The push is on.
Each tray is 13 inches diameter. This is about 4 pounds of carrots and 3 pounds of cabbage, lightly precooked (to stop enzyme action that could cause spoilage even in fully-dried food) and ready to go into the dehydrators. Each tray is 13 inches diameter; one dehydrator holds 4 and the other, 5.
I have a list of what I will need to finish dehydrating and bag up in the next 10 weeks, based on a 6-month or 24-week trip:
12 cups dried measure of each of the following:
- Carrots
- Cabbage
- Corn
- Broccoli
- Green beans
- Turnip/collard greens (yes, I like these, and yes, they rehydrate well!)
This will give me 1/2 cup dry = 1 cup reconstituted per week of each... a different vegetable each day for 6 days. The seventh day I plan to eat in town.
That's just the vegetables. I'll be mixing them with:
- Dry beans (need 24 cups dry measure = 1 cup per week = 2 X 1 cup rehydrated.) I buy them dry, soak & cook, dehydrate, and end up with "instant" dry beans. I'm not drying any more of them, though, since I discovered that lentils and split peas, after soaking 3-4 hours, cook in 5 minutes. I'll put them into a jar with water at lunchtime and heat them up for dinner.
- Brown rice (I'll need about 5 pounds for the same number of servings; soak & cook like lentils)
- 24 cups tomato sauce = 1 cup per week; I'll dry it and flake it in the blender and divvy it up; it's less expensive than 72 tomatoes (3/week)
- 8 pounds hamburger = 1 serving/week of 1/3 pound
- 8 pounds ground turkey = 1 serving/week of 1/3 pound
- Onions -- however many it takes to make 6c. dried minced onions
Then there's fruit. I don't have this fully-planned yet. Just something to mix into my oatmeal, basically. Probably:
- Applesauce "leather"
- Banana slices
- Maybe pineapple rings
That's just the stuff I'm going to dry myself.
So my dinners will include a couple servings of meat a week; complete protein the other days from the beans/rice mixture, plus cheese (buy en route); and a different vegetable every day, along with onions and tomato sauce.
I'll save breakfast, lunch, and snack plans for another post.
~Sigh~
I'm tired just from making the list. Burned up a pound of calories right there, I think.
3 comments:
Dried Black beans also don't take a long soak period. I threw some in a pot the other day and was surprised to find them soft after only half an hour of cooking. I should think soaking them a few hours would also cut down on the actual cooking time.
Did you know you can get dried butter, and dried cheese? We've bought 5 lbs cans of the stuff, some of which we sent off with linguistics working in a very remote area.
A favorite camp breakfast of ours is to toast the raw oatmeal then stir in sunflower seeds, flax seed, dried cranberries or blueberries (last 3 high in antioxidants) a bit of brown sugar and salt, toast a few more seconds then pour in just enough hot water to moisten the batch. Delicious! You can get quite creative depending on what's at hand.
"and on the 7th day, she went to town"
That made me giggle.
I have to start thinking about this stuff Pronto.
Tom and I have to get our cache for the Grand Canyon trip in the mail next Monday and I've got to get 5 1/2 days of food that doesn't leave much trash and can be stored in a plastic bucket under a rock next to the Colorado River in there...
You are going to eat healthier on this "hike" than I do at home! When you get back, will you create healthy meals and mail them to me? :)
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