adventures in vegetable dehydrating, part 1

We have been wanting to try dehydrating vegetables, and fruit, for a while now. Since we do not have an electric food dehydrator, and it was a cold day in Chicago, we decided to give dehydrating a try via the oven.

First, start by chopping up the vegetables. We used carrots...


Place them on a baking sheet... *we added a dash of garlic powder for flavor*


Bake in the oven. You want to keep the door cracked open a bit.
With this batch, the carrots were in the oven for 6 hours on 200 degrees. The carrot sticks turned out better than the round ones, which really shrived up!
Here is an excellent link on how to dehydrate all sorts of fruits and vegetables.



It was fun to experiment with a new treat, but dehydrating isn't really energy efficient.

Typically we serve carrots raw... sticks or pureed.
We like to mix them with other vegetables, meat, poultry, acv, and/ or whatever else we have around.
It's easy to make small batches that last a few days in the refrigerator.
You can also make up larger batches and freeze in smaller batches. Of course that would be more economical.
We really want to give canning a try. Would love to hear if anyone has had adventures in canning?

* pureed carrots with acv...