I was gifted a box of BANANAS! So not to let them go to waste, I started baking....and baking....and baking.
Here is the box of bananas that I started with.
I started with the best of the bananas and loaded the dehydrator. In the photo you can see the banana chips in the jar. That jar was one dehydrator full. I have the second batch in the dehydrator now and I will have one more batch after that. If you have never tried dehydrated bananas, they are sooooo good. A yummy little snack.
This is where I have stopped for the day. 4 loaves of banana bread, 4 loaves of chocolate cinnamon banana bread, 4 loaves of strawberry banana bread, 2 mini loaves of strawberry banana bread, 5 mini loaves of banana bread, and 1 chocolate cinnamon banana bread (that Hunter started eating) and a jar of banana chips and more in the dehydrator!
All of the loaves will be wrapped and put in the freezer and will last for months. I may also give some as gifts. All of these are so tasty with some powdered sugar icing drizzled over the top.
Let me tell you how simple the Strawberry Banana Bread is. You take a simple STRAWBERRY CAKE MIX, mix it as the directions state then add a cup or so of mashed bananas (I think I added about 4 mashed bananas) and bake as the cake directions. I just baked mine in loaf pans. When you get ready to serve you can drizzle with some icing.
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Dehydrating...I love it almost as much as canning. LOL! It saves space, it's easy and so useful. I had a lot of tomatoes from the garden this past summer and after a while I got tired of canning them and not wanting to waste them I finished them up by dehydrating them. Let me tell you, they are so yummy this way.
I started by slicing my tomatoes about 1/4" thick. You don't want them too thick but also not too thin. Tomatoes have tons of water in them so if they are too thin they pretty much just disappear in the dehydrator.
Once completely dried you can grind them into powder. The green on is parsley but the other is my tomato powder. It takes a lot of tomatoes for grinding but tomato powder is great for thickening soups and stews or just to sprinkle for added flavor. I always try to keep it on hand.
This is one of my jars of dehydrated tomato slices. Oh my how I love these! Shew... These are also great for soups, stews, chili, and hydrate fairly well. Of course, dehydrated things never go back exactly as they were before but close. I also love eating them straight from the jar or crumble over a salad. The taste is very powerful. I love them!!!
As you can see they are beautiful in color.
They dehydrate really thin as these were sliced about 1/4" thick.
They store well in a wide mouth mason jar or a storage bag.
I either store mine with oxygen absorbers or seal my jars with a jar sealer that removes all of the oxygen and keeps them crisp. I will post more about how I store my dehydrated items in a later post.
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Supper last night was an EASY meal with very little effort at all. Andrew wasn't going to be home for dinner and Hunter and I ate at mom's so that just left Richard when he got home from work. Here is what he had...
I started with this...
- 2 pack of thick cut boneless chops (marked down to $3.19)
- Package of Chili's Slow Cooker Sauce, Sweet& Spicy Molasses
- 3 small potatoes (not pictured) cut in chunks with the skins left on
- Maybe 1/3 cup of corn. You can use canned corn but I just used a handful of my dehydrated corn and rehydrated it.
I dumped the meat and the sauce in the small crockpot and cooked on high for 4 hours. At the 3 hour point I added the cubed potatoes. After 4 hours it was ready to serve. I sprinkled a little corn over the top of it. 4 hours on HIGH or 6 hours on LOW.
Here's my big jar of dehydrated corn. I'll post more on that later. I love having this on hand and it will last for years being dehydrated.
This is hubby's plate! Since everyone else had already ate, I just dumped it all in his plate. LOL! This is the first time that I had tried the sauce pack and he said it was a "winner". You can see the steam coming from his plate as I had just got it out of the crock pot.
Extremely fast and easy. Probably 5 minutes prep time and 4 hours in the crockpot on HIGH or 6 hours on LOW.
A yummy meal with very little effort. I also think this would be great served over mashed potatoes.
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Here is the box of bananas that I started with. 
I started with the best of the bananas and loaded the dehydrator. In the photo you can see the banana chips in the jar. That jar was one dehydrator full. I have the second batch in the dehydrator now and I will have one more batch after that. If you have never tried dehydrated bananas, they are sooooo good. A yummy little snack. 
This is where I have stopped for the day. 4 loaves of banana bread, 4 loaves of chocolate cinnamon banana bread, 4 loaves of strawberry banana bread, 2 mini loaves of strawberry banana bread, 5 mini loaves of banana bread, and 1 chocolate cinnamon banana bread (that Hunter started eating) and a jar of banana chips and more in the dehydrator!
All of the loaves will be wrapped and put in the freezer and will last for months. I may also give some as gifts. All of these are so tasty with some powdered sugar icing drizzled over the top.
