Something unexpected; 9 tray Excalibur dehydrator

Recently (as in today) I was gifted with  9 tray Excalibur. It arrived about an hour ago. Thanks so much, T! I planned on taking pictures of the unboxing, but my Nikon D80 battery needs to be charged. Oh well, I’ll take pictures in a few hours.

The bearer of this gift, read my dehydrating post after they sent this to me. Upon my comment that I left about the Excalibur, which I’ve included below, they followed up with me and told me about the surprise.

While many sang praises for this dehydrator I was never as impressed with it. For starters it was made out of plastic. I don’t have too many objects that come in contact with my food that are made out of this material. Also, the trays seemed especially flimsy. I wanted something that was a bit more durable, but it held nine trays which was perfect for dehydrating herbs and a variety of garden produce. I chose the Excalibur, because the stainless steel dehydrators that I was looking at were much more than I wanted to spend at that time.

Fast forward to now, and I’m ready to do a lot of dehydrating once again, after a lot of research, I’ve settled on the TSM Stainless Steel Food Dehydrator with 10 Stainless Steel Shelves. As the description states, it’s made out of stainless steel and it’s made in the United States. It took a while to narrow down my search. I was impressed with the customer service for TSM aka The Sausage Maker and was pleased to see they are located in New Jersey, and I believe they have another location in New York.

Also, they told me to upgrade if I wanted to do so and I’ll be doing just that within a few weeks. I’ll be paying the difference of course. Until that time I will be dehydrating a variety of raw foods snacks for my daughter in the Excalibur and I’ll be sure to share them here. During the harvest time I’ll be drying produce, by that time I’ll have the stainless steel dehydrator.

I’m hoping the lovely Jennifer, will join me on my dehydrated raw food posts. If you haven’t done so already, stop by her virtual home and check out her experiences as a first time gardener. I’ll be posting what I make and linking to Jennifer so she can share her dehydrating adventures.

So yeah Jennifer… I’m totally pulling you into my dehydrating adventures. I hope you accept. I will say, doing this will force me to actually take measurements since I’ll be sharing the recipes on I’m Celebrating Life.