Dehydrator Love

I love my dehydrator.  Today I decided to spend a lot of time in my kitchen.  I made some Apple Berry Salsa and had leftover fruit so I dried some of it.

 

 Here's the end result.  Dried kiwi, apples, an oranges.  The kiwi is delicious--I've never dried it before.

 I made a bunch of salads, and cooked taco meat for hubby's lunches.  Also I made 2 lasagna meals, cooked a chicken, deboned it and am now making bone broth.  I spent about 4 hours in the kitchen.  I did a few loads of laundry---and oh yes, I made sweet cinnamon tortilla chips in the oven on my baking stone.  I'm a gadget girl.

 



Drying Zucchini

 

I made a trip to the Farmers Market today, mainly for zucchini.  I love farmers Market.

 

I washed three large zucchini and sliced them with my mandolin slicer, then put them on six trays to dry.  After they were dry I put them in one quart jar--wow, there is a lot of water in zucchini, but they dried fairly fast.

I use zucchini in place of noodles when I make lasagna, but sometimes it turns out a little soupier than I like, so I thought I would try drying them first and just laying them in dry.  Hopefully they will rehydrate while they are cooking and not add so much moisture--we will see.



Dehydrating Produce

 

 

I'm dehydrating things now.  This is kale that has been washed, trimmed of the big stems and cut into  good sized pieces. 

 

I blanched them, then spread it out on two trays. 

 

I had three small zucchini that I washed, cut up, and blanched as well.

 

They took up two trays.  It only came with 4 trays, but I have two more coming soon. 

 

 

 

 Below are the results:  Left is the kale that I have crumbled, then the zucchini.  Next in line are the dried apples, or what's left of them.  I dried three apples, and we have about 1 and 1/2 apples worth left.  Lastly, I have strawberries, or what's left of them.  That small jar was 1/2 filled with a large store container of dried sliced strawberries, then it had dried pineapple to fill it to the top, but we munched on those as well.

 I will make a soup with the zucchini and the kale in it and see what I think of them.  I just have to try everything out before I go hog wild, as my dad would say.  I love having the fruit to munch on.  Many times I just want to eat a small snack, and drying the fruit makes it easy to do so.