TdeV

Is that watermelon @DesertTinker? Looks lovely!

Me too, I took @Kim Shook's advice. Exactly right. What I did not understand previously was dumping the fruit into ice water afterwards.

Oh, I have been looking for something like this!

I was cooking dinner for outdoor diners and decided to raise/lower the temp by 5°. Instead of letting me do this, the machine started the descale cycle. I hit a few buttons to try to stop/cancel the descale cycle but was unable to. The program emptied tons of water into the oven (no tray at the bottom of the oven at the time). The way I got the machine to pay attention was by unplugging it. What a mess! The Descale light had been on for a while, but that automatic behaviour was preposterous.

Palo, this is a very provocative statement. Could you please expound?

Yes, if I'd spent $50 for a lifetime membership I would have thought that a good deal too. I keep trying out the free version because I *want* to want a subscription! 😄 But so far, no dice.

I have tried out the free version a few times. Generally my searches are not successful and then I write to "support" who inform me that what I'm looking for can't be done. An example is wanting to limit results based on type of cooking vessel (e.g. Instant Pot). I own a few hundred cookbooks, so this is a meaningful search criterion.

Calibre Companion is/was THE app to query the Calibre database (looking for a new book to read). A large upgrade was necessary and Chaley (original author) wanted to retire and found another guy to take over the app. But the new guy released a paid upgrade which failed to implement most Calibre Companion functions and was a total catastrophe. So, the new iphone app was utter trash and useless. Fortunately I immediately turned off upgrades to Samsung Android so I am still able to use the old Calibre Companion app there. You'd think I would have remembered that I learned not to be on the bleeding edge of (mostly Microsoft) software decades and decades ago!

You know, it will be no time at all when he'll be taller than you! 😄

Thankfully, I have my device set to my needing to confirm upgrades (very bad experience with Calibre Companion). So I'm usually behind the times when it comes to upgrades.

Please report other things you do with it!

Homemade pesto and rehydrated tomatoes (from neighbour's garden), Parmesan-Reggiano, Butterkäse, and fresh goat cheese. Rather a lot of cheese actually. Good reports from eaters.

Do you drink a lot of juice, Jo? Or mainly use the juicer to prepare your Mai Tai(s)?

Happy Birthday Gully. I love this place. Plums baked in port. And the best I could do for a candle on short notice. 😇

Me too!

My mother fed us wheat germ as a cereal when we were children - couldn't stand the stuff. Curiously, I just tasted it in a version of Muësli which I'm trying out. So far my favourite Muësli is Bob's Red Mill which doesn't have a preponderance of wheat germ. So I guess I still don't think much of the flavour. 🙄

I'm addicted to carbonated water. Surprisingly, I like it best without additives.

Also, has anyone cooked beans (e.g. Rancho Gordo) and then dehydrated them?

Can one put frozen stock into the IP, or should it be completely defrosted first?

@kayb @Okanagancook @andiesenjiand Everyone, Do you seed roma tomatoes or any other kind of tomato before dehydrating? It seems Mary T Bell recommended drying herbs (in this case basil) at a lower temperature (90°F/32°C) to keep more of the essential oils. My Anova Oven (with the door cracked open) has been at this for 18 hours and the basil is drier but not dry, i.e. still limp. Should I change strategy? Mary Bell also recommends taking all the fat out of ground meat with paper towels, removing all the fatty tissue from other meats and fish, as well as using zero fat yogurt, methinks because, in longterm shelf life, anything with fat might go rancid. I'm not planning on (ever) doing any backpacking with dehydrated foods, so do I need to adhere to these rules?

@kayb, up this thread a bit you mention dehydrating roma tomatoes. Do you skin them first?

I've been posting questions in the APO topic and the Food Dehydration topic, so I thought to join them together. Here's some history of various discussions: Now I have a total of 5 racks for my APO: 2 original and 3 are Hamilton Houseware's 12" x 17" cooking racks which fit the APO perfectly (a recommendation from @palo who said "They fit perfectly, smoothly slide in and out of the grooves and are rigid enough that there is no concern of them popping out of the grooves"). Via Amazon, here for Canada and Australia and here for the US. For the two racks which came with the APO whose rungs are too wide to support drying food, I got Silpat P52 baking mats which have tiny holes in them; this was a recommendation by @JoNorvelleWalker, and do the job perfectly. 3 Fruit Leather sheets from Bright Kitchen. The only APO published recipe comes from Scott Heimendinger (Anova) for dehydrating apple chips where he only uses heat on the bottom of the oven. Dehydrating multiple racks means some goo drops to the bottom of the oven which produces jam on the heating element. Does putting the tray over the lower heating element reduce the oven's efficiency? Should the heat source be changed to the rear element? Here's my request on the subject but no answers yet. Resources and recipes: Mary T Bell: Complete Dehydrator Cookbook (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) and Food Drying With an Attitude (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) @Okanagancook recommended this https://www.excaliburdehydrator-recipes.com/ The APO door needs to be propped open to dehydrate foodstuffs. I have learned that a chopstick (~1/4") is enough space and a skewer (~1/8") is not enough. With the latter (skewer), I opened the oven in the morning (after 12 hours) and all surfaces on the door were full of water and the zucchini were still soft and wet. Here's a discussion of my experiment with marinated zucchini.

It was delicious! Photo below was of leftovers today which still had some hints of last night's tastiness. This was my usual dough at 60% hydration and 14% semolina. A substantial smear of my best batch of recent pesto (lots of garlic [some fresh this year], basil, Parmesan-Reggiano, Grana Padano, pecans). Sprinkled aged Gouda, then ~3mm slices of Yukon Gold potato, then Fontina.

When putting thinly sliced potatoes on a pizza, does one bake them a bit first or not? If so, what is the correct potato, its treatment, heat of the oven, etc?

My question didn't really get answered here but here it is rephrased: There's only one recipe on the Anova site which deals with dehydrating and it recommends selecting the bottom element as heat source. Do you suppose there is a problem if I have the baking tray sitting on the bottom of the oven (with a rack of eggplant on it)?? (All the other racks are occupied). Edited to add: It would be simple to change heat source to the rear element. Okay, do you think?