IT's HERE!!!

[Amuzon1]

I got my dehydrator in this morning! Woohoo. Already flipped thru Alissa's book and figured out what recipes I want to make first. Pizza crust (easiest!), Sausage, Calzone, Eggplant Bacon and some banana leathers. Oh yeah, and the onion bread everyone is raving about too.

Any pointers on those?!

Danielle

[ladypeace82]

YAAAAYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[justinesmith]

I am pretty sure I did my eggplant bacon wrong... it was so oily I could hardly stand it. Pizza, calzone and onion bread are delightful and easy! :D

[trinity082482]

Totally unrelated to your thread but I love ur name! Were going to try for a baby in about 1 month from now and If its a girl I want to name her Danielle. Many friends have told me they dont like the name but I love it!! What do you think of your name? Do you like it? I want my future daughter to be happy with it.

[EastCoastie]

I tend to reduce the amount of oil in the recipes, including the eggplant bacon. It is really good. I can just eat it straight out of the dehydrator.

Can't help on the onion bread as I am not at all a fan of that.

Happy 'hydrating.

EC

[walnutty]

There are two great cracker recipes on this site....the Ritz Crackers and the Spicy Red Pepper Dragon Chips/Crackers. I LOVE them both. I also DO NOT like the onion bread.

Good luck and HAVE FUN!!!

[Amuzon1]

Hi Trinity,

Good luck on the conceiving. Have fun trying! ;)

Danielle is actually my middle name. I seriously dislike my 1st name. It's fine for others, but not for me. So, THANKFULLY, my mother picked a decent middle name that I've used since the age of 13. I'm now 38. That said, until I was an adult, I went by Dani.

Danielle

[Amuzon1]

Thanks you guys for your comments too. I'll have to check out those crackers. Tonight I'm gonna start off with the pizza crust! Hubby is dying to make pizza. He used to live on it.

I don't know if they still do this, but Dominoes used to put the number of pizzas you'd ordered for the year on the slip they glued to your box. My husband and his roommates ate from Dominoes, Pizza Hut and some other local pizza maker. Anyway, by the end of the year with Dominoes alone they'd racked up like 75 pizzas! (This was when we were dating. After 12 years together, he's now fully on board with the Raw food challenge and doing VERY well.)

Danielle

[beppa66]

The pizza rocks by the way. We usually make mini pizzas (since there's only 2 of us) and we eat 2 and freeze 2 in a ziplock (dehydrated crust only)
That way it's ready to go when you're in a hurry.

( : Good luck! Let us know how it goes!!!

[Lady Green Jeans]

Hip hip hooray! You are going to have sooooo much fun with recipes!

Pizza is an awsome choice--well, one of my favs anyway.

Please keep us posted what you make.

[Amuzon1]

Ok Ya'll (can you tell I live in the south?!),

The wannabe Ritz crackers and pizza are in the dehydrator as we speak. Whew! Can't wait to taste the pizza, though I'm thinking it will be a late dinner for us as it has been an extremely busy day and we didn't get the pizza topped until around 2:30. We upped the temp to 110 hoping it would speed things up a bit without going overboard.

Danielle

[Amuzon1]

Ok...I seriously need some help. So far I've made 3 things with the dehydrator and I can't eat any of them. I made the Easiest crust pizza from Alissa's book. Ate about 1/3 -1/2 of one piece and had to give the rest to my husband. I couldn't tolerate any more. And I mean tolerate. I also made the wanna be Ritz crackers someone mentioned as well as 'the famous onion bread'. None of them can I tolerate. I actually think the onion bread is why I've had a headache for the past 24 hours off and on. Just the smell of it would bring the headache on.

I've tasted the crackers and the bread and it was just like my reaction from eating a nut pate. Just too much for me. Maybe too rich, I don't know. To say I'm disappointed would be an understatement. I don't want to have wasted all that money on the machine if I can't eat the majority of things I had wanted to make with it. My husband was able to eat the pizza, but is kinda so-so on the 2 other things.

Any ideas?! I want to make some sweet things and hope it will change things. I've been eating about 95% raw since August. At this rate, the boys 3 and 6 will not eat much of the raw and I'm hoping to appeal to their sweet tooths as someone so brilliantly suggested on another post. Fruit leathers is my next project as soon as my bananas get a bit mushier.

Danielle

[walnutty]

OH how I can relate Danielle! The crackers were the first two things I have made that I could stand to eat...and I have made a lot of things. I am sorry you did not like the Ritz Crackers. They ARE very bland. I eat them with a salad as I am a crackers and salad type person, so all the flavors mix in my mouth. The other cracker recipe (Spicy Red Pepper Dragon Chips) I LOVE!!! But then I love hot and spicy things. I learned pretty quick to make only 1/4 to 1/2 of a given recipe...because otherwise I was losing money and patience pretty quick. My "dehydrator disasters" I would throw out on my little patio for the wild birds to eat...and they did...:D Just hang in there. Keep trying recipes...but in small amounts. It took many, many tries for me to find two cracker recipes I like.

Good luck!

[walnutty]

p.s. The onion bread also made me sick. I vomited after trying to eat a piece. It was soooooo greasy. AND all night long as it was un-cooking I kept waking up with a headache. Just goes to show you....people are definetly DIFFERENT...I thought something must be wrong with me when I didn't LOVE the famous onion bread! :)

[Amuzon1]

Thanks for your response. I don't think it was so much a bland sensation that didn't go well for me. I've yet to find a recipe where walnuts didn't make me want to hurl, which is funny because the very first thing I made in August was a Spicy Walnut Taco meat, which I devoured!!! Ever since then, I can't eat them. I don't care for them just out of the shell either. I can eat almonds and pecans and cashews and sunflower seeds, etc, but once I chop them up...something just changes it for me. It's not a texture thing cuz I'm not prone to being picky about texture, but rather as soon as it hits my tastebuds.

Good idea to cut recipes in half (or even 1/4)! This stuff is too expensive to just throw in the trash. I'm hoping hubby will eat the rest of the pizza. And MAN was that thing HEAVY!!!

Danielle

[calamity]

If you've been eating very simply for the last couple of months then tried to introduce heavier nut based recipes, that could cause you a problem. you could try to eat nuts in smaller amounts with the majority of the meal being made up of veggies, eg walnut taco and salad. Sometimes the recipes are just to heavy for a smaller raw tum.

[jaydee]

Congrats on getting your dehydrator!!! I'm looking into buying one. Which one did you get? How many trays?

[Amuzon1]

I got the 3900 9 tray figuring that the 5 tray was only 10.00 less. I also got 5 Teflex things too. That was separate from the cost of the unit itself. I didn't opt for the timer on the unit.

HTH,
Danielle

I'm glad I got the 9 tray if for no other reason than the 3 things I tried to make all at the same time required flipping at roughly the same time and one thing required removal of the tray above it. Had I bought the 5 tray, I wouldn't have been able to do all at the same time. However, I will say that someone's suggestion of making half of a recipe is probably a good idea. At least for me and at least for my trial runs of things. If you've read the posts so far on this topic, you'll notice that I"m not able to eat what I've made so far. On a positive note, I gave my 3 year old just 1 of the wannabe Ritz crackers and he ate it right up, so there is hope! Just not for me! :)

[jaydee]

Thanks for the info! I'm sure you'll be turning out edibles in no time! does yours have a timer? I've been considering a 9 shelf and now that you mention it, 5 might be kind of restricting.

[jaydee]

oooopppps! sorry! I missed the part where you mentioned no timer!

[Amuzon1]

Hi Jaydee,

I noticed on another thread where you were asking others about it too. We have 4 in our family and my husband and I are the ones who are mostly doing this. My 2 children, ages 3 and 6 don't KNOW that they're becoming more raw, it's just that I've slowly tapered off what they're used to getting and having available in the house but haven't thrown away anything on purpose, just used it up and not replaced it. All by way of saying, our family of 4 is using a 9 tray. :)

Danielle

[jaydee]

Then I guess I should get 9 shelf. I've got two grandsons (15 & 8 yrs old) and my youngest daughter (20 yrs) and hubby and me. My daughter is dabbling in raw and made the collard green rolls from Alissa's book (yummy!). The 15 yr old won't be a problem because he's into sports and anything that makes him better... he's for it! Now, the 8 yr old & hubby. Well, let's just say I've got my work cut out for me! they'll eat it while i'm around but would do otherwise when i'm gone!

[CaliRaw]

p.s. The onion bread also made me sick. I vomited after trying to eat a piece. It was soooooo greasy. AND all night long as it was un-cooking I kept waking up with a headache. Just goes to show you....people are definetly DIFFERENT...I thought something must be wrong with me when I didn't LOVE the famous onion bread! :)

That's interesting. Mine aren't greasy at all. I only use one onion instead of the 3 onions called for in the recipe. I also prefer chopped, rather than sliced, onions. I don't like using so much nama shoyu because it's too salty for me. Half nama shoyu + water is what I like.

[Amuzon1]

I used only 1 onion as well and put them in the FP to chop, not mush as many said. As soon as they started to warm up and the smell permeated throughout the house, I had a migraine. I LOVE cooked onions so I've smelled them throughout the house before, just not like this.

Danielle