Ready to Go? & Raves for a New Dehydrator!

We're just about ready to go here with 22.5 pounds of food for each 8-day section. This includes vitamins, our variety of teas, the inevitable salami, and (of course) some packaging. Doing the math gives us an average of about 1.4 lbs per person per day, considerably heavier than the last 2 years (2009 @ 1.24 & 2010 @ 1.08), at least a pound of which will be the beef added to supper (see below). But the big difference makes me wonder if I was including the vitamins & teas last year ... sometimes my notes are not as clear as I'd like when I look back. Anybody else have that problem?

This backpack's food prep has been plagued by "do-overs" & I won't be completely sure I am done until the box goes to UPS on Wednesday for its Kennedy Meadows destination.

First do-over was the dried ground beef. I had already composed & taped up most of the hot lunches when I realized how much easier it would be on-trail to already have the beef in the lunches. So I opened them all back up & added a carefully measured ounce to each one. And shouldn't I have done that with the pease porridge suppers (aka "gruel") as well? Well, yes. So I opened up each one of those, added the beef and re-taped. Turns out I had just enough beef for the 15-day backpack.

And that's when I hit the second do-over. Sunday afternoon, putting vitamins & such into little pill bags, I compared my inventory to the itinerary we'd sketched out Saturday night and discovered we were doing 16 days on the trail, not 15. Huh. So we'll need one more day of food? Well, at least one more day of trail snacks, so out come the bags of nuts, dry fruits, backpacking bars and ... oh my! Hang on a minute! I've forgotten the extra EmergenC! I'll be right back ...

Hopefully, that's the last do-over. At least the box wasn't taped up yet!

Excaliber Dehydrator Report

I got one. At last. And I am in love! If I'd had any idea how much easier, quicker & more enjoyable dehydrating would be with this 9-tray, no-hole, adjustable temperature dehydrator than with my well-used Ronco, I would have upgraded years ago. In fact, I would not have bought a starter-dehydrator at all. If you are still struggling with your donut dehydrator, I gotta encourage you to get out your money and get the right tool for the job. I'll rave more later - right now I have to go unload 9 trays of white nectarines I picked from a neighbor's tree this weekend.