Make Your Food Dollar Go Further: Dry Your Own Fruits and Vegetables at Home!

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I've also found that parts of many vegetables that aren't normally used — stems, tops, roots (in some cases), and blossoms — can be dried and later added to soups, stews, and broths . . . or ground into powder and blended with cheeses to make delicious spreads.

Dried Foods Will Keep For Years

Regardless of what you decide to dehydrate (I've only mentioned a few possibilities), remember that dried foods are good only as long as they're kept dry. This means you should always store your dried goods in airtight containers (I prefer plastic bags or glass jars), preferably away from light. If you follow this precaution, your dried edibles should remain dry and edible for many years.

Why Not Give Drying a Try?

In these few pages, I've hardly even begun to describe the joy and satisfaction that can come from drying foods at home. Let me just say — in conclusion — that I don't know of a better way to...

1. Cut your yearly food bill
2. Free up valuable cupboard and freezer space
3. Enjoy a greater variety of more flavorful foods . . . than to dry your own herbs, fruits, and vegetables at home.

Give food dehydration a try . . . you'll be both money and health ahead!

A Test Report on the CEC Food Dryer

Little one- and two-square-foot trays are all right for food drying experiments... but if you really want to dehydrate and preserve edibles in any reasonable quantity, you're going to need a dryer that holds a bushel or more of produce at a time.

Plans for just such a unit are available for $1.50 (in the U.S. and Canada) from the Community Environmental Council, Solar Research Group, 109E De La Guerra, Santa Barbara, California 93101. Even though the folks at CEC call this solar-powered dehydrator an "herb dryer", the hefty man-sized rig will-of course — dehydrate any kind of produce you care to load into it.

The unit works by using a small fan to force air down its face, between a sheet of clear vinyl and a section of corrugated black metal roofing. The air absorbs warmth from the sun during this journey ... and then transfers that heat to the cut-up pieces of food spread out on trays inside the dryer's cabinet as it is circulated around those trays and out a side vent.

Emerson Smyers, one of Mother's researchers, built and tested a dehydrator constructed according to the CEC's plans. He quickly found [1] that inflation has taken its toll in the three years since the drawings and instructions were released. Whereas the council estimated the cost of the unit's materials at $195.79 in 1974. . . those same materials now price out at $240.

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