Time to Dehydrate!


I got my new dehydrator!  I'm so excited.  I have a list of food stuffs I'm going to start working on this weekend.  I've been racking my brain trying to come up with some good carbohydrate sources for backpacking that can be dehydrated and reconstituted easily.  I think I've decided on sweet potatoes and quinoa (pronounced KEEN-wa).  Although I probably won't reconstitute the sweet potatoes.  I would just eat those like chips I think.  Quinoa will be good because I can make one pot meals with it.  I'm still thinking about the actual meals and haven't decided on those yet.  You may ask, why not couscous instead?  Couscous definitely cooks faster but it's actually a pasta and I'm trying to stay away from that.  Quinoa is usually called a grain but it's actually a seed and it has all 9 amino acids thereby making it a complete protein. It's nutritionally superior to couscous as far as I'm concerned.  The cooking time is longer than couscous but if I cook it at home, dehydrate it, and reconstitute on the trail, the cooking time will only be a couple of minutes.  I can use this as my cereal in the morning instead of oatmeal as well with some dried fruit, walnuts, and cinnamon.  YUMMO!

My initial list of food to dehydrate are the following:

Sweet potatoes
Salmon
Quinoa
Green beans
Cranberries
Apricots

I was going to do salmon jerky first but I'm really excited about the quinoa so I think I'll do that first so I have time to figure out what to do in case it doesn't work out.

Now I need to get to the store and buy some food to dehydrate!



This is my new Nesco Dehydrator!