Dehydration - not a bad thing

Since it appears the raised-bed garden is going to be productive, I had to give some consideration to what I would do with all the produce since I inadvisedly planted all the seeds at the same time (well, most of them). I freeze a lot of stuff but have limited freezer space. I also waste a lot of food because I buy it enthusiastically at the farmers' market and then never use it before it gets fatigued. Happily, I can "re-home" tired fruits and veggies to the composter. But this is an expensive approach to making compost.

Several years ago, I got interested in dehydrating food. I think an infomercial may have temporarily grabbed my attention but I never did order because I would have had to jettison my Ginsu knife collection to make room for it - not! Still I thought this might be a practical alternative approach to preserving all the wonderful fruits and veggies that are available here in the rainforest. And jerky was particularly appealing since I was a hunter.

So, "like ya would", I hopped on the web looking for home-made dehydrators since the likelihood of being able to purchase a store-bought version in the rainforest would be somewhere between slim and nil. There were plenty of recipes, ranging between solar powered (which would be good for half the year here), cardboard box models, to more sophisticated designs. After extensive research, I decided I could make one out of a seldom used Coleman cooler and baking racks. I was pretty pumped for this project.

On Farmers' Market day (Friday) I was a little late getting to the venue. But my lovely friend Sally was tending bar and had taken delivery of my goat-milk yogurt so I decided to stay and have a beverage and it was raining anyway. Kelly, the owner came in and I was telling the ladies of my exciting new project. Kelly said she had a dehydrator I could borrow if I wished. So I did.
It is an Excalibur 5-tray model and it works like a charm.

It even fit into my old "entertainment centre" that I built years ago but was outgrown by the big-screen TV. So I went out and bought bananas, a pineapple, mushrooms and corn-on-the-cob. I had red bell peppers that were getting a little "long in the tooth" and needed rescued. I managed to fill all five trays, fired it up and......well, there isn't much more to it than that except to be patient and wait. The next day, I flipped the bananas, pineapple, pepper and mushrooms. Then more waiting. Today I liberated the corn, pepper and mushrooms. The bananas and pineapple are still not solid like the web demos suggest. But that's OK...there's always a learning curve. I put the captives in Ziplok bags and sucked the air out of them. They should keep for a little while but I an really eager to use them. Life can be fun in the rainforest.