Believe us, once you’ve gotten a taste of freeze drying, you’ll want to share your creations with the world. Your perfectly preserved bites are your masterpiece, and everyone should get a chance to taste them. Luckily, there are a lot of easy ways you can share your creations with others. From putting together snack packs of freeze-dried food, to mailing entire meals ready to be re-hydrated, the opportunities for sharing your freeze-dried goodies are endless. Here are a few creative ways Harvest Right freeze dryer owners have decided to pass their treats on to others:
Create Scrumptious School Lunches
Camille loves to make fun and healthy snack packs for her little ones to take to school. She fills re-useable plastic containers with a combination of freeze-dried foods, such as fruits, vegetables, and pudding or yogurt drops to give her children a nutritious and delicious snack. As a special treat, Camille periodically throws a freeze-dried mini ice cream sandwich or a few mini cheesecake bites in to satisfy their sweet tooth.
Sometimes, Camille will take a large mylar bag and cut and seal it into smaller sizes to make perfectly-portioned, on-the-go baggies. Those apples off grandma’s tree or grapes from her backyard have not only become her children’s favorite foods, they also makes them smile because they know it came from grandma.
Send Perfect Care Packages
Yvonne wanted to send her twin grandsons a care package while they were in Uruguay and Panama. As Thanksgiving approached, Yvonne knew she wanted to give her grandsons a home-cooked meal for the holiday, even though they were thousands of miles away.
Among turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, and green beans, Yvonne freeze dried her famous chocolate silk pie. It was important to Yvonne to be able to send a complete, nutritious Thanksgiving dinner, but also one that reminded the boys of home.
All the boys had to do to dig into to their homemade Thanksgiving dinner was add hot water to rehydrate their turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing and green beans. Then, they ate the chocolate pie just like little cookies! After being away from home for a few months, Yvonne’s grandsons were thrilled to get a little taste of home on a special holiday.
Share a Bite of Home at the Holidays
Teresa has been throwing her Halloween bash for years. Friends and family come year after year for the costume parade, apple bobbing contest, and her famous cobweb chili. (No, the chili doesn’t have spiders in it, but it is full of white cheddar cheese that makes her chili spookily delicious.)
When one of Teresa’s friends couldn’t make it to the annual shindig, she freeze-dried a batch of chili before the party and sent it to her friend with other Halloween goodies. Her friend was thrilled to get the package in the mail and Teresa was thrilled that it was so inexpensive to mail since the freeze dried chili was so light-weight.
Whether you are serving up your famous chili, sending your mom your signature lasagna for Mother’s Day, or mailing watermelon slices to your daughter serving overseas in the military over the Fourth of July, a Harvest Right freeze dryer makes it easy to let people know you’re thinking about them over the holidays.
A question: You say to rehydrate you just soak in hot water for awhile. What do you do after that. Obviously, the food would be warm or maybe even warm enough to eat, but how do you make it “a HOT meal.” Can you microwave it for a minute or two or put it back in the oven for 30 minutes or so – not to cook it but to re-heat it. The food looks wonderful rehydrated, but I really like my food hot when I eat it. If I would buy one of these dehydrators I would be making full meals – sort of like a TV dinner – but hopefully, it would taste much better without the preservatives and extra salt – more like a home made meal, but I also put a lot of weight on appearance (which looks ok) but also on how it is served up like a “fresh” home made meal. Thanks for any advice.
Great question. To make it a “hot” meal, you can put the food in the microwave for a minute or two. It will be just like fresh food at that point. Also, some people choose to rehydrate their meals with boiling water and that makes a “hot” meal. Either way, the food will be delicious.
You can absolutely heat the food in the microwave, or on the stove in a pan or skillet, or in the oven (like a casserole). We certainly like many of our foods hot, so adding hot water or cooking or re-heating them in normal ways is completely acceptable and desired.
do you have to use oxygen absorber when using a food saver bag?
Typically, food saver bags don’t work as well for long term storage. If you plan on having the food last a couple of years, then you can use a food saver bag without an oxygen absorber. For best results, use heavy duty mylar bags or #10 can with an oxygen absorber.