Solar Food Dehydrating in a Humid Climate

[This post will also be published in the next issue of Greenzine, the official magazine of Transition Town Peterborough.]

Peterborough, Ontario does not have a desert climate; we're not likely to get one even with extreme climate change. So how does one dry food for storage using only the energy of the sun? With a keen eye on the weather forecast and a solar food dehydrator designed to function even if the humidity is 70 or 80 percent!

Sue Robishaw in Minnesota designed such a dehydrator – four feet by twelve feet! I didn't have room for such an installation so I adapted its principles for a humid climate solar dehydrator using the two glass panels from a storm door that I also use for my cold frame. I used cedar fence boards in the construction and made two units. I can easily move them from winter storage to any of several good drying locations in my yard.

The dehydrator works by forcing air to continuously move over the items to be dried. Outer glass captures the sunlight which warms the heat sink (black metal) resting on the drying trays; a shiny metal bottom reflects the heat up into the drying trays as well. The unit is roughly square and the drying trays are long rectangles; these are easier to handle than a large square tray. There is an inlet for air to enter the bottom front of the unit and an outlet for the air to exit the back top. There must also be a gap between the main body of the drying tray and the metal bottom. Using corrugated roofing tin provides such a gap, as do side bars on the bottom of the trays that rest on a flat metal surface such as aluminum flashing. I put detailed construction directions in an Instructable.

Any edible green can be dried in this dehydrator: I've successfully dried dandelion, garlic chives, herb leaves, lamb's quarters, spinach, and chard. Tender leaves work best; remove any ribs (such as in chard) to compost, use in a stir-fry, or preserve separately. Layer the leaves one leaf deep; feel free to combine different leaves on the tray (for a soup mix). If you start the drying early in the morning and there is a slight breeze with humidity less than 70%, you could have dried greens by sunset. I've gotten crumbly dry greens in as little as six hours. The leaves should be dry enough to crackle before putting them away in air-tight jars and storing in a cool, dark place. If you pulverize the leaves into a powder, it will take a lot to fill a jar. Use in any soup or stew during the winter for a hefty dose of vitamin A and minerals.

Herbs will dry to a nice dark green (not a brownish-green) because the heat sink keeps out the direct sunlight. For parsley, remove the heavier stalks and place the leaf bunches on the screen close together.
You can leave mint leaves on stems for ease of handling, but strip the leaves off to pack away. Sage is a “dry” leaf and will dry quickly. Garlic chives preserve their flavour as they dry; regular chives do not. Generally leave herb leaves on their stalks and strip them off the dried stems to pack away. It is best to fill a tray with one herb only (unless you're doing a “herbal blend”), as drying times will vary and it can be tedious to separate them for storage.

I've had success with fruit leathers and tomatoes, but they can take two or three days to dry. Be sure you're entering a fair weather spell if you want to solar dry these! Mary Bell's Complete Dehydrator Cookbook by Mary T. Bell has good notes on what things you should pretreat (usually by blanching) before drying. Dry It--You'll Like It! by Gen MacManiman is another good source book for recipes and food ideas.

February Review for "Anyway" Project

Domestic Infrastructure - these are the realities of home life, including making your home work better with less, getting organized, dealing with domestic life, etc...

• start planning the garden (ordering seeds, etc): inventoried seeds, some old beans went into the soup pot, and I ordered some new varieties to try
  
• convert toilet to low-flush mechanism: not done yet
  

Household Economy: Financial goals, making ends meet, saving, barter etc...

• selling off a Les Paul guitar that hubby doesn't use much (ad posted): still here!
  
• eating down the stores through February to reduce outside purchases (challenge): a few more things off the priority use-up list; spent less than $100 on purchased food!

Resource Consumption : in which we use less of stuff, and strive to live in a way that has an actual future.

• thermal pot cooking: all soups, stews, yogurt making, and rice cooking done in this
  
• walking for shopping and volunteer work (use car as little as possible): lots of walking!
• I kept the art room closed up with the floor vent covered when I wasn't using it

Cottage Industry and Subsistence:: The things we do that prevent us from needing to buy things, and the things we produce that go out into the world and provide for others. Not everyone will do both, but it is worth encouraging.

• "put up" granola for the summer: used up squash likely to go bad before the butternuts do and a half dozen pints are on my preserve shelf
  
• make hot sauce from canned and stored food on hand: did this with some friends and it was a lot of fun
  
• start making custom-sized socks: first pair done and "my pattern" written up
  
• starting next year's Christmas presents by using up my re-discovered yarn stash with a new knitting book I got: no projects started
  

Family and Community: Pretty much what it sounds like. How do we enable those to take the place of collapsing infrastructure?

• co-learning with a celiac neighbor how to make polenta (an economical gluten-free "fast food"!): between weather and health issues for both of us, never got to it
  
• began planning to build an outdoor oven with neighbors: never got to it
  

Outside Work: Finding a balance, doing good work, serving the larger community as much as we can, within our need to make a living.

• volunteer work with Peterborough Greenup's Urban Forest project (GIS mapping and data analysis): did a set of maps and reports for them
  

Time and Happiness: Those things without which there's really no point.

• Nordic walking to enjoy whatever sunshine we have this month and get fresh air: also did some Nordic skiing and snowshoeing with a friend
  
• fiction reading (second-hand or borrowed books): more time devoted to art than to reading!
  
• continue with art journal: also joined the Milliande Art Community for Women while putting together a few journals; have participated in one art swap
  

Week Eight: Eating Down the Pantry

Food eaten:
• leftover lentil soup
• leftover curried veg soup
• beef stew with local grass-fed beef, local veg, home-canned stocks (beef, tomato, and vegetable)
• beef with broccoli with more of the grass-fed beef and rice from last week's stir fry session
• stir-fried veg with shrimp and more rice

I really only cooked three things this whole week for us! We ate everything up with no waste.

I did spend some money on groceries: stock up on milk, sugar, bread, and shrimp and I got lots of remaindered produce: broccoli, tangerines, kiwi, celery as well as some root basics at the farmers market: organic mushrooms, parsnip, carrots, rutabaga, green pepper. Total spent: $25.29.

Now we'll heading into the two week stretch before we go away for nearly a month, so eating down the refrigerator becomes important!

My First Pair of Knitted Socks

This is my first pair of hand-knit socks. I loved the colour way, even though the yarn is acrylic. The right one fits better than the left -- but that's to be expected for a first pair!

I adapted a pattern for toe-up-socks, using the Magic Cast-on by Judy Decker for the toe and a Plain Heel from The Sock Knitter's Workshop by Ewa Jostes and Stephanie van der Linden. I like the Magic Cast-on because I can make a less pointed toe (which fits my squarish toes better!). I like the Plain Heel because it is for a high instep and a wide heel, which I have. It also looks stronger than the more usual short-heels (which fit low insteps fine, but would be tight on me.

The cuff is K2P2 rib, with larger needles in the upper cuff to give a "larger" fit. I still have problems with the cast-off being too tight. But on the next pair I'll be adding a quarter more stitches in the last rib row to give the elasticity I need.

After the socks were done, I spent the time to transcribe the techniques and stitch counts I used into a 3 page pattern for myself -- better than carrying around a book and two print-outs! Now my sock knitting can truly travel.

I'm already on the first cuff of the next pair of socks!

Week Seven: Eating Down the Pantry

Food eaten:
• pulled pork with frozen roast and sauce compounded of preserved odds'n'ends on home-made rolls
• restaurant leftovers extended with pulled pork, shrimp, and lots of veg
• lentil soup (from mix) with tomato stock, stored carrots, dried tomatoes and red peppers
• curried veg soup with squash, broccoli stems, zucchini, tomato stock, garlic sauce, quinoa, dried red peppers

I bought some flax seed and remaindered produce, spending a total of $4.27 for the week!

Week Six: Eating Down the Pantry

Food eaten:
• remainder of adobe chicken in tostados and a soup using a number of home-preserved items: corn, veg and tomato stocks, squash, carrots.
• last of the fall apples and some canned fruit preserves in a fruit crisp
• last of the fall carrots in carrot salad and soups.
• pasta with home-canned sauce, frozen turkey sausage, fresh veg

This week was stock-up on a few items: makings for yogurt, brown rice, alfalfa seeds for sprouting; and I used a half-price voucher at a local butcher for some meat. Total spent: $37.82.
I really expect to spend a lot less next week.

The Kenmore is Dead - Long Live the Whirlpool

Back in January our front-loading washing machine stopped spinning out all the water it should from our laundry loads. Hubby took apart things and found some stuff in drain but its removal didn't improve things.

We finally got a repairman in this week. His verdict: the tub casing was broken (and pieces of it had been showing up in our laundry!) and it would cost $400 - $450 to fix. The Kenmore had more or less begun a course of self-destruction in January. After hearing that the machine was eight to nine years old, he recommended we get a new machine. I asked what kind, he said "Whirlpool."

Hubby looked through the papers and flyers we had and searched on the Internet. A store about twenty minutes away was having a scratch-and-dent sale with no sales tax. We decided to check it out. We remembered the trouble we had getting the Kenmore down into the basement and took measurements of the doorway -- we had 26 inches of clearance if we took the door off at the top of the stairs.

We got to the store and all the machines we saw we 26 1/4 inches or more in their narrowest dimension. We didn't see the scratch-and-dent model on the floor; probably sold out. We told the salesman about our size constraints and he took us into the warehouse where there was a row of scratch-and-dent washers, all Whirlpools! Even better, they measured 24 inches at their narrowest. They were smaller than the machine we had, but we were doing maybe two loads a week. Another astounding thing was that the machine used less than 160 Kw a year, figuring that you are doing eight loads a week!

Needless to say we got the machine. It even fit in the back of our CRV. Back home, hubby finished dismantling the old machine. We'll reuse what parts we can and take the rest to the municipal recycling depot for such things.

Getting it down into the cellar was another issue, but the next morning I called my son at work and he agreed to come by after work to help get it down into the basement. He showed up at 5:30 and had even borrowed a hand-truck with his boss's blessing. We had it down and sitting on its pallet (to keep it off the floor -- high enough that even the flood we had in 2004 didn't touch the first machine) in twenty minutes.

The new machine has maybe two-thirds the capacity of the old one. I'm back to separating darks from lights...