The scary world of dehydration. . .

So this last weekend Meredith and I decided to continue improving on our preserving prowess and we canned more tomato sauce.  We ordered the organic "seconds" (bruised and split) tomatoes from Soil Born farms (they ended up being beautiful unblemished masterpieces of organic goodness and not bruised at all, for a whopping 50 cents a pound!  So with 60 pounds in total and an array of other goodies we headed home to her house in Amador.  Luckily she has a great brick patio with some shade and we set up our big cooking operation from the previous weekend.  The one big difference is that we had decided to try our hand at dehydrating fruits and veggies as well.
  Our friends and family graciously donated their dehydrators for our venture and I had visions of dried soup mixes and scrumptious dehydrated fruit snacks dancing in my head.  We took the Ball Blue Book and a guide, "How to Dehydrate Food" as our bibles and compared the two recipes.  Through the comparison we came up with our game plan of what fruits and veggies we needed to pretreat in citric acid, how thick we cut them and at what temperature the dehydrator should be set.  What we found was not all fruit and veggies are created equal and what a P.I.T.A some of them were!
  Apples, pears, strawberries, and figs were the easiest and seemed to come out the most uniform (all but the figs were pretreated with citric acid).  White peaches were AMAZING dried but quite a bit of work with blanching, peeling, pitting and slicing.  Grapes, blueberries and cherries - while amazing tasting - were too messy, too time consuming to prep and took WAY too long to dehydrate.  I'll buy my raisins at the grocer in the future.

   The plan for the fruit is to make homemade trail mix.  This is something I used to do all the time in Italy before our long bus rides every weekend with my architecture class.  My roommate and I would venture down to the Mercato Nuovo and visit our favorite dried fruit vendor - he had EVERYTHING!  Our favorites being dried mango and pineapple.  Then we would head over to get a bag full of almonds and walnuts with some chocolate candies.  Our DIY trail mix would sustain us on those long bus rides from city to city.  Today I went to Whole Foods and stocked up on raw nuts and semi-sweet chocolate chips from the dry foods bins and once my homemade dried fruit is done conditioning after a week it will all get put into individual snack size food-saver bags!
  For the homemade dried veggies, less pretreating was necessary and they came out fairly uniform.  Green beans, okra, onions, peppers and corn came out great.  Carrots were too much work and do not retain much of their nutrition or flavor after drying so those are nixed for my future dehydrating endeavors.  Meredith and my greatest find, however, were dried zucchini!  We ended up slicing a lot of Mer's extra zucchini from her garden and seasoning it with a garlic seasoning mix.  When dehydrated zucchini becomes crispy and with seasoning easily takes the place of a chip - flavorful, crunchy, no fatty oils and raw so it retains all the nutrients!  Just remember to go light on the seasoning because the "chips" are much smaller after dehydration which compounds the spice flavor!

10 medium zucchini sliced 1/4 inch with garlic salt, pepper, and onion powder.

10    pounds   of   zucchini   equals   a   quarter   pound   of   zucchini    chips!

Bloody Mary Mix (Alcoholic or Non)

This recipe is the one I used last weekend for canning but it will probably stay in the fridge for a week or more and would freeze excellently (just add the vodka before pouring yourself a glass otherwise it won't freeze). 

Makes: 5 quarts - 20, 8 oz. servings

Ingredients:

  - 30 medium tomatoes, peeled, seeded, decored and quartered

  - 2 1/2 cups green peppers, chopped

  - 1 3/4 cups carrots, diced

  - 1 cup celery, diced

  - 1 small onion, diced

  - 4-6 garlic cloves, minced

  - 1 Serrano pepper, seeded and minced (optional)

  - 1/4 cup parsley, minced

  - 1 bay leaf

  - 1/4 cup sugar

  - 1/4 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice

  - 2 tbsp salt

  - 1 1/2 tbsp Worcestershire

  - 1/2 tbsp Tabasco or to taste (I added about 3 tbsp)

  To peel the tomatoes slice the skin of the tomato after washing and drop in boiling water for 1 minute or until skin becomes wrinkly, remove and drop in an ice bath.  When cool the skin will peel right off and then just core and cut in quarters and push seeds out with your thumbs.

  Cook the ingredients from the tomatoes to the parsley in a large pot until mushy - it will quickly become soupy - cook for 30 to 45 minutes, until veggies become softer.  Remove the bay leaf and working in batches, place the contents of the pot in a blender and puree to a desired consistency for drinking.  Return blender mixture to the pot and add the remaining ingredients.  Taste for seasoning and spiciness.  Bring this to a boil and either can the contents, place in a refrigerator container for immediate enjoyment or store in freezer safe containers for later.  If canning place in sterilized quart jars and water bath can for 40 minutes.

  Add the desired amount of vodka (or not) to mixture and place in shaker with ice, shake vigorously, pour chilled mixture into a glass with ice and pickled garnish or celery stick.  It's great with brunch or as an afternoon treat before dinner!