[mosquitomountainman]

My wife is preparing for an 1800 mile bicycle trip next month. She's been busy dehydrating food and packaging freeze dried food from our storage supplies. This is an experpt from her online blog.

I've (Susan) been dehydrating food to take along on the bike trip. I shredded potatoes (homegrown, from our root cellar!), parboiled them, and ran them through our dehydrator. They came out great! I also cooked up some black beans and ran them through the dehydrator. I chopped up apples and dried them, plus I dehydrated bags of frozen mixed vegetables, corn, and a peas & carrot mix. I have tomatoes, strawberries, huckleberries, onion, and both sweet and hot peppers that I dried last Fall. Then I bagged up some oatmeal (premixed with cinnamon, a little sugar, and powdered milk), freeze-dried beef stew, dry butter and dry cheese. Probably a couple other things in there too that I forgot to mention. Oh yeah! The eggs! I made dehydrated eggs! I whipped them as though I was going to make omelettes, spread it out on fruit-leather trays that came with the dehydrator and dried them. They're like cornflakes when they break apart. I ran it through the blender and "ta da!", I have powdered egg! Should be some good eating on the bike trip!

 

[mosquitomountainman]

I like the eggs idea too for hiking this summer... so would you just add water then and fry?

(I'm the wife of mosquitomountainman) After you add water (ratio 1:1) to the dried eggs stir them as you would for making scrambled eggs or omelettes. Then just fry them how you would fresh eggs. You can use your dried eggs in baking too. One and a half teaspoons of dried egg equals about one fresh egg. I add the dried egg to the dry ingredients and then add the water with the wet ingredients. You can premix the egg and water if you'd rather. Just seems like an extra step to me. Some people think the 145 degree temperature duriing dehydrating is enough to kill salmonella, but there's no guarantee, so treat the dry eggs as fresh eggs. If you're not using a dehydrator with a temperature control, be extra cautious using the finished product. Eggs have enough fat in them to make it important to keep them in a dark, cool place in an airtight container. Glass containers are best.

 

[mosquitomountainman]

Susan, In your experience, about how long does it take to dry the eggs. I started 4 tray's this morning. Thanks.

She's on the train right now. Hopefully when she gets online again she'll have an answer.