Hey blog buds!  Hope you are having a fabulous day!

I’m sweltering in my crazy hot office (85*) but no complaints here.  You know I love to be warm!  This way I don’t even need to go to the rec center for some sauna action.  I just sit at my desk at home and let the toxins start dripping out of me while I blog!  It has been a wonderfully hot summer so far and I LOVE IT.  I hope it goes well into fall and I’d REALLY be happy with a mild winter!  The chill of last winter hasn’t fully left my bones yet!

Oddly enough it’s the complete opposite when I’m at my ‘other’ office – it’s been SO FREAKING COLD in there that I have to bring sweaters and coats to put on.  I promise you I am not exaggerating.  I’ve been FUH-REEZ-ING – goose bump city, seriously!

Office dwellers: do you have that experience at your work too?  Isn’t it amazing in this day and age when we are all trying to conserve energy that commercial buildings are kept so cold with AC?  It truly boggles my mind.

Despite all the temperature swinging going on between offices, one place that is a constant temp right now is inside my EXCALIBUR DEHYDRATOR!  Woot woot!  Finally!  I’ve wanted one for years.  And ever since Cindy mentioned almost a year ago that she’d seen one at Costco we’ve been keeping our eyes peeled, in hopes of snagging a good deal.  To no avail.  I’d also kept my eyes peeled on Craigslist for a used one (even driving all the way to Boulder and back only to have the lady NOT answer her door at the prearranged time).   But all that is now in the past because the FitFeat household recently acquired our very first dehydrator.

It’s humming along as I type, with a batch of flax seed crackers and tomato wrappers!

Rascal (my little veggie lover) likes to sniff the aroma that wafts from the machine:

Riley, on the other hand (paw), could care less.  She’s all about the sleep these days.  I appreciate that she thinks our camera charger makes a cozy pillow!  Crazy mutt…

But I digress… back to the new toy.  It was a justified addition to the kitchen (or in our case, the den) for a few reasons, one of them being that MSP will eat DRIED fruit & veggies much easier than he will eat a regular fruit & veggies.  Case in point:  today he actually asked me to pick up a mango so that we can make more dehydrated slices.  My jaw almost hit the hardwood floor.  AWESOME!  My sweetie pie likes mangoes now!

I hit up the library the day the Excalibur was due to be delivered and was fortunate to bring this book home:

I was a food prep machine that night.  I’d always wanted to try Ani’s Eggplant “Bacon”, Buckwheat Crispies and “Cheddar” Kale Chips (with cashew ‘cheez’ not real cheese).

And of course I dehydrated apples, bananas and mango for MSP:

I’ve also been experimenting with fruit leather, literally just blending up fruit, smearing it onto the flat nonstick trays and hours later, you have your own healthy fruit roll ups!

Since I wanted my first batches to be truly LIVING foods, I made sure to dehydrate only at 104 degrees and no more.  Some raw foodists (Ani Phyo included) say that things shouldn’t be heated to more than 105 degrees in order for foods to keep their ‘life force’.  Other raw enthusiasts say no more than 118 degrees.  The recipes I started with from Ani’s book all needed additional hours of dehydrating than the times that were listed.  And I live in a very dry climate.  So maybe it varies based on how many trays you had filled and the moisture content of the food on those trays.  I was using all 9 trays in mine.

On my second attempt, for the fruit leathers and some additional dried fruit, I followed the instructions that came with the appliance, which recommends fruit dry at 135 degrees (no longer considered RAW but I wasn’t terribly concerned for that batch).  And it went really well at that temp.

The batch I’m making right now I am drying at 115 degrees.  So we’ll see what happens.  Obviously I have a lot of experimenting to do.

The one thing I must say: for the Cheddar Kale Chips alone, it’s been worth the wait. If you thought I was a baked kale freak before, you should see me now.  Henceforth, kale will fondly be referred to by me as Kale Krack - because I’m thoroughly addicted.

The buckwheat groats were interesting (one word: messy), and the eggplant ‘bacon’ I need to try again before I rule it out (came out a little chewy and wouldn’t coat well).  I’m excited to try the tomato wrapper next, which is basically like a tomato ‘leather’ and then I can use that in place of a tortilla for my wraps!

KNOW BEFORE YOU BUY: A word of advice to any of you looking to get an Excalibur - it’s pretty loud.  I’m SO thankful that I read a review on Amazon that talked about this issue or I don’t think I would have been prepared, and may have ended up disappointed.  Luckily I read it, and so going into this, we knew that we would NOT be keeping it in the kitchen because of the proximity to our living room.  Currently we are using it in the den and may consider making a place for it to live permanently down in the basement.  I’m just worried that I’ll completely forget I even have things in it and they’ll OVERDRY!  I’ve been known to walk away from batches of hard boiled eggs, get started on something else, and come back to find charred eggs in the pan that I’d totally forgotten.  Out of sight, out of mind seems to be my motto  in the kitchen – now when making HB eggs, I carry a timer clipped to my belt!  :)

Do you have a dehydrator in your home?  What do you like to make with it? Anything you’d like to see me try in it and post about on the blog?

Enjoy the rest of your day, FitFeat friends!

– Shari B. =)

Related FitFeat Posts to Check Out: