Re: Re: Building Food Dryers--Avril

[Guest guest]

Aaahhh, good ol' ebay. :-))

Samala,

-------Original Message-------

Thanks so much for going to the trouble of describing the process in

detail!! It goes in my files, and when we're done fixing and selling

our house, I'll work on that! Unless I can find a cheap on on

Ebay. )

[Guest guest]

Whew! I don't think I'd want a fire anywhere near my drying food. Totally unnecessary. As a matter of fact, you want slow enough drying at a low enough temp that you keep all the nutrition in. Too high a temp and poof! Your nutrition is gone.

A much simpler one is get one of those long mesh shoe or sweater racks. They are 4 ropes tied at the top, with shelves hanging on the ropes at intervals, all enclosed by a mosquito mesh type material. Normally you find these and they zipper open and shut. All you do is line the selves with some plastic wrap or butcher paper, place the food on top of that, hang the whole thing outside and let the air and sunshine do it's work. The mesh keeps the bugs off, the wind and sun dry everything. The only thing you need to do is bring the thing in at night so the damp night air (not a problem here :-) doesn't remoisten the food, and once a day turn the food pieces over so the other side dries too.

And normally, unless someone has a huge garden and/or orchard, something as big as what is in that link will never be used enough to make it worth while to build. Most folks have small amounts of fruit and veggies to dry, unless you really get into it. Then a big unit like mine is nice, because 6 2 foot square trays holds a lot of stuff.

Samala,

-------Original Message-------

I've been looking for a dehydrator for some time. Thanks for the

instructions. I found this link to an outdoor dryer also: