First Use of New Dehydrator!

It came it came it came!...a few weeks ago. Dehydrating is a great way to get more variety in a raw vegan diet and I just knew I couldn't live without one!  The reason dehydrating is "allowed" is because if you use a temperature of not more than 105 degrees, it maintains the live enzymes in the food and so you don't lose any of the nutrients.  Isn't it beautiful??  It's a 9-tray Excalibur and is supposedly the best.  I have loved it thus far!

I recently winged my first attempt at using this.  I had previously looked at some recipes so I took some ideas from them and just went for it.  Here are my results:

POTATO CHIPS

STRAWBERRIES

BANANAS - my favorite!

Sorry, but I totally forgot to take a picture of the bananas after!

The food definitely doesn't taste like what you would buy at the store (b/c it's not dehydrated at as high of a temperature) and that's fine with me, but I definitely need to work on how to make the potato chips much tastier - they were much too starchy.  As I expirement I hope to do further posts!

Anybody have any great dehydrator tips and tricks? What has/hasn't worked well for you?

Blenders and Dehydrators

I'll be reposting my 'journaling' from when I started this journey and eventually I'll get caught up! I originally wrote this on July 12.

Boy that chocolate mylk is THE BEST thing I’ve made so far!! It’s like dessert and healthy goodness all in one! The thing that will make it even better next time around is getting a better blender (or maybe just blending it longer). I just have your normal run-of-the-mill-household blender, but it doesn’t totally eliminate the bits and pieces that get left behind from nuts.

I’m also contemplating investing in a dehydrator, since eating raw means no cooking, but doesn’t mean you can’t dehydrate. Plus, the ‘bread’ I want to make needs to be dehydrated…

I almost had all the ingredients to make Angel-Hair Squash Pasta in Pesto Sauce, but not quite (bummer!!) so I’ll have to wait at least another day. I really want to make some actual meals here. That was poor planning on my part. :( I want to continue to explore and learn…

…and I’m going to because I found a group of people (various levels of raw vegan) that meet once a month and everyone brings a dish to share and then you can share your experiences. That’s exactly what I’ve been looking for! We’ll see if it’s a good fit, but at least it’s a start. I kind of feel like I have to find people I can relate to right now – at least on some level with all of this stuff.