This one involving the dehydrating of a 6-lb can of green beans.
Preamble: it's very windy in New Orleans today, steady at 28mph gusting to 40.
Preamble Part 2: Around the front of our RV, we have a "skirt," like this,
that provides an enclosed storage space with protection from wind and rain.
Supposedly.
The rest of the story:
Yesterday I posted about my bin of Ziploc-bagged dehydrated food getting wet under said canopied storage space, where rain came in around the top of the skirt right over my bin. I saved some of the food.
Today, in the wind, the skirt flapped around so much (guess we hadn't gotten around to securing it to the ground yet) that it knocked my running dehydrator right off the shelf. Luckily, it didn't break. Unluckily, 4 trays of nearly-done green beans flew onto the ground. Into gravel.
Now, the loss of a $4 can of beans isn't that big a deal, but 3 quarts of beans on the ground rehydrating in the humidity and predicted heavy rain is. Rotting beans on the ground, ew.
So I took a colander out and picked all the little bitty dried-up beans out of the gravel. Little-bitty means about the thickness of coffee stirrers. An inch long. Strewn around in the gravel. It took awhile to pick them all up. And as long as I'd picked them up, I might as well try to salvage them, so I rinsed them off in the colander until I was sure they were gravel-free, and stuck 'em back in my *indoor* dehydrator to dry them off. Can't just let them air-dry b/c they'll start to rehydrate.
I have an indoor dehydrator, which is quiet, and another one, which lives outdoors under the skirt because it makes a noise like a stove's hood-exhaust fan.
~Sigh~
Preamble: it's very windy in New Orleans today, steady at 28mph gusting to 40.
Preamble Part 2: Around the front of our RV, we have a "skirt," like this,
that provides an enclosed storage space with protection from wind and rain.
Supposedly.
The rest of the story:
Yesterday I posted about my bin of Ziploc-bagged dehydrated food getting wet under said canopied storage space, where rain came in around the top of the skirt right over my bin. I saved some of the food.
Today, in the wind, the skirt flapped around so much (guess we hadn't gotten around to securing it to the ground yet) that it knocked my running dehydrator right off the shelf. Luckily, it didn't break. Unluckily, 4 trays of nearly-done green beans flew onto the ground. Into gravel.
Now, the loss of a $4 can of beans isn't that big a deal, but 3 quarts of beans on the ground rehydrating in the humidity and predicted heavy rain is. Rotting beans on the ground, ew.
So I took a colander out and picked all the little bitty dried-up beans out of the gravel. Little-bitty means about the thickness of coffee stirrers. An inch long. Strewn around in the gravel. It took awhile to pick them all up. And as long as I'd picked them up, I might as well try to salvage them, so I rinsed them off in the colander until I was sure they were gravel-free, and stuck 'em back in my *indoor* dehydrator to dry them off. Can't just let them air-dry b/c they'll start to rehydrate.
I have an indoor dehydrator, which is quiet, and another one, which lives outdoors under the skirt because it makes a noise like a stove's hood-exhaust fan.
~Sigh~
I guess it's not as much of a disaster as, say, a raccoon or bear getting into a whole week's worth of food while I'm hiking. Which is why you hang your food bag overnight from tree branches or, where provided, special "bear cables" or even (as in New Hampshire) lock it up in metal boxes secured with chains.
If the Trail is as much fun as getting this food-trying thing figured out, it's going to be fun :-)
2 comments:
Wow, you certainly are having your fair share of bad luck! But you do seem to be finding ways to make the best of things. Hopefully water getting into places it shouldn't will be the worst of what you might encounter along the trail.
I heard about that wind! Oh my - sorry to hear about those beans! I got some raccoons and possums too - in my backyard, and they make a mess!
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