Dried Vegetables and Fruits

[Watchman]

This is something I confess we have not used to advantage. About 10 years ago we dried celery when it was cheap. We had a jar of dried celery and the other day my wife had a recipe that needed celery. She let it soak for an hour and then included it in the recipe and you could hardly tell the difference. Think about that - 10 years in storage! We also have used dried apricots from our tree for apricot-upside-down cake and it was great. Ditto for dried apples from our tree for a pie. We have dried mushrooms, sweet peppers, and hot peppers, with amazing results. I think we are going to use these more often.

[Toepopper]

Yes indeed, dried fruits and vegetables are the way to take advantage of a bumper crop and prevent waste. We make our own raisins and as an experiment we saved some for 12 years and they were just as good as the day we put them in the mason jar. We dried some tomatoes and that worked too. I have a small electric multi racked food dehydrater which we run during the day while the sun is hitting the solar panels. I made a 2x3foot x2feet tall box with window screen over it and a hinged door on top with racks that I scrounged from a county dumpsite and we dry everything from deer jerky to fruits and veggies in it.