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Thank you, Tara! :)

😁

Thank you so much! :)

I could ... and my husband is always encouraging me to do that when he can tell I'm scavenging around trying to find something else to put on a tray. It just feels like a waste of time and energy to only use two of the seven trays during a run. But I'm definitely getting better at figuring out things to freeze dry together! :)

Thanks for the reply

Please do, Tara! You're off and running :) At this very moment I'm chopping the last of our garden's jalapeños and serranos for a run through the freeze-dryer. You're going to love this big new adventure!!

Lol!

Annoying, isn’t it?

I also have the XL and I know what you mean! Those trays just won't fit in our chest freezer. But I found a workaround: brownie pans from the Dollar Tree. Here's a link to a video where I talk about that: My Harvest Right XL freeze dryer trays are so big they created two dilemmas--but I found a solution! th-cam.com/video/nYnDwz38BaE/w-d-xo.html I can't remember the exact dimensions but I think I shared in that video. I know they are 10 inches long. If I am getting ready to freeze dry something solid, I can actually get two layers in those pans as long as I move the top layer in a bit. The pans widen as they go up, so you have to compensate by reducing the size of that top layer a little. For something more liquidy, I only do one layer in each pan and then I rotate them out. I didn't want to buy 28 brownie pans so the food has to take turns. :-) Hope all of that makes sense! I was super frustrated before I found these pans so I hope they work for you too. :)

I’m so sorry you had a bad experience! Given the sheer number of people using and loving them, I have to think you got a bad motherboard (or whatever the computer part is for that). The one time I called with a question, I got great service, but I’ve never had to go deep into tech support like you did so I can’t speak to that, and mine has been running like a champ since I got it a year ago. Again, I’m sorry. I can tell it’s been frustrating. :(

I’m happy to hear that, Marc! Thank you for the encouragement :)

Yay! You’re number one! :D

I’m glad you mentioned that, because I forgot to put it in the video. This all happened within ten minutes of me pulling the trays out. Usually it takes me about 25-30 minutes to package up seven trays (it’s a lot of food!), and usually I have no problems with moisture. But this just came on so quickly. Big surprise.

@JaniceCrowell, the first two batches I tried were awful. They made a giant mess of my freeze dryer. But then I reduced the heat down and turned off the warming tray, and that did the trick. They turned out dangerously good … I had to give them away to people so I wouldn’t eat them all. :D I have a video with the details about that if you want to try again!

We did milk duds all summer to sell and never had any problems, but we keep our house at 68 degrees all the time. We live in Northwest Indiana. Candy mode 150 degrees and do not warm the trays.

Thanks,@@melissasmith2942! I’m sure they were a big hit :)

Thank you :)

Janelle, as far as I know, your window to add time ends once you end the cycle and start defrosting. I'd love to know if it's possible to customize a cycle for just drying. I've googled that myself but haven't gotten any luck. If you discovered that a few days after freeze drying, were they just in a bag or had to put them in mylar? They will start to absorb moisture if they're left out for any length of time, although one of my sister still has a Ziploc bag that I gave her and hers are holding up well. :-) I am working on a video right now about a failure I just had. To salvage the contents, which started rapidly absorbing moisture within 10 minutes of me pulling them out of the freeze dryer, I ended up putting them in my dehydrator for a couple of hours. That worked pretty well. Is that a possibility for you? Wish I could help you more on that extra drying time question! If anyone I'm here knows if it's possible to do that, please jump in!

Hey, Pammie! :) On the full video I show a bunch of things at the end that you can use the powder for, but I mostly use it in iced tea, lemon bars, soup and muffins. :)

Gorgeous, isn't it?

Thank you, @Bobbylk100. :)

Fresh grated ginger root would be great! I actually would rather use fresh to dried, but I always have a bunch of dried on hand.

Welcome aboard! :) I am just getting ready to put a run of kale and comfrey leaves in. I'll have a video of that up in the next few days. Thanks so much for leaving a comment! :-)

Me too, Joanne! :)

No! I missed it this time! That would have been great to add. 🥲 Do you go often, Nance?

Thanks for watching! :)

Ginny, I’m glad I could bring you a little taste of home! :) I know a tiny bit of what life is like for you in Texas . I spent my childhood in Oklahoma and Arkansas and I well remember the summer humidity. Your description of working in short bursts is pretty much how I get my gardening done here, even though it’s relatively cooler. So nice to see you here! And thank you for the encouragement! :)

It really is, Janine :)

Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment! Knowing someone is out there keeps me going. :-) If I was freeze-drying for a large family, I would absolutely get the XL. It's just my husband and me now, but I'm always preparing ahead for whatever calamity may come along. We have children and grandchildren and because we have the largest property in our family, I believe that if we had a catastrophic earthquake (and we're in the Pacific Northwest and overdue for a big one) or any other natural disaster, I would likely have 25 people living with us pretty quickly. So even though it's just my husband and me at the moment, I prepare as though I am cooking for many more. And I absolutely love my Harvest Right XL. The hardest thing about having the XL is that it is a lot of food to deal with when the run is over. But that's where you have a big advantage. Having a few extra hands on deck when it's time to process those trays will make all the difference. I have it down now and can do it pretty quickly, and my husband steps in whenever I need him, but that was seriously the biggest hurdle I had to overcome, because the moment you take those trays out you are conscious of the clock ticking and you know that the food is absorbing moisture the longer it sits. And seven XL trays hold a LOT of food. But by now I am in a groove and I know to have all of my packaging labeled ahead of time and have my scale out and ready to go. Everything is much quicker than it was in the beginning when I had such a big learning curve to deal with. I am confident you wouldn't regret getting the XL. You'll just have to make sure you have helpers when it's time to package a run. My friend who had her FD before I got one told me that if she had it to do it over again, she would get the XL. She has a large and says hers is running 24 hours a day. I believe her. :-) I am hindered right now because of the heat we're having but when it's not an issue, mine is running pretty much all the time as well. One thing about having all these extra large trays: you either have to have seven trays worth of the same food, or seven trays worth of similar food. I've gotten to the point where I know what I can combine so I'm able to freeze dry more often than I was in the beginning. Back then I felt like I had to have exactly the same thing on every tray, but I know now that as long as they are all savory or all sweet, and all of similar weights and consistencies, I can get away with mixing and matching. It has really made things easier. But for you, being that you are already cooking for so many people, you probably won't have to think much about that. My suggestion is that you go for it. I think you will be happy in the long run. It's definitely a big investment, but much less of an investment than trying to buy pre-freeze dried food for a huge family. Just seeing the difference in cost between buying freeze dried chicken and being able to do it myself is what sold me. Hope that helps! Please come back and let me know know how it's going. :-)

Thank you sooo much! I really appreciate your response! It means a lot and it really helps us with our decision! Praying for your grandson ❤❤

Oh, thank you!! That means the world to me. Gage is doing really well right now and we are praying that at some point the tumor will just be gone when they take the next MRI. I sure love this TH-cam community. Thank you for your prayers! 💕

Sure! It's 48" deep, 24" wide and 38" deep, including the wheels. It has one shelf which is where I keep the pump and my extra trays. With the freeze dryer on top it leaves me a space of 24" x 13" which is perfect for setting the trays on. I initially bought a heavy duty plastic one, but it had a lip which they had counted as width, which made it too small. I am very glad I found the stainless steel one. It was a little more spendy, but totally worth it. :)

@@TwigandFeatherTHANK YOU!!!

You’re sure welcome! Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment! :)

@careyreprogle6445, thank you for taking the time to leave such a detailed comment! I like your idea of numbering the trays themselves. I always record the weight (now … I’ve learned :) at the end before putting them back in for another hour or two, but number them on my sheet from the bottom to the top. Your way, I can shift the trays around for the next dry. Thank you! I also love hearing that about the dehydrator. My Excalibur is sitting about ten feet from my Harvest Right, so I’m going to try that for my next run. Question for you. Have you ever found that your trays GAIN weight on your second weigh? it’s odd but I’ve had that happen a few times lately where I record the weight, put them back in for two hours, and then a couple of trays show a gain. It’s perplexing. Unless it’s my scale. Thanks again for the input! I love how helpful the FD community is. :)

You may be right, Jeremy-I just haven’t been that adventurous. :) It took me forever to feel comfortable adding extra drying time. I’ll take every bit of advice/wisdom you want to share!

@@TwigandFeather if I had any on the freeze dryer I would definitely share it. New myself as in less than a month on a standard, medium 5 tray with the so called premium pump. It's had it's issues and at moment in testing settings, vac only or vac with heat on it can't seem to pull a vac under 10000 mtorr. As soon as I turn freeze on, in a min or less vac drops fast. It gets to 130 mtorr in about 10 minutes or less. I use vacuum bags, food saver for most what I've done so far. Stuff that doesn't compress at least. No need of oxygen packs if there's no oxygen. Looking into getting the mason jar vac attachment as well.banna and strawberry vac nice. Watermelon is a jar or oxygen pack seal. Done a couple of tv dinner. Used the plastic container and vac seal it in the food saver bag. Keep it in a box n basement. Cats keeping the mice away, but now wife is feeding the neighborhood cats as well. No mice here at least. Only good thing of them. I don't know about mixing. different things, like right now is mix chocolate candy bars. Bite sized and milk duds. Those are doing fine. But not sure how they would with like Skittles. Wife was trying to get me to do Skittles on a couple trays and fruit on the rest just to have a full load. Ehh nah I'll pass on the chance of messing that up. Jolly ranchers uiihhhhgggggg. Got huge, stuck to the heating elements. I got a large bottle brush for carboy wine making supplies. Easy to clean the heating elements with that. Fairly soft and stiff. Right mix. Stiff enough to do a good scrub but not scratch

I haven’t tried Jolly Ranchers, but thanks for the heads up. Milk Duds made a horrible mess the first two times I tried them. I did a video on the third attempt and they came out great, but that probably would have been the end of my candy making if they hadn’t worked that time. I’m using a bottle brush too for cleaning. Works great! :)

@@TwigandFeather if I can cut the jolly ranchers down then they should be fine, looks kinda like the milk duds . Reasons chocolate gets big. 3 musk bearly XP and, twice expand but the cookie part didn't. Snickers great, milk dud chocolate and Snickers chocolate was fine, the others instantly started to bubble n melt as cycle started, chocolate melt to tray some, came off on fingers sticking to everything it touches. So I'm guessing it's the fat and wax content in chocolate. Less wax more fat it gets messy. Assuming chocolate malt balls would do bout nothing, Skittles will get big if in to long. Some kind of Valentine's hard candy looking stuff grew in size some. Gummy nerds ehh. I just not big on candy myself. Rather do really food along with canning for stock up, like duums day peppers lol. But more like family always canned n garden most there own. Thinking I'll try some fresh fish next time I catch some and deer season if I get to tag one. Deer should do great, very lean, and freezer space is always limited

@jeremybanks719 You are adventurous! :) I've done Skittles (can't ruin those), peach rings--giant mess, lemon heads--no change at all, Swedish fish--nothing, caramel pops worked great, taffy worked great, sour patch kids--nothing, and the Milk Duds that I finally conquered. Right now I'm freeze drying herbs from my garden and loads of canned tomatoes I got at a great price from Grocery Outlet. Our neighbor fishes whenever he's not working or sleeping so I might suggest an arrangement. I'll FD whatever he brings me and we'll share it :)

I’d love to see some of that, Kathy!

That’s a nice thing to hear-thank you :)

I actually had no plans at the time to post about the delivery of the freeze dryer. I was just recording for us to have a memory of it. But also, I was needed to help slide it from the tailgate onto the table. We had a piece of cardboard under it. So I had no thoughts of recording at that moment. :-)

I would try just a bit under 2 cups of garbanzos. Because you need to add together the dried chickpea powder plus the amount of water that is used to rehydrate it. The beauty of hummus is that you can finagle a little here and there and it's still delicious. :-)

Thank you for the encouragement! 😊

Thank you! And good tip. It took me a while to get comfortable adding more time. I don't know what my hang up was unless it was a fear of "cooking" things too long. When I realized you couldn't over-dry food, it finally freed me. Such an interesting process, isn't it? Thanks for commenting! I hope you get to your batch of Milk Duds soon. Warning: they're addicting! :)

I did not! I had no idea. Now I'd like a side-by-side taste test! :)

Lol ... thanks, Marc :)

Lol! I couldn't agree more, Anita :)

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He sure is, Inga-Lill! 💕

Thank you, Kim!

Thank you so much, Linda! ❤️

Thank you so much! 💕

Yep, Ron. Thank you for praying :)

He sure is, Jean! Thank you for praying :)

Thank you, Kimmie! Love you!

@@TwigandFeather Love you, too!! 💕