[Nacci]

I'm dehydrating regular home cooked meals. The spaghetti sauce we had for dinner tonight has Smart Ground Veggie Crumbles in it (son is vegetarian.) Can I dehydrate the sauce with the crumbles mixed in? Can I mix in some mozzarella cheese to boost the calories & fat, melt it a bit, then dehydrate the cheesy sauce? I think my biggest challenge as I delve deeper into FBC is figuring out how much is a "serving." Son piled some noodles on a plate, then I put that amount on the tray. But when he's really been hiking all day, I think he'll be hungrier than that. He like Primal Bars (Whole Foods, $1.19 each) and Clif Bars, but it was a lot easier to feed him when he was smaller and he ate meat (lots of beef jerky on the trail.)

[sarbar]

The crumbles dry well, great in red sauces. I would leave the cheese out and add it in after rehydrating, take string cheese It carries well.

[Nacci]

Typically we have "backpacking quesadillas" (string cheese in a tortilla) for lunch almost every day, so we always have lots of string cheese. I'll toss one to son when he has his spaghetti. (By the way, the pasta was "accidently" left on the dehydrator for 9 hours instead of the 2-6 hours you recommend. Should I try to rehydrate it to see if it's edible, just take it with us, or toss it?) I'm packing up a quinoa salad and a couscous salad for myself. Yesterday I sat in the hammock in the yard, rereading your book and picking recipes I'd like to try for our upcoming trip. I'm definitely one of the "live to eat" crowd, while the vegetarian son is "eat to live." He just needs food.

[sarbar]

It should be fine - dehydrating is such an open end thing due to humidity. The 2- 6 hours is a suggestion more than anything. I know that when I dry whole wheat pasta it takes longer than white for example. Same on damp days. The real issue of over drying comes in play with oven drying - which is much hotter than a stand alone dehydrator

[wamtngal]

I just dehydrated veggie crumbles for the first time last night -- by themselves since we'll be adding them to a couple dishes. Excited to throw in something new for our dishes...hard to come up with protein ideas for vegetarians. Hey Sar...this is a bit of thread drift...but is there such a thing as over-drying? I usually leave the dehydrator on all night and everything is nice and dry in the morning...otherwise I'm not sure when I would dry stuff considering I'm at work all day and not going to leave the dehydrator plugged in.

[sarbar]

You can over dry certain things - like fresh herbs and delicate fruit for example or foods heavy in dairy products but overall I wouldn't worry. I have never had issues with over drying and I let it go overnight (so much easier than doing it during the day and worrying about it being plugged in!) One thing that helps is often hiker food is in small pieces - and not huge pieces where, yes, one can over dry the edges while the center is still wet.

[wamtngal]

Yup ok, that's what I always thought...and to be honest, even if you told me that you could overdry, I'd probably do it anyway b/c I'd rather have it go overnight...call me lazy.

[sarbar]

I love the photos for dehydrators where they show 1" thick rings of pineapple being dried - which would take fer-ever