Want to support this channel? Buy me a coffee :-) www.buymeacoffee.com/DanZm AFFILIATE LINKS & REFERRALS - I earn from qualifying purchases from the links provided ─────────────── As an Amazon Affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases from the links provided. By clicking on the links, you can explore the products and tools I use. www.amazon.com/shop/schoolreports --------------------------------------------------- PackFreshUSA We have been buying oxygen absorbers and 7 mil Mylar bags from PackFreshUSA since early 2018. During all that time (1000's of bag and oxygen absorbers, and about 6 year before before we added this affiliate link) we have been happy with the products and service we have received from them. I earn from qualifying purchases from the links provided. - packfreshusa.com/?rfsn=7877576.a54e2a Use the discount code "SchoolReports5" to get 10% off your first purchase when using the link. --------------------------------------------------- Harvest Right - If you are thinking of buying a freeze dryer, please consider supporting us by purchasing through our link. It helps us and costs you nothing! affiliates.harvestright.com/995.html ─────────────── Before buying a freeze dryer, perhaps research to find out more about the downside of the machine; some people have problems with their machine and it's big and heavy and hard to return! I'd check Costco first to see if you can get one there. - Best return policy:)
I hope you’re recovering well and your health continues to improve. You’re one of my favorite RUclips teachers. In the meantime until you complete your home projects and are freed up to make more videos. I’m going to peruse your playlist and see what I might have missed. Cheers sincerely, Ray from Seattle.
Thanks so much for following along! I'll also try to put more videos of the other projects up on the other channel. (SchoolReoprts - On The Go) I'll keep trying to do as much as I can, so I can keep doing as much as my body will let me do over time. If you stop doing things, you end up in a downward spiral of physical abilities. I have some spinal cord injury that left a dead spot, and unfortunately spinal cord injuries usually only progress in one direction. Our goal with this was mostly to just keep the progression as slow as possible.
Did you see where they now offer wire screens you can buy, five in a set, you use 2 per tray? They made them so you could spread and dry layered fruits faster. Oh and they work great for baking meat loaves on your FD tray. Any liquid run off drops down into the tray. The meatloaf stays above resting on the screens.
I hadn't seen that. We have wire racks that fit our backing sheets that we us all the time and I cut one down to fit the freeze dryer trays a few years ago and did some trials with it. I don't know how much it helped, and I don't know if it ever showed up in a video.
Great video thanks for sharing , love the house pics at the end , we moved into this house i think 5 years now ( time is flying by ) we chose a house with no steps , I have a talent for falling up them lol , but seriously no steps is fantastic and our whole back yard is full of veggie gardens so I have a lot to preserve and give away , and very little in house repairing is a big plus , we are on tank water and have solar , trying to be ready for old age with not many worries , if such a thing :) any way loved the video . Ive just finished FD cabbage and mixed veg . OH here's something I did so I wouldn't have to keep going out to my pantry to check on my machine in the middle of the night . I got a Ring camera and propped it up on a shelf in front of the screen but on a slight angle or it will be too bright then I can just look it up on my phone any time of the day or night :)
Thanks! We bought at this location to build so we would be in the school district we wanted. (And then I homeschooled so it never mattered:) We designed the house to meet our needs at the time (and the slope of the lot), plus the need to have a 2 family setup so my mom could live next door in her own place. The front door of the building (under the left archway) was her door, and our door is on the side over the driveway/garage. (The county rules are odd. - Because it's a 2 family building we can't have 2 doors in the front, but if it were a single family place we could have as many front doors as we wanted) Mom has been gone for a few year now (sister lives there now), the kids have moved away, and now we live in a stupid-big place for just us. We do have 2 flights of stair, both inside and off the decks in the back, but every level is ground level because of the slope - no step to go in at any level. I custom built our inside stairways to lessen/eliminate the toe-catch effect when going up. We did also leave a place where an elevator could be installed from top to bottom in case I needed it before the kids were grown and gone. Hooray! I made it this long without the need. Now it's time to start planning to downsize. Maybe to a place with fewer deer so we can have a garden again. 🤣 I do miss the garden. Using a camera that way sounds like a nice idea. As one of my two of my long time mottos to live by says: "Laziness is the mother of invention" the other is "Procrastination: The key to flexibility" 🤣
@@SchoolReports aaahhh don't we all have great idea's when were younger hey :D 5 years ago stairs never bothered me but the wear and tear on the body over years and building garden beds so we don't have to bend over really takes a toll on the body but I'm so glad we did it , I can preserve something almost every day of the week in one way or another , Thats such an odd thing about you not being able to have 2 front doors , we have 2 both are glass sliding doors , the main one has 3 large panels of glass which is amazing on hot days , but our council here can be real a*s holes too , what we went thru to get an outside pantry set up was enough and I hope never have to go thru again , I often think it wonderful to have so many different animals roaming around the yard ( until they eat my plants lol ) the biggest we have to deal with in our area are kangaroos but sadly our small country town has become a hot spot and now everyone wants to move here , incredibly sad to see all our bush land being bull dozed . We down sized as well , best thing we ever did now just a matter of selling off things we no longer need :) Love your mottos 😂 as much as I hate being lazy but I like being flexible 🤣
@SchoolReports any way to get a copy of the file to print out that data tracking sheet that you use while freeze drying? Thank you. Love your channel, bought my small Harvest Right a few months ago. Only regret is that I didn't get the Medium!
This time I think I got it right! The first time I missed part of the link when I copy and pasted the link. Sorry about that. These are the freeze drying batch worksheets we've been using. They were made using OpenOffice. You can download them and change them in any why you want to suit your needs. Freeze Drying batch worksheet - 4 tray - 2 per sheet (Feel free to download a copy and use it anyway you want. You don't need to ask :) docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14_1KDR7-eEv_h9EdwJcHb2Dex5MuhnxlDV24qPR7H6c/edit?usp=sharing
Rats! I completely forgot about your laser trick! We finished doing our apples 3 weeks ago and I'm looking forward to eating them. My favorite are Melrose and this year was a good one for apples in the Midwest. In my opinion there is nothing more delicious in our freeze dried food then apple slices. They are just so good! Skipped the dipping this year and had very little browning. I have missed your freeze drying videos and was so happy to see this post!
We have freeze dried (and eaten:) more apples than any other single food variety. You're right, they're just so good! (Never tried Melrose) The different varieties of apple, along with the ripeness, make _huge_ differences in how fast the brown. Some hardly brown at all. The ones I used for my browning test had a disappointingly slow and small amount of browning. (Only disappointing because I was trying to show the browning:) There is even a new variety I've read about that doesn't turn brown. (The Arctic Apple, a genetically engineered apple cultivar developed by Canada-based Okanagan Specialty Fruits) Working on Chicken & Dumplings right now.
@@SchoolReports Melrose apples have a thin skin and a cherry flavor to them. Because of the thin skin they don't travel well so they are never sold in a supermarket. I would love to plant a couple trees in our yard. Working on pulled pork this week for the freeze dryer and I'm thinking we should make it plain for freeze drying and add the sauce later. We have a good amount of meat in the freezer we want to work through and freeze dry. I've always canned it in the past, but thinking longer term storage. Your mention of Chicken and Dumplings is making me hungry. Can hardly wait for your video!
@@buckonono7996Sounds like a interesting apple. - The official apple of Ohio. (I had to look it up:) I finished the "stew" part of the Chicken & Dumplings a couple days ago and it's in the freezer waiting. Now I'm working on the "Dumpling" part. I'm trying different dumpling recipes to find one I like and that will also work for freeze drying and rehydrating well, too. It's going to be my version of the Mountain House Chicken & Dumpling meal. (Which I bought 3 1/2 years ago for this project and I'm not opening until I've made my own version)
Good, legitimate question. Short answer - Time, money and results. It takes time, costs money, and doesn't give better results for my needs. I'm not against vacuum sealing the bags (as long as there are oxygen absorbers included), except for the cost of the chamber vac, time (maybe a minute or two per bag, times thousands of bags), and the potential of crushing some delicate foods (if using bags), e.g. tomato slices, green beans or other delicate items. Plus, most vacuum sealers leave _significantly more_ of oxygen in the the bags than oxygen absorbers. Vacuumed bags still need oxygen absorbers, but of course they can be very small ones. I have no plans to get a chamber vacuum for Mylar bag sealing, though I would like to do nitrogen flushing of the bags like commercial bags are often done. (I just never got around to it) One concern I would have with vacuum sealing is that because the bag has a lower pressure on the inside vs the outside, there will be a pressure pushing the oxygen in.
Thanks so much for watching, commenting, and for the questions! We store ours on racks, in big plastic bins that we got at Costco. (Other people use cardboard boxes or whatever containers work for their space) And, in general, cooler temperatures are better for longer storage. Freeze Dried Food Bins/Racks - ruclips.net/video/1FNCelTsgrg/видео.htmlsi=dnERzcreYrEIckFA
Sorry, I should have made that more clear. They are a bunch of consecutive batches of apples, with the machines defrosted between batches, just put together in one video instead of making/showing 6 to 10 videos in a row showing apples.
@@missmollycollie911 They were perfectly good questions. 😁 It's something I 100% should have mentioned at least once during the video, but failed. 🤔 Just looking at the video at face value, it makes it seem like you could run them back-to-back without defrosting, but it wouldn't work with these apples with this amount per batch.
We've been using this little printer for a little over a year now, and we've been very happy with it so far. Trying Out My New Thermal Label Printer - ruclips.net/video/64uMWEFxOgA/видео.htmlsi=xG_lM8tJwoTKDj51
Sorry, Vitamin C - ascorbic acid is just vitamin C. We used to use Fruit Fresh, but ascorbic acid is cheaper. I didn't find that lemon juice helped as much for us. First Apple Browning Test - ruclips.net/video/2BMuORbmu9A/видео.htmlsi=lfAVl7qfwRHy92fp Here is a good paper about browning: Recent Trends in Controlling the Enzymatic Browning of Fruit and Vegetable Products - pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7355983/pdf/molecules-25-02754.pdf Oxidation | Why Apples Turn Brown - Science Experiment | Best Way to Keep Apples from Browning | - ruclips.net/video/36K4iEuqQzo/видео.htmlsi=EfNiQ9vQAgexhSCR
@Licetoeat171 I found Vitamin C powder at Whole Foods for $14.79 for 8 ounces. Amazon sells 2 pounds of Ascorbic acid for just over $20. Personally 4 times as much for 50% more money is a better price
Why do you have to babysit your machine so much? Do you have to adjust the temperature for every different food? I never do. I didn't know it was necessary? and 40 minutes pre freezing an empty freeze dryer??? They say 15 minutes. How does Harvestright not know their own machine?
I don't "babysit" the machine. I start it and come back when it "thinks" it's done, and then I check to see if it's _actually_ done. I freeze dry almost all foods at the same temperature, 120ºf, but I do adjust it for a few items. I don't put frozen food into the freeze dryer until the chamber is colder than the food I'm putting in, around 0ºf because I don't want the food to warm up. The 40 minutes was because I don't babysit it, I start it and walk away and go do something else until I get around to loading it - sometimes hours later. (My record is probably around 8 hours later:) That time, apparently, it was 40 minutes. Harvest Right may know the machine, but they have no way of knowing how/what people are loading it with.
Want to support this channel? Buy me a coffee :-) www.buymeacoffee.com/DanZm
AFFILIATE LINKS & REFERRALS - I earn from qualifying purchases from the links provided
───────────────
As an Amazon Affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases from the links provided. By clicking on the links, you can explore the products and tools I use.
www.amazon.com/shop/schoolreports
---------------------------------------------------
PackFreshUSA
We have been buying oxygen absorbers and 7 mil Mylar bags from PackFreshUSA since early 2018. During all that time (1000's of bag and oxygen absorbers, and about 6 year before before we added this affiliate link) we have been happy with the products and service we have received from them.
I earn from qualifying purchases from the links provided. - packfreshusa.com/?rfsn=7877576.a54e2a
Use the discount code "SchoolReports5" to get 10% off your first purchase when using the link.
---------------------------------------------------
Harvest Right - If you are thinking of buying a freeze dryer, please consider supporting us by purchasing through our link. It helps us and costs you nothing!
affiliates.harvestright.com/995.html
───────────────
Before buying a freeze dryer, perhaps research to find out more about the downside of the machine; some people have problems with their machine and it's big and heavy and hard to return!
I'd check Costco first to see if you can get one there. - Best return policy:)
I love the laser idea! Definitely using that one.
I hope you’re recovering well and your health continues to improve. You’re one of my favorite RUclips teachers. In the meantime until you complete your home projects and are freed up to make more videos. I’m going to peruse your playlist and see what I might have missed. Cheers sincerely, Ray from Seattle.
Thanks so much for following along! I'll also try to put more videos of the other projects up on the other channel. (SchoolReoprts - On The Go)
I'll keep trying to do as much as I can, so I can keep doing as much as my body will let me do over time. If you stop doing things, you end up in a downward spiral of physical abilities. I have some spinal cord injury that left a dead spot, and unfortunately spinal cord injuries usually only progress in one direction. Our goal with this was mostly to just keep the progression as slow as possible.
idk how I got here but loved the vid keep it up good sir
Thanks! YT recommendations are an odd thing!
Did you see where they now offer wire screens you can buy, five in a set, you use 2 per tray? They made them so you could spread and dry layered fruits faster. Oh and they work great for baking meat loaves on your FD tray. Any liquid run off drops down into the tray. The meatloaf stays above resting on the screens.
I hadn't seen that. We have wire racks that fit our backing sheets that we us all the time and I cut one down to fit the freeze dryer trays a few years ago and did some trials with it. I don't know how much it helped, and I don't know if it ever showed up in a video.
@@SchoolReportsI’ll send you a private email and show you.
Great video thanks for sharing , love the house pics at the end , we moved into this house i think 5 years now ( time is flying by ) we chose a house with no steps , I have a talent for falling up them lol , but seriously no steps is fantastic and our whole back yard is full of veggie gardens so I have a lot to preserve and give away , and very little in house repairing is a big plus , we are on tank water and have solar , trying to be ready for old age with not many worries , if such a thing :) any way loved the video . Ive just finished FD cabbage and mixed veg . OH here's something I did so I wouldn't have to keep going out to my pantry to check on my machine in the middle of the night .
I got a Ring camera and propped it up on a shelf in front of the screen but on a slight angle or it will be too bright then I can just look it up on my phone any time of the day or night :)
Thanks!
We bought at this location to build so we would be in the school district we wanted. (And then I homeschooled so it never mattered:) We designed the house to meet our needs at the time (and the slope of the lot), plus the need to have a 2 family setup so my mom could live next door in her own place. The front door of the building (under the left archway) was her door, and our door is on the side over the driveway/garage. (The county rules are odd. - Because it's a 2 family building we can't have 2 doors in the front, but if it were a single family place we could have as many front doors as we wanted) Mom has been gone for a few year now (sister lives there now), the kids have moved away, and now we live in a stupid-big place for just us. We do have 2 flights of stair, both inside and off the decks in the back, but every level is ground level because of the slope - no step to go in at any level. I custom built our inside stairways to lessen/eliminate the toe-catch effect when going up. We did also leave a place where an elevator could be installed from top to bottom in case I needed it before the kids were grown and gone. Hooray! I made it this long without the need. Now it's time to start planning to downsize. Maybe to a place with fewer deer so we can have a garden again. 🤣 I do miss the garden.
Using a camera that way sounds like a nice idea.
As one of my two of my long time mottos to live by says:
"Laziness is the mother of invention"
the other is
"Procrastination: The key to flexibility" 🤣
@@SchoolReports aaahhh don't we all have great idea's when were younger hey :D 5 years ago stairs never bothered me but the wear and tear on the body over years and building garden beds so we don't have to bend over really takes a toll on the body but I'm so glad we did it , I can preserve something almost every day of the week in one way or another , Thats such an odd thing about you not being able to have 2 front doors , we have 2 both are glass sliding doors , the main one has 3 large panels of glass which is amazing on hot days , but our council here can be real a*s holes too , what we went thru to get an outside pantry set up was enough and I hope never have to go thru again , I often think it wonderful to have so many different animals roaming around the yard ( until they eat my plants lol ) the biggest we have to deal with in our area are kangaroos but sadly our small country town has become a hot spot and now everyone wants to move here , incredibly sad to see all our bush land being bull dozed .
We down sized as well , best thing we ever did now just a matter of selling off things we no longer need :)
Love your mottos 😂 as much as I hate being lazy but I like being flexible 🤣
@SchoolReports any way to get a copy of the file to print out that data tracking sheet that you use while freeze drying? Thank you. Love your channel, bought my small Harvest Right a few months ago. Only regret is that I didn't get the Medium!
This time I think I got it right! The first time I missed part of the link when I copy and pasted the link. Sorry about that.
These are the freeze drying batch worksheets we've been using. They were made using OpenOffice. You can download them and change them in any why you want to suit your needs.
Freeze Drying batch worksheet - 4 tray - 2 per sheet (Feel free to download a copy and use it anyway you want. You don't need to ask :) docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14_1KDR7-eEv_h9EdwJcHb2Dex5MuhnxlDV24qPR7H6c/edit?usp=sharing
@@SchoolReportsThank you 👍
Thank you. As always a very informative video
Still love the videos. Good luck with the maintenance
Thanks!
Rats! I completely forgot about your laser trick! We finished doing our apples 3 weeks ago and I'm looking forward to eating them. My favorite are Melrose and this year was a good one for apples in the Midwest. In my opinion there is nothing more delicious in our freeze dried food then apple slices. They are just so good! Skipped the dipping this year and had very little browning. I have missed your freeze drying videos and was so happy to see this post!
We have freeze dried (and eaten:) more apples than any other single food variety. You're right, they're just so good! (Never tried Melrose)
The different varieties of apple, along with the ripeness, make _huge_ differences in how fast the brown. Some hardly brown at all. The ones I used for my browning test had a disappointingly slow and small amount of browning. (Only disappointing because I was trying to show the browning:) There is even a new variety I've read about that doesn't turn brown. (The Arctic Apple, a genetically engineered apple cultivar developed by Canada-based Okanagan Specialty Fruits)
Working on Chicken & Dumplings right now.
I'm sorry to hear you were not feeling well. I hope your recovering well
@@SchoolReports Melrose apples have a thin skin and a cherry flavor to them. Because of the thin skin they don't travel well so they are never sold in a supermarket. I would love to plant a couple trees in our yard. Working on pulled pork this week for the freeze dryer and I'm thinking we should make it plain for freeze drying and add the sauce later. We have a good amount of meat in the freezer we want to work through and freeze dry. I've always canned it in the past, but thinking longer term storage. Your mention of Chicken and Dumplings is making me hungry. Can hardly wait for your video!
@@buckonono7996Sounds like a interesting apple. - The official apple of Ohio. (I had to look it up:)
I finished the "stew" part of the Chicken & Dumplings a couple days ago and it's in the freezer waiting. Now I'm working on the "Dumpling" part. I'm trying different dumpling recipes to find one I like and that will also work for freeze drying and rehydrating well, too. It's going to be my version of the Mountain House Chicken & Dumpling meal. (Which I bought 3 1/2 years ago for this project and I'm not opening until I've made my own version)
Honest question, why no vacuum packing?
Good, legitimate question.
Short answer - Time, money and results. It takes time, costs money, and doesn't give better results for my needs.
I'm not against vacuum sealing the bags (as long as there are oxygen absorbers included), except for the cost of the chamber vac, time (maybe a minute or two per bag, times thousands of bags), and the potential of crushing some delicate foods (if using bags), e.g. tomato slices, green beans or other delicate items. Plus, most vacuum sealers leave _significantly more_ of oxygen in the the bags than oxygen absorbers. Vacuumed bags still need oxygen absorbers, but of course they can be very small ones.
I have no plans to get a chamber vacuum for Mylar bag sealing, though I would like to do nitrogen flushing of the bags like commercial bags are often done. (I just never got around to it) One concern I would have with vacuum sealing is that because the bag has a lower pressure on the inside vs the outside, there will be a pressure pushing the oxygen in.
How do you store your finished bags?
Thanks so much for watching, commenting, and for the questions!
We store ours on racks, in big plastic bins that we got at Costco. (Other people use cardboard boxes or whatever containers work for their space) And, in general, cooler temperatures are better for longer storage.
Freeze Dried Food Bins/Racks - ruclips.net/video/1FNCelTsgrg/видео.htmlsi=dnERzcreYrEIckFA
How do you do multiple batches? Do you not defrost between batches?
Sorry, I should have made that more clear. They are a bunch of consecutive batches of apples, with the machines defrosted between batches, just put together in one video instead of making/showing 6 to 10 videos in a row showing apples.
I should have mentioned that I have done multiple batches without defrosting if it's super low water items, like candy or marshmallows.
I just wanted to know because I am new to freeze drying. Only had mine a month.
@@missmollycollie911 They were perfectly good questions. 😁 It's something I 100% should have mentioned at least once during the video, but failed. 🤔
Just looking at the video at face value, it makes it seem like you could run them back-to-back without defrosting, but it wouldn't work with these apples with this amount per batch.
What label machine do you use?
We've been using this little printer for a little over a year now, and we've been very happy with it so far.
Trying Out My New Thermal Label Printer - ruclips.net/video/64uMWEFxOgA/видео.htmlsi=xG_lM8tJwoTKDj51
So I'm curious why you didn't just add 12 more hours to the extra dry time?
At what timestamp?
You said you use acerbic acid? I only know of lemon juice water, but is that acid available in the grocery store?
Sorry, Vitamin C - ascorbic acid is just vitamin C. We used to use Fruit Fresh, but ascorbic acid is cheaper. I didn't find that lemon juice helped as much for us.
First Apple Browning Test - ruclips.net/video/2BMuORbmu9A/видео.htmlsi=lfAVl7qfwRHy92fp
Here is a good paper about browning: Recent Trends in Controlling the Enzymatic Browning of Fruit and Vegetable Products - pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7355983/pdf/molecules-25-02754.pdf
Oxidation | Why Apples Turn Brown - Science Experiment | Best Way to Keep Apples from Browning | - ruclips.net/video/36K4iEuqQzo/видео.htmlsi=EfNiQ9vQAgexhSCR
@Licetoeat171
I found Vitamin C powder at Whole Foods for $14.79 for 8 ounces.
Amazon sells 2 pounds of Ascorbic acid for just over $20. Personally 4 times as much for 50% more money is a better price
Why do you have to babysit your machine so much? Do you have to adjust the temperature for every different food? I never do. I didn't know it was necessary? and 40 minutes pre freezing an empty freeze dryer??? They say 15 minutes. How does Harvestright not know their own machine?
I don't "babysit" the machine. I start it and come back when it "thinks" it's done, and then I check to see if it's _actually_ done.
I freeze dry almost all foods at the same temperature, 120ºf, but I do adjust it for a few items.
I don't put frozen food into the freeze dryer until the chamber is colder than the food I'm putting in, around 0ºf because I don't want the food to warm up.
The 40 minutes was because I don't babysit it, I start it and walk away and go do something else until I get around to loading it - sometimes hours later. (My record is probably around 8 hours later:) That time, apparently, it was 40 minutes.
Harvest Right may know the machine, but they have no way of knowing how/what people are loading it with.