Experimenting with the Dehydrator

I recently wanted to purchase a dehydrator, particularly the Excalibur but I didn't know which one to get. I've never used a dehydrator but found that it would be pretty important to have if we want to eat something other than salad. Plus, I can make crackers, dried fruit and what have you. Did I mention we signed up for our first CSA? It starts March 1st! My grandparents had a dehydrator packed away that they sent to us just this past week...after I called out to Facebook asking around for one. That Excalibur ain't cheep in case your wondering. So, back to this machine we got in the mail. It's called the Waring Food Dehydrator. It was sold through Amway and was shipped to my grandparents in '96. They probably used it a couple of times and then packed it away...and that's we're it stayed until this girl, 18 yrs later starts asking. Wow, '96 was 18 yrs ago? I'm not great at math but I think that's right.

Just a few pictures of the item in question!

Now that the dehydrator is here and I'm not at work, it's time to get started. I had two recipes I wanted to make.  The first was Flax Crackers, the second Raw Cocoa Crackers. Lets start with the first one.

Flax Crackers

If you juice like I do save your pulp.  You can use it for this recipe. 

Ingredients

1 cup Walnuts (soaked for 1 hr or more)

1 cup juice pulp (I had carrots, apple, and kale)

1 cup Almonds (soaked for 1 hr or more)

1 medium tomato 

1 cup Red Onion

3 tablespoons Flaxseed

2 teaspoons Sea Salt

Oh and don't forget the food processor!  Throw all your ingredients into the food processor and pulse till its smooth!

Some of the ingredients. I forgot to photograph them all.

Once you've got that done, it's time to spread it onto the dehydrator trays. This dehydrator sadly has one setting: 140. These crackers are supposed to run on a lower temp like 115. Since this is the first time I'm using it, I'm just winging it. That's probably not the greatest idea but I'm learning. There supposed to be crackers at the end and the dehydrator is supposed to suck the moisture out right? So I figure you just keep an eye on it periodically until there dry. That's what most of the recipes say to do.

Alright, before I loaded the trays in the dehydrator I made the second recipe.

Raw Cocoa Crackers

Ingredients

1 cup Cashews

1/3 cup Flaxseed

1/4 teaspoon Salt

1/4 cup Cacao Nibs

1/2 cup Date Paste 

(I get my date paste recipe from www.addictedtoveggies.com, basically you get Medjool Dates, remove the pits, and process them in the food process with a little water.  It depends on how many or how much your using.  I didn't soak the Medjool dates I bought.  They didn't need it.)

2 tablespoons Chia Seeds

1/2 cup Water (as you need it)

A photo of all my ingredients (I forgot to photograph the process.  I'll get better at it.)

Throw all your ingredients into your food processor and pulse till the mixture is smooth.  This one turns out a bit more sticky then the other did but thats alright.  Once you've done that, take the mixture and smooth it out onto your dehydrator tray.

Now its time to load up the trays.  The thing thats different about this dehydrator than the Excalibur Dehydrators is that the heat is coming from the bottom.  I read that was not a great thing because stuff tends to drip into the motor and the air doesn't circulate as well.  The Excalibur motor is on the back end as apposed to the bottom which means nothing leaks into the motor and the heat/air is distributed throughout the machine.  

Here it is doing its thing.

I had to move the trays around a couple of times so it would dry everything evenly and wouldn't have to wait forever.  I forgot to mention, the dehydrating process takes time.  For mine it took 8hrs for the Flax Crackers and a little over 24hrs for the Raw Cocoa Crackers. They probably could have gone a lot longer too.

Flax Crackers

Raw Cocoa Crackers

I hope you've enjoyed my post tonight!

New Year so what now....

Apologize in advance if I'm all over the place. It will all make sense soon enough ;-)

We've made it through the holidays and are now in 2013. I just had a big birthday too. It seems like we've had something going on non-stop for the last year- deployment, Texas, Vegas, NOLA, moving, and more visits. Now we've got nothing on the schedule except work and aging. Seems so weird to have nothing planned since we've been so non-stop.

On another note, we are venturing even further into the vegetarian/vegan/raw world. I hate that it has to have labels. Should be, "hey we're trying to eat normal" but normal isn't normal anymore...so got to give it a new name, label. None the less, we still like our dairy so that's still in the cards. We found raw milk (stuff is awesome and I don't even like milk) to go along with our fresh eggs and cheese. Also got ourselves signed up with the local CSA. Ordered seeds just yesterday which is super exciting. I've got high hopes for the garden this year! Stay tuned in for that. Right now I'm attempting to make crackers...without a dehydrator. Hope they turn out awesome and before the weekend is up!