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Take Your Temperature

Oct 27

Posted by Shari B. in Adventures in Dehydrating, Cooking, Handy Kitchen Tools | 2 Comments

Hi friends!

I’ve had a topic that I’ve wanted to cover for a while and seeing how this has been the week of bizarre weather extremes in Colorado (record heat on Monday, then snow yesterday and near record lows this morning), I figured it’s the perfect time to talk about TEMPERATURE!  But instead of outdoors, I’m talking about in some of your appliances!

When I work in a client’s kitchen, the first thing I do when I’m there is test the accuracy of their oven.  The last thing I want is to burn their food if I think I’m cooking something in their oven at 350° only to find out that it’s actually much higher than that.  You’d be surprised how the dials tell a completely different story than the actual temp inside your oven.

You can find an inexpensive hanging thermometer that you can pop right onto a rack in your oven and leave it there.

You can also determine “hot spots” in your oven this way as well by moving it to different locations.  This would explain why that batch of cookies you made burned on the back right side of the cookie sheet and the front left ones were perfect.  :)   You’ll find that if you have a convection oven the temp may jump around a bit as the fan turns on and off.  If I set my oven at 325° often times it actually registers on the thermometer at 350°.

It also helps you to know if your oven preheats in the amount of time it says it does.  Just because your oven beeps that the oven has reached the desired temp doesn’t actually mean it has.  I’ve had some client ovens signal preheated when still 100° away.  So place your thermometer and then compare.  Is it at the expected temp when it tells you it’s ready?

Don’t just stop at your oven though.  Do you have a toaster oven?  I do.  And I used to make the mistake of trusting the dial on the front. Until something came out of it TOTALLY charred (and not in that tasty ‘blackened Cajun fish’ kind of way).  It hadn’t occurred to me until then to check my toaster oven and BOY was it ever OFF.  I’m talking almost 200 DEGREES off.  I thought I was cooking at 325° and it was over 500°!

Another good appliance to test is your dehydrator, if you have one.  Many raw food enthusiasts use dehydrators to dry their food below certain temperatures in order to preserve the live enzymes in the food.  (Depending on which expert you follow, some say that is below 105°, some say 114°, and others say below 118°.)  So if you want your kale chips dehydrating at 105° and they are actually at 130°, you no longer have raw chips.

My dehydrator’s dial is anything but accurate when it comes to determining where the white dot actually is on the temp range.  In this photo, I’d figured I was set at about 108°:

But I was actually much closer to 120°:

To test your dehydrator, rather than using an oven thermometer you’ll want to use an instant read thermometer that will give you a smaller range.

And last but not definitely not least, you should also check your refrigerator and freezer temperatures rather than trusting what the built-in appliance thermometer may be telling you.   A recent job I was on found me working with a fridge/freezer that just didn’t want to stay as cold as they should.  In the Food Safety world there is something called the DANGER ZONE that you don’t want your food sitting at for too long and that’s between 40° and 140°.  In that range bacteria can multiply in phenomenal numbers.  So you want your fridge to be under 40° but not freezing (ideally 33-37°).  And ideally your freezer should read at 0-3°.  Otherwise you might have a few million (billion, trillion) more ‘guests’ joining you with dinner than you may have anticipated!

Do you check your appliance temperatures on a regular basis?

– Shari B.

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Stop by Cindy’s blog today and check out this delightful post about her visit with a good friend.  ;)

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Shari Becht is a Certified Natural Chef, Fit Living Coach and ACE Certified Personal Trainer.  She is extremely passionate about teaching people how they can take steps to fit healthy habits into their busy lives. 

If you or someone you know could use some help learning how to eat more healthfully, achieve a healthy bodyweight or fit more “FIT” into their lives, please feel free to email her at shari [at] fitfeat  [dot] com.  For more information, click here.

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It’s All Good

Sep 16

Posted by Shari B. in Adventures in Dehydrating, Keeping Fit | 2 Comments

Hi FitPeeps!  It’s FRIDAY!  Wahooo!

It won’t be a ‘relaxing’ weekend on this end at all – for me, it will be ALL ABOARD the BUSY TOWN EXPRESS.  Lots going on!

How about some recap on eats and feats?  When I left off yesterday, I’d just had some Sunrise Juice.  And the rest of the day was just as good!  A bit later for my real breakfast I had some buckwheat groat cereal (previously sprouted and dehydrated) in a mug with almond milk.  You don’t need a lot of these – they are very filling.

Mid-morning I munched on the spicy kale chips I’d made in the dehydrator.  I might have to make more today because that batch is already GONE!  For the record – kale chips in a dehydrator just seem to taste better than those I make in my regular oven.

For lunch I had some leftover Autumn Ragu.

Mid-afternoon I had the simplest, but oh-so-good smoothie:  1 scoop chocolate egg protein powder, 4 oz water, 4 oz almond milk, 1/2 frozen banana and a small squeeze of chocolate syrup.  Blend that baby up and try not to suck it all down in 5 seconds flat.

For dinner I had an inside-out egg sandwich, where the eggs become the ‘bread’ and the ‘bread’ is the filling.  My bread this time was the one I made earlier in the day in my dehydrator, using the pulp from my morning juice.

I’m still up in the air on whether I love the bread or not.

I think I need to try it in something else to decide for sure.

After dinner we ran a few errands and then settled in to watch Jersey Shore.  And I had a few Milk Duds. :D

I took yesterday off from working out.  It just felt like it should be a rest day.  I’ll have one more recap for you to wrap up our cleaner eating challenge!

Hope you are having a FANTASTIC day!

– Shari B. =)

 

 

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Out of Practice

Sep 15

Posted by Shari B. in Adventures in Dehydrating, Adventures in Home Gardening, Keeping Fit | 3 Comments

Hey blog buds!  Happy “JERSDAY”! (New Jersey Shore episode tonight, woot woot!)

I am happily feeling yesterday’s workout.  I did a quick but effective Tabata workout consisting of:

I love the effect that the windmills have on my shoulders.  It’s a total body move that utilizes a lot of core and stabilization, but the light soreness I get after doing them is mostly in my shoulders and upper back.  LOVE that move!  It’s a “new to me” exercise in the last month, so I’m starting with light weights when I do it.  Currently using just a 5 lb DB and STILL feel it!

I took a very chilly 30 minute power walk right after my workout too.

I had 1/2 of a Larabar before my workout.

I hit up Target to look for a travel iron and while I was there I had a decaf soy caffe misto.  I always forget about the misto, which is less expensive (and less caloric) than a latte.  My tall misto was 70 calories and $2.20 or so.  It’s basically equal parts coffee and steamed milk (or in my case, soy milk… still awaiting the arrival of almond milk at local SBUX stores).  So in Italy this concoction is called Caffe Misto while in France it’s Cafe au Lait.

I realized yesterday as I was driving away from Target how out of practice I am at snapping a pic of EVERY thing that crosses my lips, like I did when I first started logging my food on the blog.  It just doesn’t occur to me sometimes like it used to!  So I don’t have a picture of my misto to share!

I also don’t have a picture of my soup and salad lunch that I had at the Whole Foods.  I met a good friend there to grab a bit at noon and I had a kale salad with olive oil, pepitas, dried cranberries and grape tomatoes with a cup of their vegan savory quinoa soup.  It was delicious!

Dinner was completely out of character and not the cleanest…  I think my mind is already in vacation mode, because all I wanted was pizza.  And rather than make a pita pizza at home, I went out to pick up a single slice from a local pizza joint that I’d never tried called Big Bill’s NY Pizza.  Topped with eggplant and mushrooms.

I had intended to add a bunch of stuff to it when I got home, like sliced black olives, spinach, tomatoes – but I was FULL ON lazy last night.  I’m so not loving the dreary weather!  I feel like I need to eat “hibernation” foods!  :D

I do appreciate that I can go somewhere to purchase just a single slice.  This is all strategy on my part.  If I were to order a full pizza, I’d eat too much of it.  It’s not a food I can easily stop eating when I’m full and because I know this I find a workaround.  If I just get a slice and bring it home, that’s all there is.  (I use this strategy with desserts as well, which is why you don’t see me write much about making desserts at home.  It’s better for me to go pick up a single mini-cupcake or cookie than make a whole batch at home.)

Other than lunch, the rest of my day yesterday was pretty lacking in greens and fresh food so I’m making up for it today.

“Sunrise”  juice with carrots, broccoli stem, kale, cucumber, celery and a bit of lemon:

Then I mixed up the pulp and am attempting a raw bread in the dehydrator.  If it works out, I’ll put a recipe out here for it.

And I also have a batch of kale chips in the dehydrator.

This is kale from my garden.  And I refer to it as BABY KALE because the leaves are pretty tiny.  And it’s getting cold so fast here now that I feel like I need to keep harvesting because I think the growth might slow WAY down soon.  It’s getting into the 40s at night and right now as I type this at 9:32 AM it’s still only 52 degrees.  Record breaking heat at the beginning of the month and now I’m digging out mittens for my walks and runs.  WOW.

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CHECK IT OUT

Now, for something fun if you like giveaways, head over to the Brooklyn Fit Chick blog where she is giving away a copy of Bethenny Frankel’s latest yoga workout DVD.  Of course I entered!  And you should too!  (Who doesn’t love to win a blog giveaway AND get a new workout to do in the process?)  I really enjoy the BFC blog, especially her “What Have We Learned This Month” posts which recap what you’ll find in magazines each month, like SELF, Prevention, More, Oxygen, etc.

Have a great day friends!  I’ll see you tomorrow for the FINAL day of our 3 weeks of cleaner eating!  I’m going to have a STRONG FINISH today and tomorrow!  How ’bout you?

– Shari B. =)

 

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A Post Chock Full of Veggies

May 18

Posted by Shari B. in Adventures in Dehydrating, Cooking | 7 Comments

Hi blog buds!  What’s new?  I hope that you are having a wonderful week so far!  As usual when a week goes by between posts I have more to share with you than you probably have time to read!  I’ll try to keep it from being TOO long and then come back and post again sooner this time!

I have been spending a decent amount of time in the kitchen recently (pictures to follow later in the post). Today when I was testing a new recipe adaptation for a vegetarian Adzuki Bean Shepherd’s Pie (with spicy mashed yams on top… mmmm!) I was realizing that if I were ever to have a cooking show it would most likely be featured on Comedy Central as opposed to the Food Network.  And not so much because of my silly sense of humor but because of the string of crazy things that seem to happen when I step into my own kitchen.

Like when I was trying to pour from a new container of vegetable stock and it decided to “glug” WAAAAY past the measuring cup and splash all over my arm and shirt.

Or when I was stirring a mixture of adzuki beans and vegetables sauteeing on the stovetop and my spatula took on a life of its own, made some sort of slingshot maneuver and flung bean mixture EVERYWHERE.  (Seriously – I’m going to have to move my stove out from the wall to clean this one up.)

I feel fortunate that when I used both my blender and my food processor today, the lids were firmly in place.  It could have been disastrous – it has just been one of those days!

The good news?  The shepherd’s pie was delicious!  (I’m not really sure what to call it – it’s obviously not shepherd’s pie if there’s no lamb in it.  “Farmer’s Pie” maybe?)

It’s not very pretty in the casserole dish pictured below.  When I make this for the intended client, it will be in single serving baking dishes and I’ll fancy up the yam topper (maybe with a pastry bag) but when I’m just checking to see how it tastes and how it will freeze/thaw/reheat, I’m not worried about the looks yet.  :)

However, some of the other things I’ve made lately are much easier on the eyes:

Raw “Fruit Truffles”
with dates, carob, orange zest/juice, dried cranberries and rolled in raw sesame seeds

Orange Chia Seed MiniCakes with Dark Chocolate Coconut Ganache
and White Chocolate abstracts (all vegan except for the white chocolate)
(I was sharing with the neighbors, so I put their initials on them)

I also made some quick-bread muffins with the pulp leftover from my juicer…

… but then I forgot to take a picture when they were done!

(I’m putting together an alternative ingredient dessert class that will be hosted in the near future by a wonderful gal I know!  Just so you don’t think all I’m eating these days is sweets!  ;) )

I also tried Gena’s raw juice pulp crackers in the dehydrator and I tossed some green olives, garlic, capers and artichoke hearts into the food processor to make a quick ‘tapenade’:

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I’ve gotten back into the swing of eating again like I used to:  aiming for a minimum of a pound of raw veggies a day via green smoothie and large salad, plus some cooked veggies.  And on top of that I’m also adding in some fresh green juice as well – it feels GREAT to be getting back to that.  I have so much food testing to do now as a part of my job that I’d really gotten away from getting in all my raw veggies.  Granted, most of the test food I make has TONS of veggies in it (even just today’s recipe alone had onion, mushrooms, carrot, zucchini, celery and yam) – but RAW veggies are very important for us as well for the enzymes and vitamins that can be diminished or destroyed by cooking.

I weighed my smoothie veggies for fun:

13.6 oz of GREEN just in my smoothie!  Wahoo!

Rascal… every morning he just EYEBALLS my smoothies.

Juice with fun things like broccoli stalks, parsley, cucumber, celery, kale and a green apple:

Kale salad (massaged in hemp oil) and topped with a very-veggie-egg salad (green onions, celery, kale stalks, carrots, beans and sprouts):

Chard Boats filled with navy beans, sprouts, carrots, leftover Pesto Tilapia mixed with a little Vegenaise:

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Speaking of healthy eating (and JUICING specifically), MSP and I watched a wonderful documentary this past weekend called “Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead“.  (I wanted to embed the trailer here but it’s not playing nice with me today so click HERE for the link to watch it on YouTube.)

Long story short:  the man in the film got up to 309 lbs and also suffered from an autoimmune disease.  He went on a physician-monitored green juice fast … for SIXTY DAYS!!  (Incidentally that doc was Dr. Joel Fuhrman – whose books I love and who first turned me on to the idea of getting at least 1 lb of raw veggies per day).  Can you imagine ONLY drinking juice for 60 days straight?  WOW!  that makes EATING green veggies seem so much easier by comparison, don’t you think?  He then went on to help another man who was 428 lbs (and suffering from the same autoimmune disorder) on his juice fast journey.  There is more to the film – you can “rent” it at Amazon.com and stream it right to your computer.   Check it out!

“Forks Over Knives” (meaning ‘choose nutrition first instead of later having to resort to meds/surgery’), another nutrition documentary, opens in Denver this weekend and I can’t wait to see that one too!

Have you seen either of these movies?  Have you ever done an extended juice fast?

Have a great day friends!  I’ll be back again (sooner this time, I promise) so I can tell you about the start of YARDIO season and also about WATER KEFIR that a friend clued me in on!

– Shari B. =)

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Sinus Clearing Snack (or Dehydrator Onion Rings)

Jan 15

Posted by Shari B. in Adventures in Dehydrating, Recipes | 4 Comments

Hi friends!

Wow, I’ve missed you guys!  How have you all been?  I’m getting a TON accomplished on my project list, but I have to admit it’s been a little tough to stay away from blogging!  So I thought I’d pop in today to say hello and share a few fun things from the last 9 days (and at the end I’ll talk about that snack referenced in the title).

We had a pretty good snowstorm and some FRIGID subzero temps hit us last Sunday into Monday, so I had my first sketchy (and S-L-O-W) commute to school of this winter season.  But what a gorgeous drive it was.  I took this photo from my cell phone driving along at about 50 mph so it’s not the best quality, but it’s still pretty.  I never get tired of looking at the scenery here.  Check out all the colors!

We’re in the Therapeutic module at school and learning about cooking for diabetes/blood sugar control and candida at the moment.  Yesterday my improv recipe assignment was Kale with Arame, Ginger and Sesame.  It may not be the most colorful dish, but it turned out very nicely and felt very warming from all of the fresh ginger. I left the kale leaves raw, cutting them into very thin ribbons (known as a chiffonade cut) and then lightly dressed them with sesame oil and tamari (use your hands to “massage” the dressing into the kale – this will wilt it slightly and help to increase it’s digestibility).  I cut the kale stalks into tiny pieces and sautéed them with grated ginger (about 2 TBSP), minced garlic, sesame oil, tamari and vegetable stock (to keep it from sticking without using too much oil).  Then I added the soaked and drained arame (seaweed) to the sauté.

Using the raw kale as the “bed” I then topped it with the sauté mixture followed by some toasted sesame seeds.  Extremely mineral rich and full of fiber.

Some of the other photoless recipes I’ve done with our improv assignments have been:

Spicy Gingered Bok Choy with Arame and Goji Berries
Baked Mung Bean and Brown Basmati Burgers
Curried Adzuki Bean Soup
Skillet Tempeh Reuben with vegan Thousand Island

I am enjoying this segment of school a lot.  I’ve had the opportunity to work on recipes alone which has been a nice change.  I can’t believe how fast time has been flying by.  We only have 6 weeks left!

So yesterday for a snack, our Kitchen Manager set out some DELICIOUS no-fry onion rings that he’d made in the dehydrator.  They were insanely spicy and insanely good!  He listed off the ingredients he’d used but no amounts so I came home last night and tried to recreate it.

Now let me warn you first:

1. These are CONCENTRATED onions so they pack some punch.  Not only will your house smell like onions while they dehydrate, but your BREATH will rival that of a dragon’s after you eat them.

2. Keep a mint handy for the sake of your friends and coworkers -OR- you may only want to eat these in the privacy of your own home.

3. If you are eating these around your significant other, make sure he/she eats them too so that you can BOTH have dragon breath.  Share the love.  One person with bad breath is no fun.  Two people cancel each other out, especially when it’s time to kiss goodnight.  ;)

4. I have a feeling these will clear out your sinuses.  Mine sure seemed more open after a few bites of these!

But the flavor of this super healthy and LIGHT snack is definitely worth the breath and the long wait during dehydrating.

Dehydrator Onion Rings

Credit for this recipe idea goes to Chef Nelson Schwab, our über-creative Kitchen Manager at Bauman.  I’m not sure if he used the same measurements or not but here is my interpretation.

  • 1 yellow onion, peeled and cut into rings
  • 3 tablespoons nutritional yeast
  • 1 teaspoon herbs de Provence
  • 1 tablespoon almonds, finely ground
  • 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
  • 1 or 2 cloves of garlic, minced
  • 1/2 tablespoon olive oil
  • pepper to taste
  • water at the ready

Combine all ingredients except for the onions and water in a mini-chopper or Magic Bullet (or you can do this by hand in a mixing bowl – it just takes longer).  Add just enough water to create a dressing that is about the consistency of thin pancake/crepe batter.  Pour dressing into a Tupperware bowl, throw in the onion rounds, seal the lid onto the bowl, and shake well until all of the onions are well coated.

Place on a dehydrator sheet lined with either parchment paper or a Teflex liner.

Dehydrate overnight at 105 degrees and up to 20 hours or until your desired level of crispiness is reached.

Action shots!

Batter:

Onions after tossing in the batter:

Before dehydrating:

After dehydrating (amazing how tiny things get when you remove all the water!):

And time to snack:

I hope you enjoy these as much as I did!  Let me know what you think if you give them a try!

(If you don’t have a dehydrator, no worries!  Bake ‘em in your oven. Start with a low temp around 250 and keep an eye on them so they don’t burn.)

Until next time,

– Shari B. =)

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Seven is Heaven

Aug 24

Posted by Shari B. in Adventures in Dehydrating | 8 Comments

Hi blog buds!

Hope you’re having a great and FIT day!  My day has definitely been active. In fact, I’m pretty tuckered out now and ready for some couch time!

It began at o’dark-thirty, in the clouds and rain, for a meet-up with one of my clients for a run session.  This was the scene on my drive over:

Luckily after the first mile the rain moved out and from then on it was just 55 degrees and overcast.  We did seven miles.  The last time I ran seven (or more) miles was way back on March 13 (gotta love the Garmin GPS training center software) and that was ultimately the 14-mile day that I knew I would NOT be running that marathon after all!  Since then I’ve done a few fivers here and there, and maybe two sixes.  It felt great to get seven in, and it also felt great to have it DONE at the end.  I was in need of some serious stretching after this one.  To think that I would have had to turn around and run that same seven again to hit the 14 mark that I’d done during training a few times made my knees hurt just thinking about it.  Seven is just dandy right now if you ask me!

After the run, I even had a coconut water – another one of those things I haven’t had in a while.  Today was just sweaty enough that I felt I could use the electrolyte replacement during the drive home.  (Sorry Whole Foods employees for my stinky post-run wandering in your aisles!)

The rest of the day was spent painting walls in our guest room, so my arms also got a nice workout today as well!  We have a special guest coming for a visit soon (MSP’s mom!) and I’ve been unhappy with the yellow paint color I put on those walls 5 years ago.  Goodbye crazy bright ‘need your sunglasses’ yellow…

Hello ‘goes with everything’ taupe-y gray color:

Luckily I finished this can of paint, so I get to take a break.  Plus it’s time to eat some dinner.  I think tonight I’ll have a repeat of the other night, which is some spiralized garden fresh summer squash (thank you for sharing your crop Heather!) drizzled with some creamy avocado dressing, and my first taste of the TOMATO WRAPPER that I made in the dehydrator.

I love the unique look of it!

I stuffed it with some cucumber strips and arugula, drizzled inside with the same avocado dressing, and tied it up with a thin celery ribbon.  The wrapper was so good:  like a sweet sun-dried tomato.  Delicious.  Maybe this time I’ll try making it into rolls that look like sushi, if it will stay rolled up well enough.

I had seconds on this one for sure!  Can’t wait to experiment further with other dehydrated wrappers – I’m thinking zucchini next maybe?  Or pumpkin?  Too many ideas, too little time!

Have a GREAT evening friends!

– Shari B. =)

A Beginner’s Adventures in Dehydrating

Aug 19

Posted by Shari B. in Adventures in Dehydrating | 10 Comments

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. =)

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