Preparedness for when

Karmacat

I've been prattling about dehydrators on my diary thread, as I'm wondering about buying this: https://www.westfalia.net/shops/household/kitchen_appliances/electric_and_mechanical_appliances/dehydrating_appliances/193811-food_dehydrator.htm

Can I ask, how good are they in general? How good is the brand? I don't like all the sugar that jams imply, and I don't want to use too much vinegar (bad for me arthritis, dontcha know) ... dehydrating seems the next logical option ...

Living_proof

Karmakat - I have had an Excalibur 9 tray one for a couple of years now and this year I have been drying fruit as fruit leathers. They dry very quickly and are speedy to prepare and I will use them in crumbles and pies and will try and sweeten with sweet cecily or stevia to avoid sugar entirely. Very useful to have dried celery, leeks and loads of other veg to throw in the slow cooker. I feel I am a slave to it at this time of year however as there is so much to preserve. Create loads of condensation so can only be used when it's warm enough to have window or door open for several hours on end and can be a bit noisy.

Living_proof

You could dry a load of rosehips which I understand are really good for arthritis amongst others. Look at the eat weeds website for details on how to do it.

mardatha

Just caught up with 3 pages - very good posts in here
Re gamekeeping courses at college, this kind of thing is very good. If you have sons then get them to take one in a gap year. My youngest son left school at 15 because he was quite dyslexic and really fed up struggling and getting nowhere. He went to college and did the 1 year gamekeeping course, and also got work experience with the gamekeeper along the road here. He learned amazing interesting things and became a much happier person. Then he went back to his love of Falconry and worked for the top people in Scotland at the time, flying everything upto and including Golden Eagles. After a few years doing that he went back to college and learned to be a joiner lol.
I never have to worry about that son, he has a lot of skills covered

grandma247

Karmakat I have that one,in fact bought another a few months later. It runs at a temperature set for jerky so is quite hot.

I made my original into a ten tray and put the motor and base of the new one away as spares. This is a good dehydrator but it needs babysitting as you have to alternate the trays to get even drying. After the first couple of hours I move the bottom tray to the top and continue doing that every hour or so.

Karmacat

Living_proof wrote: »

Karmakat - I have had an Excalibur 9 tray one for a couple of years now and this year I have been drying fruit as fruit leathers. They dry very quickly and are speedy to prepare and I will use them in crumbles and pies and will try and sweeten with sweet cecily or stevia to avoid sugar entirely. Very useful to have dried celery, leeks and loads of other veg to throw in the slow cooker. I feel I am a slave to it at this time of year however as there is so much to preserve. Create loads of condensation so can only be used when it's warm enough to have window or door open for several hours on end and can be a bit noisy.

grandma247 wrote: »

Karmakat I have that one,in fact bought another a few months later. It runs at a temperature set for jerky so is quite hot.

I made my original into a ten tray and put the motor and base of the new one away as spares. This is a good dehydrator but it needs babysitting as you have to alternate the trays to get even drying. After the first couple of hours I move the bottom tray to the top and continue doing that every hour or so.

Livingproof, grandma247 - thanks for your posts. Had to pop out for a bit, and I'm having a butchers now ... you know what, I'm going to put it out there on my local freecycle/freegle, whatever, but as for right now, I'm going to see if my halogen oven will work. People say it does, but no huge detail about it. I'll have a proper rummage about here on Old Style, and see what people say on halogens

Thanks again.

Butterfly_Brain

I have a westphallia dehydrator that I bought many years ago,it is pretty good and is still going strong. It is a good one to get you started

Karmacat

Thanks BB - I've been dashing here there and everywhere, on mse and around found 3 recommended sites via a post of grandma's, here:
http://www.aces.uiuc.edu/vista/html_pubs/DRYING/dryfood.html
http://www.preservefood.com/drying.shtml
http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/dry.html

Not about halogens, obviously, but lots of precious info

Seems that dehydrating using the halogen is really expensive, dehydrators run much cheaper (Fuddle was writing about that).

Good to know that westfalia last well, BB - I might be down to a situation in a few years time where I need to downsize to a flat, so I'd just be using it for shop-bought. I've got to have a think about this, don't want to buy on a reflex whim this time, don't really have the money for that.

Thanks for your post

Frugalsod

armyknife wrote: »

Well if Corbyn wins the leadership, as a one nation pro-European heathite tory, I'll be joining his labour party; first time in a generation that a political party will have broadly similar policies to my, by now 'far left' politics.

I think that the reality is that Blair, Clegg and Cameron had dragged all the mainstream parties so far to the right that they were almost sharing ground with BNP and UKIP. Even the liberals leadership had abandoned its centrist position under Clegg. Even Ronald Reagan would never be selected to lead his party now. I wonder how many of Labours past leaders would cope with the current leaderships.

Frugalsod

Something for GreyQueen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca5fLOp_yWE