My New Toy

So for about 2 months I have been spending a lot of time experimenting with my new toy:  a food dehydrator!  It was a lovely birthday present from my parents.   So I've just been playing around with the variety of different things you can do with a dehydrator - right now I'm trying my first batch of chicken jerky, to be followed by the beef jerky while I'm sleeping tonight.

So obviously you can do jerky...this was marinated in Kikkoman's Teriyaki Takuma Collection which was AWESOME if I don't mind saying so myself.  Think mouth wateringly good...atleast if you like teriyaki like I do!
And then you go to the Farmer's Market and go overboard on buying fresh and happy fruits and veggies and have plenty of ways to 'experiment' with them...

My very first experiment was just drying plain zucchini and squash...nothing special.  Then I did the walnuts and almonds after first soaking them to make the easier to digest (dehydrating just dries them back out after soaking them...they are still considered "raw" if you keep the temperature of the food under 118 deg if you're on a raw food kick).
Then I decided I better step things up a notch, so I tried making some kale 'chips'.  (No, even through they're in a Fat Free container, they do still have fat)  You basically wash kale, rip it into pieces, put a little oil and whatever seasoning you want on it, then throw them in the dehydrator for about 4-5 hours.  I had a garlic parmesan mix that was very tasty on them, as well as just salt.  They're light and crunchy, definitely with a little bit of the bitterness that kale has, but I personally enjoyed them very much!

 Of course there are the regular other fruits: blueberries (took FOREVER to dry), sliced strawberries, halved cherries (also took FOREVER...aka a couple days), star fruit, cilantro, "sundried" tomatoes (halved cherry tomatoes), apples, peaches, bananas...  I haven't tried very many veggies yet, so I'll have to work on that some more.  I did try to make potato 'chips', which did not turn out very well - they got grey and were very starchy.  So I pounded it down into little pieces and figure I can use them as a soup thickener if I ever need to...

One of my favorite things has been making fruit rollups!  The ones pictures are actually just applesauce I had in the fridge I decided to experiment with.  I also did ones made out of dragonfruit, tomatoes (again to make into a sauce), cherry banana - blending in any leftover zucchini pieces to get in a bit of veggies!


On a similar note, I used Rawmazing's banana crepe recipe to try out the fruit rollup idea further - obviously mine don't look quite as amazing, but it was fun to try!

I also tried to make a kale-flaxseed cracker/wrap and they were AWFUL.  I'll have to try to make something a bit better than that and see if I can come up with some sort of tasty cracker type recipe...

So as the word 'experiment' came up quite frequently in this post, that would be the most appropriate word for how I've been eating recently...I've also read a book or 2 that make logical sense to me as far as eating the stuff you digest most easily (fruit, then veggies, then protein) first so it can get through your system the quickest.  Very interesting stuff indeed!