I always knew I had a dam­ag­ing hole in my food prepa­ra­tions. I have quite a few pro­teins. In fact I con­sis­tent­ly rotate my pro­teins because I use them in every day life. I also need to boost some of the pro­tein preps , as an aside. How­ev­er, what are/were miss­ing are crit­i­cal prepa­ra­tions because they cov­er two areas of impor­tance that I per­son­al­ly think are over­looked. Over­looked you ask? Yes, over­looked. Here is why I say that. I think “most of us” focus on the “meat,” no pun intend­ed. I pur­chase a lot of canned meats for my preps. Canned ham, turkey, chick­en, etc. I also use them. I am start­ing to inves­ti­gate can­ning my own meats to help cut costs if I can. I’m look­ing at a new pres­sure cook­er for that. But more on that lat­er. Back to the hole. When I looked over my food preps, I noticed a huge hole in veg­etable prepa­ra­tions. I pur­chase and store a lot of stuff, but dehy­drat­ed veg­eta­bles or canned veg­eta­bles. I will tell you I like canned veg­eta­bles because they come packed in their own liq­uid (water) which can be recy­cled, puri­fied, and ingest­ed if nec­es­sary for hydra­tion. How­ev­er, the cans can get heavy and bulky if you had to pack’em for bug­ging out . So I have recent­ly pur­chased a Nesco 75 PR 700 Watt Dehy­dra­tor .  I imme­di­ate­ly start­ed look­ing for YouTube Chan­nels on Dehy­drat­ing.  I came across Dehydrate2Store ’s Chan­nel.  I was imme­di­ate­ly hooked.  I ran to the gro­cery store, and start­ed dehy­drat­ing…

Now, I men­tioned there were two rea­sons I start­ed dehy­drat­ing veg­eta­bles.  While writ­ing there are actu­al­ly three rea­sons I can come up with imme­di­ate­ly:

• To gain ample fiber into my prepa­ra­tion diet
• To gain ample car­bo­hy­drates into my prepa­ra­tion diet
• To add ample vit­a­min, min­er­al, antiox­i­dant con­tent into my prepa­ra­tion diet.

I have read and hon­est­ly believe man can­not live on pro­tein alone.  I have seen diets such as the Atkins diet do as much harm to a per­son as it is sup­posed to do good, and in gen­er­al is NOT good for the kid­neys.  The body needs car­bo­hy­drates.  A lot of them.  The body needs fiber, for a num­ber of rea­sons.  All three rea­sons are of the utmost impor­tance, and hack­ing my own diet in the past, I can tell you that they are all impor­tant to me for some var­i­ous health rea­sons.  Espe­cial­ly from a fiber and vit­a­min impact.  Not to men­tion to keep you going from a car­bo­hy­drate per­spec­tive.  I have noticed that when replac­ing whole grains with veg­eta­bles for car­bo­hy­drates I have noticed I require a LOT of veg­eta­bles to get the same ener­gy impact, with the excep­tion that the ener­gy impact lasts much longer with veg­eta­bles (and fruits) than with refined wheat prod­ucts.  It has also been part of the Paleo Diet that I am try­ing to fol­low (not always as suc­cess­ful­ly as I think I should).

It feels good to be able to add to my preps in an area that I know has been both­er­ing me.  So what have I been dehy­drat­ing and pack­ag­ing for stor­age?

• Corn
• Broc­coli
• Car­rots
• Peas
• Green Beans
• Ital­ian Green Beans
• Mixed veg­eta­bles
• Pota­to (Hash Browns)

What I am sur­prised at is the speed at which the veg­eta­bles dehy­drate.  The size at which they dehy­drate to, and how light they are for pack­ag­ing post dehy­dra­tion.

Test­ing and rehy­drat­ing the dehy­drat­ed veg­eta­bles was also inter­est­ing.  I am going to have to play around with the dehy­drat­ed mea­sure­ment and rehy­drate to know exact­ly how to por­tion con­trol the dehy­drat­ed veg­gies so that I can build a prop­er meal with­out wast­ing veg­eta­bles once rehy­drat­ed… Maybe I will post some find­ings and calo­rie counts per por­tion so that you can pair your por­tion with your pro­tein por­tions, etc. for meal­time once I mess around with it a bit.  I was sur­prised how quick­ly the veg­eta­bles rehy­drat­ed.  There was a cel­lu­lar lev­el change in how they felt in some of them, so don’t expect your car­rots to feel as firm as they did pri­or to dehy­dra­tion.  But, I made soup with some of them and it turned out just fine.  I rehy­drat­ed peas and ate them like I just popped them out of the pod.  I was pret­ty impressed and con­tin­ue to dehy­drate to store…

If you are not buy­ing pre-canned veg­eta­bles through a ven­dor, I high­ly rec­om­mend try­ing to dehy­drate your own veg­eta­bles.  You may be able to pick an inex­pen­sive dehy­dra­tor up on Craigslist (NJ Search)  for MUCH less than pur­chas­ing new.  I have noticed that many peo­ple use them just after they have been pur­chased, but tend to let their inter­est fall off short­ly after.  This is a great bud­get item to add to your prepa­ra­tion tools that take VERY LITTLE effort to com­plete.