The economics of dehydration, continued

I made oatmeal in my new (to me) insulated container this morning. It turned out perfectly, and took very little energy to cook. A lot could be said for retained heat cooking, particularly if a reasonably simple and robust solar device could heat water to boiling.

I also went on a long walk today to the haymarket farmer's market. It runs on Fridays and Saturdays; if you go late on Saturdays, you can get some good deals on produce. For example, I bought two crates of bell peppers for $8 a crate, or about 80 cents a pound (1 crate orange and 1 crate yellow). I diced the yellow peppers when I got home and filled up 6 trays of my dehydrator with them. Another 2 trays got filled with the 83 buckeyes I picked up during the walk. I had previously picked up perhaps a dozen and stored them in a plastic tub, but they molded quite quickly. I plan to keep these ones in the dehydrator until I find time to pulverize them and then dehydrate the powder.

So it appears that, for peppers at least, my dehydrator can hold 30-40 of them (depending on their size) when diced. They should be dry in another day, or two at the most, and I can dice and dry the other crate. Perhaps I can spend the next few Saturdays getting a few crates of produce on closeout and turning them into tomato powder, dehydrated chopped leeks, and the like. Of course, there is the question of how the results should be stored.