Jean-Francois mentioned a couple weeks ago that he had dehydrated food in the past to take on camping trips. He knows I am into healthy eating.<\/p>\n
I’ve seen the dried food at REI and other places and have no interest in paying that much for a meal while camping. The idea of preparing tasty, healthy food to take along appeals to me a lot.<\/p>\n
I checked out some books and ended up getting Backpack Gourmet by Linda Frederick Yaffe. I have also found great ideas on http:\/\/www.backpackingchef.com\/index.html.<\/p>\n
I bought an economical little dehydrator — Nesco FD-75PR 700 watt. I was pleasantly surprised when the box arrived because I didn’t know it came with 2 plastic trays for liquid items and 2 plastic mesh screens for small things. After using it I feel the ideal situation would be to have 5 each of the liners for liquid and the mesh screens since the dehydrator comes with 5 trays. So far I’ve been improvising by cutting parchment paper to fit the other 3 trays and it’s been working well. The FD-75PR model has fan to circulate the air which I read prior to buying is critical to the drying process. I put it in another room with the door closed since it does produce a lot of heat while drying. I have been very pleased with it’s performance so far.<\/p>\n
I started out simple by drying vegetables. I have done broccoli, mushrooms, carrots, and multi-color peppers so far. It is amazing how small everything gets when all the moisture is pulled out. Lesson: use the mesh screens. Small pieces fall through the trays when the items are dry.<\/p>\n
I tried the pumpkin pie bark on backpackingchef.com and love it so much I had to get it bagged up and put away or I was going to eat it all. It’s just pumpkin, pumpkin pie spices, and maple syrup (the real stuff). I think I spread it a little too thick because it took a long time to dry and I’m not certain it’s dry enough to not go bad on the trip. It’s just one of those things I’ll have to find out as we go.<\/p>\n
Prepared a recipe from Backpack Gourmet this morning — Thai Noodles. I hope it’s as good rehydrated as it is right out of the pot. I used a food processor to mince the shallots, garlic, mushrooms, and peanuts to make sure they are small enough to dry properly.<\/p>\n
I’m excited about being able to take meals and dishes that I know are healthy and have only good ingredients in them. We’ll report during and after the trip how my food works out on the road.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jean-Francois mentioned a couple weeks ago that he had dehydrated food in the past to take on camping trips. He knows I am into healthy eating. I’ve seen the dried food at REI and other places and have no interest in paying that much for a meal while camping. The idea of preparing tasty, healthy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[94,21],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-camping","tag-camping","tag-trip-planning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":802,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions\/802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorcycle-journeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}