Food Dehydrator; A new found love.

I've had this food dehydrator for approximately three years. My mother in law gives awesome gifts. Sometimes, I don't realize right off the bat how awesome they are.

Just like the time I got this really huge crock pot I thought was a turkey roaster, which I discovered wasn't, in fact, a turkey roaster. Of coarse this was during the very first Thanksgiving I ever hosted. Yeah, panic in the kitchen during that day! Of coarse it did just fine in the oven...

However, I have been pleasantly surprised at how convienent it is to have such a size of crockpot. Much like how pleasantly surprised I am learning I love to dehydrate things.

I have owned a dehydrator before. Though, no one ever bothered to tell me that they weren't created just for the sole purpose of jerky making.

I recently found some old books that belonged to my grandmother. A couple are mainly canning books but with some good chapters on dehydrating too. There was also one book entirely on dehydrating as well. These books are what sparked my interest in digging out the dehydrator (still in the box) from the top of the pantry, and giving dehydrating a go. So far I've dehydrated celery:


Hey, I had lots of celery from Bountiful Baskets and I didn't want to just chuck it in the compost bin!

When the leaves are dried up, you can add some sea salt, grind it all up together and you have some delicious celery salt!

Bananas! Now we're talkin! My husband and oldest daughter love banana chips. They were good, but next time I think I need to pay more attention on how thick/thin I cut them so that they are more uniform.


Fruit leathers. These were the kids' favorites of coarse. We made some pear and berry ones sweetened with honey.

And my favorite (because there is this really yummy recipe for creamed corn that my co-worker gave me)is dehydrated corn.

The problem with falling in love with my little dehydrator?
Wanting the much bigger, super-duper, fancy schmancy one!