I know I have talked about the amount of food prep we have going so far. What I want to talk about now is the difficulties that arise in making your own food for the trail and wonderful lessons learned.
Drying everything
This may seem like something that may or may not be a problem, but I think the biggest issue with this is the time and gear you need for this. Right now, I'm borrowing Jenn's dehydrator, as well as running my own.
While that is all well and good, most of the foodstuffs I am dehydrating require mesh screens to cover the regular shelves because once the food starts to dehydrate, it will shrink down smaller than the openings on the shelves. Down side is I have nine shelves and only six screens. So that means, either I run smaller batches or I have to make sure I'm dehydrating something that doesn't need the screens on the other three shelves. Lots of juggling and not enough planning for this. As of right now, spinach would be the only thing I have that needs dried and won't fall through the cracks. Everything else needs screens. Booo. I could probably make a few more, which I have done in the past, but it would be one more project and I don't have time for one more project.
Pokey food
In dehydrating food, you get a lot of sharp points on things like chicken. I use the canned chicken as I have read multiple sources saying that it rehydrates the best. The only thing is, it turns into these really sharp points while it dehydrates. I'm pretty sure it would do that no matter what, seeing as it has a grain and that's what makes the points, but still. It's frustrating. It leads to packages like below that don't seal all the way.
Chicken isn't the only thing that does this either. My dried potatoes also cause damage to my vacuum seal bags. They are like super thick chips, which means any corner not properly blunted will poke through. I am going to try to break it into smaller pieces with the food processor. Here's to hoping it works.
The problem that arises from this is that you can't just dump the food into a different bag. The food will just poke through it again. We've solved this problem (Please thank Jenn for this) by putting the back, opened back up, in a larger vacuum sealer bag. This has worked for all but one of the packages. One of those bags of potato poked through a second layer. Thankfully, after the THIRD layer, it has held.
Sorting
One of the things that we are doing is having Steve and Diana, mentioned previously, do our shipment boxes. That means that all of our food needs to be sorted in such a way that they are able to send us food easily.
I don't think our wonderful idea of having a different type of food each day for breakfast is going to go as well as we want, given limitations on the process and us not prepacking most of our boxes. But there are things we have to let go of to be able to do this trail. This is just one of them (Cat Tax. Baby Cat is one of Steve and Diana's cats. He decided to help me and Zoe, Damon's "cousin" [don't ask about the family tree], sort stuff).
Overheating vacuum sealer
This is one of those things you don't think about being a problem, but home vacuum sealers are not designed to keep going hour after hour with no breaks. Their heating elements that seal the plastic together will sometimes get too hot because of use and melt through the plastic, rather than just sealing it. This leaves micro holes along the seams that will open after you have loaded the bag and moved on. It is super frustrating to find these when you go to sort food.
Lessons learned so far
Start packing food way before you think you need to! Packaging food takes so much more time than I had expected, even with streamlining steps and having friends help. I do assembly line style processes, but it still takes forever!
Dehydrate more than you think! Mushrooms especially. I didn't have a really good understanding of how much of everything I would need, especially since quite a few of my shopping trips were, "Oh, let's get some of this and some of that." I bought a lot of items that need chicken, broccoli, and mushrooms. Especially with mushrooms, you don't get all that you think you are going to get when you dehydrate them. Those things have so much water and air in them!
Track how much food you dehydrate as you dehydrate. This seems like something that is fussy and such, but I would have loved to know I have x cups of something, because that means that I could go through and plan my meals, rather than going "Sure, I have enough of x." That's why I'm scrambling to get everything prepped for meals. I've made four trips to Winco for food in the past week or so just trying to make sure I have enough of everything.
Ordering dehydrated food can be tricky. I chose to order dehydrated broccoli, rather than drying it myself because there is a lot of water in it and it just seemed easier. Definitely easier, but make sure you order your food early. I've been waiting for almost two weeks for my order to be processed. That's put a lot of my food making on hold while I wait for that to come in. I have enjoyed using Amazon, but venturing further out to prepper websites and such have led to mixed reviews. It's frustrating to have to worry about shipping dates as you get down to the wire.
Electric Can Openers! Next time I do this much food dehydration, I am getting an electric can opener, even if it is just one from the thrift store. I have had to open so many different cans and it takes forever, especially in the mornings when I have to get to work. Totally having one next time I do this much food.
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