DesertTinker

@pastrygirl Have you considered an impulse sealer (eG-friendly Amazon.com link)? No vacuum, but a better seal than folded and taped.

Food for “air sous vide” does have to be vacuum sealed. From pg. 9 of the Cosori deluxe US model cookbook, and pg. 42 (the only air sous vide recipe in the book) It also takes a lot more time, 3 hours air sous vide for a 10 oz. unspecified thickness of salmon fillet vs. (per the Joule app) 1 hour for a 1 1/2 inch thick salmon fillet.

Chili recipe please? I enjoy seeing chili recipes of others. Beans or no beans, meat or no meat, no matter what it is I won’t tell you “That’s not chili!”. 🤣

Another scraper here. My parents both grew up during the depression, I think my mom was more impacted by the experience, being 14 in 1929, in Oklahoma.

That sounds about right.

125°F for around 10 hours, but we have really low humidity here, I think it was at about 15% that day.

With plum tomatoes it’s really not necessary, but you can if you want, it will make them dry a bit faster. I recently dehydrated 9 lbs of grocery store Romas. I debated the wedge vs. half vs. sliced, ended up going with 7mm (1/4 inch) crosscut slices, there was very little juice loss even with the cross cutting. I ended up with about 9 ounces of dried tomatoes.

This is on the Simply Chocolate website (another part of the 1800flowers.com family of brands. Hmmm… it also links thru the Harry & David page.

This (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) has worked well for us. The actual heated area within the white circle) is 5 1/2” diameter, it’s relatively lightweight, but doesn’t move easily on the counter and the cord is long enough to not be a total nuisance.

Here's what I found after a bit of poking around.

I’m guessing the last part means that you plated them, photographed them, then binned them?

It’s 16.5” wide by 19.5” deep by 12.5” tall. Here’s a view of the inside (found online). The 7” fan pulls air from the back (via holes that aren’t very visible in this pic) over the heating element that sits just behind it, blows it through the trays, warm moist air is exhausted through gaps around the door on the front. Super simple construction, remove 8 screws and the back panel which holds all the “works” comes off. The best part is, replacement parts are readily available and easy to remove/reinstall.

A 9 tray Excalibur Dehydrator. Purchased on eBay to replace the Harvest Maid FD-5000, Solid State w/dryness sensor probe, circa 1985, that I inherited from my mom. At just shy of 40 years of relatively steady use, the Harvest Maid finally pooped out. The Excalibur is not quite as quiet as the HM, but it does dry faster and has a bit more drying space than it’s predecessor.

@liuzhou I know you’ll appreciate this…

It’s all good as long as there were no finger slices! The blue vinyl gloves were your gentle warning. You need cut proof gloves for the mandoline!

@Smithy I think you missed this line (in between the pictures) “home aged in the crisper loosely wrapped in ids wrapper , then in a plastic bag” .

Dragging out the big guns! 🤣

Something like This? They also seem to be available in a six slice version. I used “pie cutter” for my search.

@rotuts and @Smithy. Good job! I’ve got a set on the way. You each get an enabler's gold star. ⭐️⭐️

Here’s the “blue item”. It's a fun butter dish. I had to hunt to find a linkable pic in blue. I think there were many more colors available in the late ‘90s.

My shears also arrived. I like the serrated blade, that’s something the old Gingher pair didn’t have.

I was offered a “taste to see if you like it” at a friend’s house. It was… interesting. Not offensive, but also not something I would seek out to consume again. My memory of the experience is the initial whiskey flavor and burn, followed by a peanut butter aftertaste.

I also cheated and did my cabbage/salt massage with my Kitchenaid 5 qt mixer, two pounds of thinly sliced cabbage with salt just fit in the bowl, and with the dough hook took about 2 or 3 minutes on low speed to be “massaged and juicy”. I just wasn’t feeling the cold and salty massage by hand today.

Double ditto! I just put up two quarts of sauerkraut this afternoon, I made a couple of 9cm rounds from polypropylene dehydrator screen (I had extras), the mesh size is the same as the cheese mat and it’s food grade. It’s so much easier than the glass weights that I have, as noted by @blue_dolphin. I only had a couple of “floaters” to catch and dispose of.