First dehydrated test meal....Chicken Noodle Soup

So we finally did our first dehydrated test meal tonight.  Last week I dehydrated 4 carrots, 1 celery bunch, 3 roma tomatos, a basket of pre-sliced mushrooms, 1 giant red bell pepper, 2 zucchini's, 5 granny smith apples, 4 McIntosh apples, .75lb of chicken strips, .75lb of beef strips, and 1lb of ground beef.  That sounds like a lot of food right?  In fact the veggies were all I could fit into my 6 tray dehydrator, so I did the meat Saturday and the apples Monday. So here's what all that food looks like dehydrated and packed into small containers.

The two opaque containers hold all the dried meat....that's nearly 3lbs of chicken and beef!



Talk about lightweight food!



So then we followed the advice of Ms. Holmes and dumped the chicken in a Nalgene bottle with water and chicken boullion while packaging up the rest of the meal in press-n-seal (crumples down to super compact and lightweight trash on the trail) per her instructions.  Apparently I need more practice getting the air out of the package because I didn't do so well this time....but I'll get plenty of practice!!  So our psuedo-trail packaging looks like this

 

  The idea is that we dump the meat in the Nalgene bottle after lunch and let it rehydrate all afternoon in our packs.  That way we cut down on cooking time and hence save fuel.  Pretty sweet huh?  Then after we hike into camp, we dump everything in the pot and let it sit for a bit while we get organized.  The instructions (slightly modified) are to bring to a boil, then cook for 5 minutes.  After cooking, we set the pot in a (homemade) pot cozy where it continues to cook sans fuel.  

We cooked this test meal in our pot on our gas stove.

And viola!  We have our very first ever homemade dehydrated meal :-)

Unfortunately, the taste verdict was....too bland :-(  I think in general I'll be more generous with the spices but also that perhaps chicken noodle soup itself may not be the best menu item.

Oh, and we decided against dehydrated celery.....what's the point?  You eat celery when you're trying to lose weight because it has NOTHING in it.  Since we want the most bang for our buck when it comes to trail food, I have made an executive decision and vetoed all celery.  Sorry to any celery fans out there.