Excalibur heat
The Excalibur food dehydrator is quickly becoming one of our
favorite appliances, but it tends to put off a good deal of heat, which
is why we decided to relocate ours to the new porch.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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I got my Excalibur last summer but haven't tried raising bread or making yogert in it yet.
I love my dryer though.
Heather --- We've only used ours for drying fruits and vegetables so far, but it's definitely pulling its weight around here!
Mona --- I totally agree!
I read an article about making fruit leather where they mix the fruit with zucchini as a base, and can double their fruit leather output. Have you ever tried stretching it that way? The article mentions 80% zucchini and 20% fruit, but I can't believe that would be very good. Half and half, maybe...
Have you ever tried dehydrating in a solar oven? I've seen plans for solar dehydrators but we get way too much rain and humidity to make that work. A solar oven would seem to have just that extra bit of heat needed.
Thoughts?
c. --- I've played with drying fruits in a hot car, and it does work, but is pretty painstaking since the temperatures can easily get too high, and if it turns cloudy for an afternoon, they can go bad. I suspect a solar oven might get too hot (although I've been wanting to try one for cooking).
Like you, we live in a climate that's subpar for drying without a fancy machine. If we lived in the desert, though, I'd be building a solar dehydrator ASAP. (Well, actually, I'd probably be making plans to move out of the desert.
)