suggestion that instead of buying allegedly more-expensive oxygen absorbers, why not buy iron oxide hand warmers, they said, since the hand warmers were cheaper and readily available in sporting goods stores and, they said, had the same active ingredients as food-grade oxygen absorbers? Well, that’s all fine and good if the hand warmers are cheaper and if they’re food-grade, but is cheaper necessarily what you want when it comes to food storage?

I’ve tried probably eight or nine different brands of food dehydrators over the years, and the only one I’ve tried that I would recommend to other people (disclaimer: I haven’t tried an Excalibur) is the one manufactured by Nesco, which has an internal fan for air circulation and helps food dry in half the time compared to dehydrators without fans. I like the Nescos so much that I’ve bought a dozen of them over the past several years just so I’ll have plenty of extra food preparation tools if I need them. (Shameless plug: You can usually get a Nesco on eBay for around $30 (plus shipping) if you pick your auctions smartly.)

Now, I could buy a Ronco or other model without an internal fan that would in fact use less electricity during the drying process…but if it takes the dehydrator twice as long to adequately dry food, am I really saving any money? I think it’s more than worth a few extra pennies of electricity to have dehydrators with fans so that I know my food will dry quickly and uniformly…and in the end, I have the security of knowing that I have plenty of food if I need it. (If you’re so worried about a dehydrator with a fan using more electricity than a dehydrator without a fan, maybe you should unplug the appliance in your house that uses the most electricity — your refrigerator!)

Which brings me back to the point about getting what you pay for.

In 1996, I bought my very first car, a 1984 Toyota Corolla. (Yes, a Toyota. The brakes worked on this particular vehicle…but nothing else did.) The car had about 162,000 miles on it, and the dealer was asking only $850 for it. The only warranty it came with was for me not to let the door hit me on the way out of the so-called dealership. More than $1,000 and 1,300 miles later, the car wouldn’t budge out of my mom’s driveway. Well, that’s not quite true…I could drive it three or four miles before the engine would overheat and I’d have to put more (and more…and more…and more) water in the radiator after it cooled down…and watch the water go right through the radiator to the pavement because the bottom of the radiator was rusted out.

I’d spent close to $2,000 and now had nothing to show for it. I was not a happy camper. But at least I could catch a ride on good days and hope I didn’t have to walk very far the rest of the time.

Which brings me back to my first point.

It’s one thing to shell out a couple thousand bucks on a piece-o’-junk car and have the thing eventually stop running altogether and then chalk up the experience to a lesson learned the hard way. But it’s a whole different story when your life depends on something.

And you can’t live without food.

Let’s say for the sake of argument that hand warmers technically do have the same oxygen-absorbing properties as, well, oxygen absorbers. I haven’t been able to try to vacuum-seal a jar yet with hand warmers because (at least according to the sporting goods clerk at Wally World) they are a seasonal camping-accessory item and won’t be available until later in the year. But do I really want something to heat up my food items as they are undergoing vacuum-sealing, and risk denaturing the vitamin content of the food that my life could depend on if TSHTF? Or would you rather use tried-and-true methods and materials that have been proven time and time again to work, so you don’t have to worry?

I’m not telling you not to buy that 1984 Toyota. I’m just asking you if it will get you where you need to go when you need it to get you there. If you’re buying cheaper food storage tools that you can’t be sure will do what you need them to do — keep your food fresh and safe until you eat it — are you willing to risk your health and maybe your life just to save a few bucks?

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Oh, carrots are divine, you get a dozen for a dime, it’s maaaaaagic!

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010

ORIGINALLY POSTED 4-28-2010:
Some of you may have caught the Bugs Bunny reference in the title above, which seems appropriate given that I’m about to try my hand at dehydrating carrots. And I’m not imagining it will be too hard, as the only extra step between dehydrating carrots and spinach will be the dicing of the crinkle-cut frozen carrots I just bought at Wal-Mart. For just under $6, I picked up a Mainstays brand food chopper (pretty low capacity — maybe 2 cups?) that I will use to dice the carrots so the bits to be dehydrated will be as small as possible — exactly what you want, as small pieces dehydrate much faster.

Someone pointed out to me that frozen vegetables are already blanched before they are frozen, so that step is already take care of compared to fresh-packaged vegetables, and the frozen veggies are ready to be cooked and eaten…or dehydrated, as the case may be.

The price on the 1-pound package of crinkle-cut sliced carrots at Wal-Mart was 98 cents. Checking a couple different websites to see the going price for bulk dehydrated carrots, at a reconstitution ratio of about 1 pound of dehydrated carrots equal to 2 pounds of cooked carrots, pricewise I’ll be doubling my money by doing this myself instead of ordering an already-dehydrated bulk lot of carrots — one particular site I’ve ordered other items from is selling 20-pound lots of dehydrated carrots for about $3.95 per pound (which would be about $1.97 per pound for the equivalent volume of non-dehydrated carrots, twice the price of my package of carrots from Wally World). As I mentioned earlier, in most cases it will be cheaper to dehydrate fruits and vegetables yourself instead of buying pre-dehydrated products, with the caveats that high-sugar foods (especially tomatoes, apples and bananas) might be a bit trickier and stickier since their sugars will caramelize and get gooey and make it hard for you to remove them from your dehydrator trays. But obviously this isn’t a problem with carrots, so never mind. :)

I’d also like to reiterate the point I’ve made before that the food items I’m dehydrating for my long-term storage are either huge in nutrition, huge in flavor or both. Carrots (and spinach as well) are loaded with beta carotene, which our bodies turn into Vitamin A. Carrots don’t necessarily pack the flavor punch that other vegetables do, but they will add a huge nutritional punch to your food — 1/2 cup of dehydrated carrots (equal to 1 cup of cooked carrots) will give you about 130 percent of your daily recommended Vitamin A. Like Bugs said, it’s maaaaaagic!

I’ll post an update as soon as I get my first couple batches of carrots done.

UPDATE 5-17-10–I’ve gotten off to a later start than expected with the carrots, but the first thing I’ll say is that I’m amazed at the amount of shrinkage in volume once the carrots are dehydrated — but this is a very good thing, as it will give you more carats of carrots per quart! It looks like I’m averaging 8 pounds of pre-dehydrated carrots per one-quart mason jar AFTER dehydration–I’d estimate it’s about an 8-to-1 shrinkage in volume, similar to what I’ve encountered with tomatoes. I didn’t realize how much water was in carrots! But having said that, assuming reconstitution will work on the same water-to-carrot ratio of about 8-to-1, I’ll be able to fit the dry equivalent of 96 pounds of carrots per 12-jar case! I’ll post a photo of the carrots after dehydration…as soon as I can find the USB port for my camera. :P

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Don’t be a chicken — dehydrate one instead!

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

Protein is central to human survival–you can’t live without it. And one of the least-expensive forms of protein in the American diet is chicken. As I mentioned in a previous post, food dehydration is one of the simplest ways to prepare food for long-term storage, as dehydrating it, by definition, removes all the water, which greatly extends food’s storage life. So to help you in your food prep efforts, I thought I’d post a few videos showing how to dehydrate chicken.

Having said that, don’t get hung up on the idea that only certain types of meat or poultry are amenable to dehydration. ANY type of meat or poultry can be dehydrated (or possibly turned into its own form of jerky) if it’s thoroughly cooked, thoroughly dehydrated and then stored in a tightly sealed container in a cool, dark place for longest possible shelf life.

The three video links below (click on each of the photos and it will open a new window with the corresponding video on YouTube) will walk you through the process of dehydrating chicken, and by extension any other form of meat or poultry. I personally prefer chicken because it’s inexpensive, and if thoroughly cooked and dried it can be stored for years in a sealed, airtight container, as is the case with beef jerky and other such dried meats you see most commonly.

A couple caveats: In the second video, a couple slightly misleading comments didn’t get edited out of this final version of the video. First of all, ignore the comment about adding textured vegetable protein as a texture enhancer with your dehydrated meats or other items. TVP isn’t a nutritionally dense food and really won’t get you much mileage at all in your food storage. Second, a comment was made about problems in the dehydration process with the chicken becoming “too dry” — this is incorrect. Dehydrated food items cannot become “too dry” in the sense that “too much” water is removed. What should’ve been said with regard to the chicken is that, because chicken is actually a naturally greasy meat source, as the chicken is dehydrated, at least using this model of dehydrator without a built-in drip tray, there was a problem with grease buildup that was not realized until a couple batches of chicken had been dehydrated, and without a catch tray the grease buildup actually ruined the motor in one of these Nesco dehydrators. Don’t let this worry you! Lining the bottom of this particular model of dehydrator helped catch much of the grease buildup, although we later figured it’d be easier with chicken to dice it into very small pieces and put it on a broiler pan on the top rack inside the oven until it is thoroughly dry. About 200 degrees for 30 to 45 minutes should do the trick, although your own oven’s drying time may vary. The chicken should be almost brittle when it’s thoroughly dehydrated. Adjust your own oven temperature or dehydration time as needed, but just make sure the chicken is dry to ensure maximum storage life.

Having noted the problem with grease from the chicken, I am beginning to instead dehydrate canned mackerel and salmon as an alternative source of animal protein. Why canned fish?? Because it’s a relatively cheap source of protein, it doesn’t have nearly the problem with residual fat that chicken has during the dehydration process and because dehydration will extend the shelf life even more. And canned salmon and mackerel have less necessary prep time than fresh-from-the-market fish and are usually packed fresh anyway.

As a side note, some of you are probably wondering why I don’t just leave the salmon or mackerel in the can, since it has at least a three-year shelf life in the can anyway. Well, there are three considerations. First is the relative lack of shelf space I have available, and the fact that dehydrated items take up only a fraction of the volume of their pre-dehydrated state. (See my earlier thread about how much less space dehydrated food takes up–check out the before-and-after pictures of the spinach.) I can fit three to four times as much product into a given space after it’s dehydrated.

The second reason why I dehydrate canned fish instead of just leaving it in the can is because if, for whatever reason, I need to grab my bug-out bag and hit the road on very short notice, I can carry a lot more food and can just rehydrate it as needed. Carrying around a vacuum-sealed mylar pouch of dehydrated meat/fish and vegetables, plus water, is easier than carrying around an unopened can of mackerel, unopened can of vegetables and a can opener. Think of dehydrated meat/fish, vegetables, etc., the same way you’d think of trail mix–just grab the bag, grab a container of water, and go.

The third reason why I dehydrate canned fish instead of just leaving it in the can is something that might not be on your radar at the moment, but could be an issue if you have nosy, Dumpster-diving neighbors: operational security. Let me illustrate: Let’s say you’ve just gotten a huge new big-screen TV or some other expensive item that someone might want. If they find a box for such an item in your trash, they might target your house later for that item because, they figure, the packaging for the item probably means that you have that item in your house!

Now think back to the reason you have food storage: First, because you want to be able to feed your family if times get really tough, the economy totally tanks, you lose your job, etc. And obviously you won’t want people to know that you have a lot of extra food on hand just as you wouldn’t want them to know if you have a lot of money or other valuables in your house. By getting rid of the original packaging such as can that some of your food preps come in (this won’t apply in all cases, obviously, I’m just using the canned fish as an example), if things get bad enough that your nosy neighbors are foraging around in the trash for things to scrap, or even for food, by getting rid of cans and other things now, you’re going to eliminate any trace of evidence after the fecal matter hits the fan that your house is where all the food is.


Hungry yet?



Click here to go to our food-prepping videos


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Pay more for food later, if you can find any…or stock up now while you can

Friday, March 19th, 2010

Maybe in some ways I might seem like a broken record when it comes to continually prodding people to stock up on food and other necessities before extended crises come for a visit, but quite frankly, I like to eat and hate being hungry, and figure most other people like to eat as well.

When people are hungry, they can do very destructive things that make a bad situation much, much worse. Given the unrest that usually follows an extended lack of food, and the breakdown of social order into very ugly scenarios none of us should want to see, I hope the article below will help compel you to at least start making a list of things you use now and will need later, starting with food.

And I’ll make a plug right here for some of the best money I’ve spent in my preparedness activities, the “Rawles Gets You Ready” preparedness course by Jim Rawles of SurvivalBlog.com. It’s worth every penny. It’s worth being able to ensure your safety, security and lack of hunger when everyone else is rioting in the streets because food prices have skyrocketed and there’s none left on the store shelves. It’s happening right now:

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2010/03/15/business-as-india-inflation_7434569.html

It doesn’t matter how many meals away from anarchy we are or what particular event sparks unrest over a lack of food. Even the perception that a food shortage is coming could start a chain of events that would make it dangerous to go anywhere near where unprepared people are mobbing each other to get food or other supplies. Remember the Wal-Mart worker who was trampled to death on Black Friday 2008? The man was killed by people wanting to get marked-down TVs and computers at 5 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving. How much more will people be desperate and dangerous if and when food panics start?

You can’t eat the money in your wallet. And that money won’t help curb your hunger if no food is left on the shelves. Like I said above, I don’t want to keep harping on the same point over and over and over, but since most of us like to eat every day, and since more and more stories about the prospect of food shortages keep showing up in the news, I’d really hate to get caught up in mobs of hungry people who didn’t plan ahead. And I hope you don’t become one of them.

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Yet another reason to prep: Venezuela tightens controls on food

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

The article below is yet another reason why relying on ANY government to “help” you in times of crisis isn’t the brightest idea…unless you like price controls, which lead to shortages because private suppliers aren’t usually inclined to sell products at a loss, and then you have to wait in line with thousands of your closest friends while they also wait for government “help.” Don’t think this couldn’t happen here. We could be closer to Venezuela than you think.

Stock up while you still can!

Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez tightens state control of food amid rocketing inflation and food shortages

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Stubborn and starving

Monday, March 15th, 2010

I’m simultaneously amused and dismayed at some of the comments at the bottom of this article by people who think that those of us who are stocking up on months, even years worth of food and other necessities of life are paranoid nutjobs with no connection to the real world.

And y’know, I think they’re exactly right.

Why be prudent now when the government can provide for us later?

Why scrimp and save and buy things that are useful when buying that Chinese-made plasma-screen TV will do more to stimulate the (Chinese) economy?

Why buy extra food and build up a substantial reserve pantry when we can rest assured that, no matter what, food will ALWAYS be available at the grocery store? (except when snowstorms, strikes, food riots, crop failures or other disasters strike)

Dang that I didn’t buy food when I should’ve stocked up, because the wife and kids are hungry right now and not too happy that we bought a much bigger house than we could afford on an adjustable-rate mortgage, and now our payments have skyrocketed, we owe more than the market value of the house and my industry is laying off people like blood gushing from a trauma patient.

Each one of us has choices as to how we spend the money we earn. It’s just that some people choose to spend money on really stupid things.

I’m having a hard time understanding what’s stupid, paranoid or disconnected from the real world when it comes to having a year’s worth of food for myself and my family. Is our collective memory as a society so short that we forget that little over 100 years ago, most families had at least several months worth of food in their pantry or at least easily obtainable in their communities? But now most of us are so far removed from the source of our food that if something — it could be multiple things — interrupts the supply chain that fills our grocery stores, we could be days…maybe weeks??…without food or other items. If having several months worth of food on hand made sense 100 years ago, how has it somehow become a ridiculous idea today?

Or to look at it another way, what good is it to have a 24-hour grocery store nearby if their shelves are empty? SOMEBODY obviously bought food and emptied the shelves, so why weren’t you among them?

Because they’re open 24/7. You didn’t “need” to go to the grocery store when you should’ve gone, just in case. Now you’re hungry.

But because the store is open 24/7, I’m sure they’ll have something on the shelves.

Eventually.

Whenever.

Well, there’s always Dumpster-diving.

Or you could stock up now while you still can.

What’s your excuse?

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Nine meals from anarchy, part 5: Cheap eats, coming right up!

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

As I said yesterday, in general it’s a lot cheaper to dehydrate and store your own food than to buy prepackaged dehydrated or freeze-dried foods. It takes a little more effort than just entering your credit card number on a website and waiting for the package to arrive, but it’s typically a lot cheaper. And putting together your own food storage from home-grown or store-bought items also allows you to know exactly what you’re buying and storing.

For the sake of full disclosure, however, I will admit that there are certain kinds of foods I prefer to order from certain companies because those particular foods can be a bit challenging to dehydrate. In particular, foods that are high in naturally-occurring sugar will, of course, get gooey and sticky when they are heated. I dehydrated a batch of apples a couple years ago that were darn near impossible to pry off of the dehydrator tray, a problem that didn’t get solved until I bought food-grade plastic mesh sheets to put on the trays first to keep high-sugar foods and other items from sticking to them. (More on those sheets in a moment.) And in calculating how much or how little end product I was ending up with for the time I invested, apples (which had to first be cored, diced and dipped in lemon juice to prevent browning) ended up being more labor-intensive than I wanted to deal with (your mileage may vary), so I decided to order a can of dehydrated apples from WaltonFeed.com and have been very happy with the quality and the price. I’m planning to order a case of banana chips and a case of tomato powder from them very soon as well. (Editor’s note 8-26-10: Since I first posted this thread back in March, I’ve found much better shipping prices — $5 for orders over $75 — at BulkFoods.com.)

Having said that, though, I’ve found that most other foods are much less problematic to dehydrate, so your options are pretty wide-open as to what you can make with relatively little effort. And one thing you want to aim for as you’re putting together your food storage is to make sure you’re getting the biggest nutritional bang for your buck. I promise I won’t “preach” too much on the merits of making and storing food that is “good for you,” but it just makes sense: Healthy eating is especially important in high-stress situations, and if you’re in a situation where you’re having to rely primarily on your food storage for a while, I’m guessing that the situation itself will be stressful. So let’s use my favorite vegetable to illustrate how easy it can be to dehydrate and store food for your long-term survival and health:

SPINACH!

Mmmmmmmm, spinach!

Now, I’m not suggesting that YOU should like spinach, I’m just saying that as far as vegetables go, besides being my favorite, spinach is also packed with vitamins and flavor. And it’s pretty darn easy to dehydrate. So let’s start with the dehydrator.

A few caveats before we begin: I’ve had several of my ideas criticized online by people who tell me I’m not using the “best” dehydrator or that I should buy only fresh vegetables instead of frozen or that I shouldn’t buy my food at Wal-Mart or other big-box stores or that THEY do other things differently and so I should try to do things their way. You might hear the same things from people as you proceed with your own food storage. I’ll offer these few thoughts to the few points above and let you decide for yourself what is best for you.

1. I typically buy frozen vegetables unless fresh vegetables are in season because I can keep the vegetables in the freezer until I’m ready to dehydrate or cook them, and if the vegetables aren’t in season, I’m not keen on paying high prices now when I can wait for much lower prices when whichever fruit or vegetable is in season. It doesn’t make much sense to pay high prices for one thing now if you can buy other fruits or vegetables that are in season at a given time and which are cheaper as a result.

2. I own several Nesco American Harvester food dehydrators that I’ve picked up for about $25 each on eBay over the period of a couple years. They’re not high-end machines like the Excalibur, but they get the job done. And personally, I’d rather have multiple dehydrators since 1. I dehydrate a lot of food; and 2. if something happens to one machine, I still have a backup. Just my two cents, but these machines can save your life. I don’t think I’m exaggerating in saying that — at the moment, I’ve got about 20 quarts of spinach alone (that’s about 80 lbs. before dehydration) that I can keep in storage for a long time until I decide to eat it. The security of knowing I can prepare food by dehydrating it and storing it for several years until I need it (and to have a lot of food on hand that can feed me and my family for a long time) helps me worry less about food so I can turn my attention to other long-term needs. Having said all of this, Nesco puts out a very good product, and I’m willing to stake my entire food-dehydration process on their product.

3. I realize that buying food from various big-box stores, most notably Wal-Mart, is a contentious issue for a lot of people, so I’ll lay out my case and let you decide what is best for yourself. I buy fresh fruits and vegetables in season from local sources whenever and wherever possible. But as I type this, it’s early March, snow is still on the ground in some areas and not many crops are ready for harvest at this time. There’s no local farmers market selling tomatoes along the highway right now, so I’ve been buying packages of frozen spinach recently for about $1.30 per pound at Wal-Mart. The tradeoff of spending my money at big-box stores for frozen vegetables I can’t get fresh, inexpensive and in-season from other places at the moment is the price I’m willing to pay just for now until the local growing season begins and I can buy from local growers. I’d rather make a regular series of purchases from big-box stores during the offseason and keep building up my food storage year-round than only stock up on food when I can get it fresh and local. Most of us go grocery-shopping year-round, so I think it just makes sense to keep stocking up on food-storage items year-round as well.

Now, having gotten those caveats out of the way, on to the good stuff… ;)

food-grade plastic mesh that keeps your food from sticking

These food-grade plastic mesh sheets available from Nesco have saved me a lot of headaches since my first forays into food dehydration. As I noted above, high-sugar foods get really gummy when heated and can stick like super-glue to the dehydrator trays unless you use these mesh sheets. But since spinach isn’t a high-sugar food, we don’t have to worry about this at the moment. However, I will point out that because of how fine the mesh is, it will also help keep food particles from dropping through the trays themselves.

Let’s start with four quarts of frozen spinach:

I put quarts of frozen spinach into, well, quart-sized containers and let the spinach thaw for 6 to 8 hours. I could theoretically microwave it to accelerate the thawing process, but since I want to keep the vitamin content as intact as possible, I just allow several hours for the spinach to thaw and then put it into the dehydrator.

So I start off by spooning the spinach onto a dehydrator tray…

…and then spread it out evenly and as thinly as possible. You want to have whatever product you’re dehydrating spread out as thinly as possible so that you can have as much air flow through the product as possible:

Then I put the lid on, turn on the dehydrator, and in about six hours (your dehydration times may vary) I take the lid off the dehydrator to check on things.

You can see that after several hours of drying, the spinach has shriveled up a bit as the water has been removed. But you’ll notice that some of the pieces are kind of clumped up, and I can feel that they are still a little soggy, so I break those pieces into smaller pieces…

…and after another 4 to 6 hours, it’s done:

And now things get a little tricky.

These dehydrator trays are about 12 inches across and obviously not flexible. The plastic mesh sheet are flexible, but they have little holes all over and a big hole in the middle. The challenge is how to get the spinach from the tray and into a mason jar without spilling it all over the place. The first time I tried to figure out how to do this, I remembered a large, flat box in my office…

Don’t laugh…because it works. :P

I opened the box flaps, turned the box on its side, stuck the dehydrator tray into the box, inverted the box and then poured the spinach slowly from the box into a quart-sized mason jar, compacting it as much as possible until I couldn’t fit any more spinach into the jar. About 4 lbs. (pre-dehydrated weight) of spinach will fit into a one-quart mason jar if you pack it in tightly.

A couple notes about serving sizes of dehydrated fruits, vegetables and anything else: Obviously because whatever you dehydrate will take up less space after the water is removed, your serving sizes will be proportionately smaller. Leafy vegetables such as spinach are about one-fourth of their original volume after dehydration, so if you’re wanting to cook one cup of spinach, about 1/4 cup of dehydrated spinach or whatever other leafy vegetable will be what you need. Tomatoes, cucumbers, squash and other fleshier vegetables and fruits will take up about 1/8 of their original volume after dehydration, so measure accordingly. Breaking up the dehydrated pieces into smaller pieces will help you get a more accurate measurement.

Portion size is vital!

Measure your dehydrated foods carefully so you don’t overestimate how long they will last. If a recipe calls for 1 cup of tomatoes, using 1 cup of dehydrated tomatoes will be the rough equivalent of 4 cups of tomatoes, and you’ll burn through your food storage in no time at all. Portion control will help you ensure that your food storage will last as long as you intend it to last, all other circumstances being equal. Measure your dehydrated items carefully. And enjoy them. :)

To help you get started:

Here’s a file on dehydrating vegetables that I found at this link. The one thing that I’d recommend you NOT DO is peel the skin off of your fruits or vegetables before you dehydrate them if in fact the skins are edible. The skins are a great source of fiber and vitamins, and you’d be doing yourself a disservice to peel the skins off even if the instructions on that PDF file calls for peeling.

Got ideas or suggestions? Post ‘em below!

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