Drying Pears, Apples, Green Beans and Sweet Potatoes

I'm trying several things in the dehydrator today: pears, apples, green beans, sweet potatoes.

Apples and Pears: Core, cut some with and some without skin. Store cored fruit in lemon water. Cut ~1/8" thick. Sprinkle with cinnamon (next time try brushing with some vanilla, then sprinkle with cinnamon). Dry at 135 F for 7 hours. Turned over at 4 1/2 hours. A bit rubbery, but almost done. Too thin, though, curling up like a bit.

Green beans: chop off ends, mix with 1 t. sunflower oil, sprinkle with salt. Dry at 135 F for 8.5 hours.

Sweet potatoes: sliced 1/8", to 1/2 sprinkled with cinnamon, to 1/2 coated with sunflower oil and sprinkled with sea salt.

Overall, disappointed that they aren't crispier.

Processing the almonds to make almond milk

1. Soak the almonds overnight in water in the frig.
2. Rinse well in running tap water over a colander

3. Process the almonds (do 1 cup of almonds at a time)

• Place almonds in blender
• Add 2 cups of water
• Blend on high for 1-2 minutes until well blended

• Pour the almond mix into a prepared strainer. Allow it to drain until no more will drain. I put a strainer over a 4 cup measuring cup. Over the strainer I place cheese cloth. I cut 2 strips of cheesecloth that are about 1 foot long each. I crisscross them over each other (so the make an 'X') on the strainer

• Once no more will drain, gather up the cheesecloth and squeeze it until you can't squeeze any more milk out. Be careful or the almonds will come out the top.

• Pour the almond milk from the measuring cup into your pitcher, put the strained almond pulp in the cheesecloth into a bowl for use in other recipes. 

 Squeezed almond pulp

• Repeat with remaining almonds

Mmmm...almond milk, yum!

Almond Pulp Prep - #2

I posted previously how to dry the almond pulp by drying it in the oven. Unfortunately, the oven "kills" the almonds, so it is no longer considered raw. Raw almonds maintain their enzymes and other nutrients. However, I had no other way of doing it besides the air (which would take too long) so it worked in the meantime. NOW, I have a dehydrator (yay!) so I'm drying it in the dehydrator. I spread it out on the trays lined with sheets.

When it's dry, it looks like this (this was actually dried in the oven):

After sifting it, the sifted almond pulp looks like this:

Not everything will go through the sifter, mostly the skins, so you are left with this:

So far all I've tried to make with the almond pulp are CocoNutty crackers. We really like them, but we are still perfecting the recipe.

CocoNutty Crackers

CocoNutty Crackers

2 t. chia seeds + 4 oz water

1 ½ cup sifted almond pulp (leftover from making almond milk)

½ cup coconut flour

½ cup sunflower seeds (raw)

½ cup pumpkin seeds (raw), grind in Burr grinder (coarse)

½ t sea salt

4 T coconut oil, melted

6 T water

1. Add the 4 oz of water to 2 t of chia seeds (make sure they are food grade). Allow to sit until thickened. This acts as an egg substitute.
2. Mix all dry ingredients together.
3. Mix in chia seeds.
4. Mix in oil.
5. Mix in water 1 T at a time. You want enough until you can form a ball.
6. Roll out on to cookie sheet. I put a silicone mat on my cookie sheet, shaped the dough into a log, placed wax paper on top and rolled it out to 1/8 – ¼ inch thick. The problem with the silicone is that it buckles, making the crackers bent.
7. Sprinkle tops with salt.
8. To ½ the batch I baked at 325 F 30 minutes until lightly browned. After 20 minutes, flip over, cook another 10 minutes.
9. I dried the other ½ of the batch in the dehydrator for 13 hours. Not too bad, but definitely need more salt.

Still looking for a good binder, the "dough" is still pretty crumbly. I think I will try one more teaspoon of chia seeds, so 1 T + 6 oz water.

My "New" Dehydrator!

I've been on the search for a dehydrator for a couple of months now. I finally found one on Craigslist and I'm pretty excited. It's a 9 tray 2900 Excalibur. It's the older model, but it looks brand new! I wonder if she even used it :o) She also included a bunch of Teflexx (?) sheets for making fruit leather and stuff that doesn't work on the mesh sheets. I'm not too excited that they are made of Teflon, but it will work for now. I just loaded up my first batch. Since I just made almond milk, I loaded it up with the almond pulp. I also made some CocoNutty crackers so I'm drying 1/2 the batch instead of cooking to see how it turns out.

 

The Excalibur 2900

 

Loaded up with almond pulp on the teflon sheets -- Very thin layer, took about 4 hours to dry

Coco Almond Milk

I've been having a lot of trouble with the coconut oil precipitating (for lack of better term!) out of the almond milk. I've been using 4 t of coconut oil per 8 cups of almond milk. I'm using 16 soy lecithin capsules (poking them open and draining into the milk) as my emulsifier. I've seen a recipe that called for using lecithin granules, so I broke down and bought some. Here's what I tried, waiting for it to get cold to see if it works:

CocoAlmond Milk

4 cups of soaked almonds (start with 3 cups dry and soak overnight in frig)
8 cups of water
2 t vanilla
4 T agave nectar
2 quick shakes of salt
1 1/2 T. lecithin granules (well actually, added 2 t. first and then another 1 1/2 t later, blended it on low for a bit til all incorporated)
2 t. coconut oil. mine was liquidy at room temp.

1. Process the almonds.
2. Pour some of the almond milk back into the blender (be sure to rinse the blender first to clean out remaining almond bits).
3. Add vanilla, agave nectar, salt and lecithin granules. Blend well until granules are dissolved.
4. Gradually add coconut oil.

After sitting in the frig for a while, the coconut oil precipitated out. Next time, I'll try 2 T of lecithin granules.

More sprouts!

The sprouting Jar -- kept on its side so the grains get more air

Last night (Tues) I started some more sprouts. This time I'm trying oat groats and buckwheat groats. I'm so glad I found these instructions before I started. You're only supposed to soak them for 20-30 minutes because otherwise they get water logged and won't sprout. I was going to soak them overnight, whew! The other important thing about these is that you have to rinse the water until it runs clear or they won't sprout. This morning, my buckwheat groats are already sprouting a bit. I'll "harvest" them tonight.

 Sprouts in Action! 

These are buckwheat groats. You can see a tiny white bud coming off the pointy end.