DEHYDRATING

I was intrigued by the concept of making your own dehydrated meals, specifically individual servings which can be put in your bug out bags/72 hour kits. I don't have one of those fancy dehydrators, just an older Mr. Coffee round one. There's no temperature setting like the new ones have, so I've been a little intimidated by the whole idea of dehydrating.

I do have "Backpack Gourmet" by Linda Frederick Yaffe, and have seen a lot of youtube videos  on making your own. I've tried some of those YT videoed recipes, they're pretty good. But I've never tried dehydrating and rehydrating my own, until now.

It was pretty easy: I started dehydrating my leftovers ! 

So for example, the other night we had bowtie pasta with marinara sauce. It dehydrated overnight. Last night we had chicken cacciatore, so I shredded the chicken leftovers and dehydrated that.

I rehydrated both this morning. It rehydrated really well; not enough "sauce" made it back (they're leftovers after all), but enough to be edible.

I plan to reuse Capri Sun drink bags. You cut off at the top, rinse/wash out well, add dehydrated food, an oxygen absorber, either seal with a flat iron curler, an iron, or your foodsaver. Voila! Individual serving of meals.

It's such a great idea !! And it's food my kids will eat!

I'm also looking forward down the road, to buying freeze dried food in bulk, then repackaging it into individual servings. For these I will probably buy mylar bags and cut them down to individual serving sizes.

I'm looking forward to dehydrating tonight's meal leftovers: diced chicken with Louisiana style red beans and rice. Hope we have some leftover (it's a meal which goes fast in my house)!!

Now if I could only figure out how to successfully dehydrate Diet Pepsi.....<grin.>