Freeze Dried Candy and Food, Studio Insulation, His First Full Meal Prep - Wednesday
It was before 6:00am when the process finished and I checked on the trays. The 3 trays that held the Skittles and mini marshmallows were nicely done but the other 2 trays needed more time, how much I couldn't know. Under 13 hours though to process the two and they both came out cool. The Skittles now melt in the mouth except for the shell which still has a crunch. The marshmallows are nor the texture of a Lucky Charms marshmallow.
The Skittles all popped open when the insides expanded in the vacuum. I should have left more room on the trays so they would have had room to expand.
The marshmallows didn't change much at all in shape or look. The only change is in the texture as they are now crunchy if chewed up but will melt in the mouth otherwise.
The sprees, candy corn, and gummy bears needed more time as well as the raisins. I put them back in and set the process for another 6 hours.
I bagged all the Skittles up and tossed the marshmallows in a gallon ziplock.
After the 6 hours had passed I pulled the trays out to see how they had fared but the candy corn are the only thing that was fully done. They now are hard but melt in the mouth after a bit. The gummy bears are still soft in much of them and the sprees did not all expand. The raisins are still pretty soft but got a bit of the drying on the outsides. I called it good at the just under 19 hour mark and bagged the stuff up.
My real goal for the day was to get the trays of rice on the left and millet on the right in.
Along with the 2 trays of beans I had cooked in the crock pot and had chilled outside.
And to fill the last tray I cut up 5 apples.
The beans have a good bit of fluid with them still so they will take a bit to dry. I'm expecting this run to go into the 40 hour range judging by the prior run with rice. When done we will have a solid batch of dried ingredients for meals. Rice, millet, beans, ground beef, broccoli I have done plus a bunch of various dried veggies we have purchased over the years.
With the freeze dryer running again I got the insulation installed around the breaker box and now just need to cut the sheet of sheet rock to cover it. It will be a bit of a pain with the outlet boxes but measure 3 times cut once and I should be good.
J made his first meal mainly by himself. We gathered the few things from the pantry mid day as he was excited and once @stryeyz got home from work he got to making the spaghetti. I have to say it turned out quite good. I mainly helped by dealing with the water for the noodles and he did the rest.
It rained overnight and it is going to be in the upper 40s F this weekend so most of our snow will be gone soon. We may not have a white Christmas at this rate. Today I finally get the right adapter to connect my SDR to my discone antenna. I've found a tutorial on scanning the 433Mhz range for the various remote signals that are around so am looking forward to playing with it. I'd like to get the sheet rock pieces up on the wall to finish it up as well.
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Gab
Twatter
Wow! I didn't expect the Skittles to look like miniature Neptunes when they were subjected to the freeze dried treatment, how interesting!
You are really getting that beast of a dryer broken in quick, fast, and in a hurry! I still suffer from slight covetous feelings when I gaze upon its glory, but now that I know just how awesome yours is I'll feel confident when I actually order the darn thing:) Glad you are enjoying it so much!
With it being winter I have a lot more time to be using the thing so it is getting itself worked hard right away. I'll likley slow down a bit as we run out of stuff to put through it.
We saw a post somewhere of someone who had run candy through so we had an idea how they would look. The mouth feel of them is the surprise though.
I’m seriously impressed with how much you’ve already ran through it! You got any plans for some MRE style entrees in the future?
I’d probably ask you 30 more questions but I have at 10 more dozen cookies to bake this morning lol! Hope you have a great weekend!
Meals was what I did yesterday! We'll be trying them this weekend but I already have high hopes for them.
Sounds like enough cookies to feed a few teenagers...
I never would have thought of freeze-drying candy!
Very cool about J doing his first meal. I like how you did ingredients for meals in the dryer.