Dehydrating #3: Shrimp

Making my own dried shrimp was one of the earlier ideas that popped into my head after we got the new toaster oven. Dried shrimp is known for being more expensive than regular shrimp because the flavor is so much stronger. You don't have to use as much at one time, but it's more versatile because it is dried. When we went to Taiwan last year, I really wanted to bring some back. I saw someone selling a giant bag of dried shrimp at a market one evening but never got around to purchasing it to bring back home. I cannot legally buy it from the market to bring back because it is not properly packaged and labeled. By the time we were getting ready to leave, I didn't make a last minute grocery store trip to bring any home. I talked to a friend about it and she had said some of her friends tried bringing it back before but it is tricky because of the refrigeration. So from the time it gets packed into the luggage in Taiwan and makes it back to your home in the states, many hours (a day?) have passed and the quality may have been affected. 

I had done some research online and they said to dehydrate your own shrimp, start with cooked salad shrimp. This saves the step of needing to boil the shrimp before. I was at HEB getting some groceries when I saw a bag of salad shrimp. I spontaneously decided to get a bag and try making my own dehydrated shrimp at home that weekend. I honestly didn't even pay a very good price for the shrimp. The bag cost me about $7.00 and these were a pound of 150-250 size cooked shrimp. I can get a bag of the same size for uncooked shrimp and save $1.50. I think I can boil my own shrimp at home for less than that. 

Regardless, it was a capturing-the-time moment so I was already at HEB, the shrimp was in front of me, and I bought it. 

Dehydrating the shrimp wasn't difficult. I took the shrimp and laid it out on my dehydrating trays. I set the oven to 135F and the timer for 10 hours. I peeked in a few times to check on the shrimp, but when they were done, they were dry and felt just like the store-bought ones.  

 

My husband was smart. I didn't think about this, but it was a Friday evening to Saturday morning when I dehydrated them. At the time I had asked him, do you want to do the dehydrated shrimp first or *item number 4* first? He told me to do the shrimp first because I wasn't teaching over the weekend so it would give the house some time to dissipate the smells. Boy was he right. 

 

  

 

I'm happy with how my shrimp turned out. They look just like the ones from the store. The size of mine are a little smaller because I probably started out with smaller shrimp to begin with. I buy the size M from the store so they probably start with size 75-125 shrimp or so. The yield was similar. My pound of shrimp turned into 77g of dehydrated shrimp. The packs from the store have 100g of dried shrimp in them. 

 

When they're on sale at the grocery store, I can get the bag on the left for less than $7. The jar of dehydrated shrimp on the right I made myself cost me $7 in shrimp and time/electricity to dehydrate myself. 

 

I don't think I'll ever dehydrate my own shrimp again. The cost breakdown doesn't make sense and my whole house smells like a seafood market for about a half day. If I had access to bulk seafood at super discounted prices, my response might be different. But, for where I live and what I have access to, making it myself won't be cost efficient.  I'm glad I did it once just to have the experience and know-how. But now, I also know that paying for a bag of dehydrated shrimp from the grocery store really isn't that expensive. 

Dehydrating #2: Squash

We were at the grocery store one day leisurely pushing the cart around the store. I think we only had one item on our list which was already in our cart. Everything else was bonus. We passed the produce section, and I asked my husband, do you want to try zucchini chips? He okayed the idea so I went to get some.

Now I was a little confused for a bit because the signage in the store said zucchini but the label on the bag said squash. I never really looked into the difference between the two, but the vegetable looked correct for what I wanted, so I bought it and just thought, "I guess I'm making squash chips instead." Turns out that zucchini is a type of squash, but not all squash are zucchini. This makes sense to me as I'm used to seeing squash as a large gourd with tough skin.

I used our mandolin to thinly slice the squash into rounds. I seasoned with a few spritzes of oil and the slightest bit of salt. I placed them into our toaster oven and had to jerry-rig a two-tray system. This was before I bought the extra air fryer baskets for dehydrating. I ended up using the wire rack as my second tray. The slices did begin to curl around the wires as they cooked, but the overall flavor and texture were not affected. They just ended up looking a bit wavy. 

 

 

I found that 135F at 10 hours was a good amount of time to cook squash when sliced into round discs. I made these another time with oblong slices and didn't increase the cooking time - that was a mistake. The second batch with oblong slices was not as crispy as the first batch.  

These chips were so delicious. A lot of them were consumed while sitting in bed watching television in the evening after the kids went to sleep. For me, these were tasty enough to crave and serve as a substitute for potato chips. Now that I have extra dehydrating trays, I can dehydrate 6 squash at one time - it came out to about one squash per tray. 

I told my kids to try these and they did but weren't as impressed as I was. They would still prefer regular chips over these any day. Their palette is still young and immature. 

I really enjoyed making these squash chips and they will definitely be on my list to make again.  

Dehydrating #1 : Kiwi

We've had the same toaster oven since we got married which meant it was just over 11 years old. There was nothing wrong with it - still fully functioning - but our family has changed in the last decade and our needs are different. I found myself wishing I could heat more food in it at a time - if we had chicken and french fries, I couldn't heat enough for our whole family at one time. I could barely heat enough for both my kids at one time. 

This led to some searching online and buying a new toaster oven that was much larger and had more features than our old toaster oven did. The main reason we bought this one was for the size. It's advertised to hold a 20 lb turkey! I don't think I will ever roast a 20 lb turkey in my toaster oven, but it's nice to know the size is there if I ever truly need to. In addition to the size, I was intrigued by the features, primarily, the dehydrating feature. This oven has digital temperature settings as well as a digital timer, neither of which our old toaster oven had. 

We use our new toaster oven a lot to reheat food and toast bread. That's a given. Four years ago, I did an experiment by counting the number of times I used each of our small appliances.  Three specific ones were excluded from the count because I knew we were going to use them all the time and therefore, it wasn't necessary to tally each use. The toaster oven was one of them. 

The first item I wanted to dehydrate was kiwi. I don't even buy kiwi on a regular basis, but it was the first food I immediately thought of when I ventured down this dehydrating path. When I lived overseas for a year, I was exploring a market one evening and came across a booth selling dried fruits and nuts. I saw the dried kiwi and knew I had to try it. It looked so beautifully green and round. I bought a pack (I want to say it was around $5-7USD per pound...?) and just as they appeared, they were delicious. It was a burst of sweet kiwi in my mouth with every bite.

13 years later, I dehydrated my own kiwi. A grocery store had them on sale after we bought the new toaster oven so it seemed like the perfect signal. I was going to dehydrate my own kiwi! I sliced them about a quarter inch thick and laid them out on my rack. The toaster oven automatically set the temperature to 135 degrees F and 8 hours on the dehydrate function. I let it run overnight and the next morning, I had my very own dehydrated kiwi.

It wasn't as beautiful as the bag I bought. The green wasn't as vibrant - they definitely colored theirs. And my kiwi wasn't as sweet as the ones I bought - they added sugar. But it was delicious in a naturally unaltered tart kiwi kind of way. An online blog described it rather well: like a homemade sour gummy candy. 

I really enjoyed them. It was a fun first try with dehydrating! 

Does Size Matter?

Our washer and dryer are going on 12 years old. We purchased them for our first apartment because we could either rent the units from the apartment complex for a monthly fee, or we could buy our own. We bought our own and they've been working hard for the last 12 years. 

We were grocery shopping together last week and got a free sample of laundry detergent from the sample dispenser. The marketing line? 1XL pod = 2 regular size pods. So the sample was 1 XL pod. I turned to my husband and immediately said, "I'd rather have the 2 regular size pods!"

 

Our washer has a 3.6 cu ft capacity. When we purchased our set, I didn't think about the size as much as I did the cost. It was very cost efficient compared to other sets and for just the two of us, it worked great. I've never had trouble with cycles not cleaning well, but size has become an issue. If everyone's (littles and bigs) laundry basket is full, I can't do everyone's laundry in one cycle. It has to be two. Sometimes, if our hamper is completely full, I can't even do all the bigs laundry in one cycle. 

When I look at our washer, it doesn't appear to me as small. 
But when I look inside other washers, mine looks small...

I end up doing a lot of laundry in one week. On an average week, it's about 3 loads. Most of the time, it's not because there's a lot of dirty laundry. There's a decent amount, but if I had a bigger machine, I could do less loads.

I honestly would rather have the 2 regular size pods as a sample because for our machine, 1 XL pod is overkill for 3.6 cu ft of laundry. Whenever I use laundry detergent now, I have to remember to fill the cup for the "medium" loads even though I'm washing an XL load on my machine because that's how much I'm washing compared to what some of the larger machines out there can hold!  From the research I've done, there's a good number of washers between 4.8 - 5.5 cu ft! Our machine is 25-35% smaller than a lot of machines on the market. 

I've been asking myself for years, is it worth it to upgrade to a larger washing machine even though ours works? Sometimes, I tell myself we don't have any problems with our washer and it's fine. Other times, I really want a different machine (a removable agitator?!) to be able to suit my needs (or glorified wants?) better. 

Last year for Black Friday, Lowe's was giving out free appliances to one winner per store. I didn't wake up early to get in line because I don't believe in my chances of winning, but man, it's a nice pipe dream to wish I could have been one of the winners. 

Do you like the size of your machine?