Dehydrated Fruit and Spinach Tortillas

I'm getting ready to go on a hiking trip around Mont Blanc. When I travel overseas with a group, I'm at the mercy of the group when it comes to food. And though I've found some great raw restaurants in unlikely places (like Zagreb, Croatia and Lisbon, Portugal and Edinburgh, Scotland) I often have to supplement with my own food. So I'm starting early because dehydrated fruit keeps a long time, and I had a lot I didn't want to waste.

Also, I talked to one of my sisters the other day, and she received an Excalibur dehydrator for Mother's Day. She's excited to make breads and crackers, so I thought I'd start putting some dehydrating recipes on the blog. In part for her and in part for you.

For this upcoming hiking trip I dehydrated fresh pineapple, mango, and kiwi. I also made some cayenne dusted mango to put in a spicy trail mix I'll make closer to the departure date. This time I used cayenne, but habanero pepper works well, too. To make the spicy mango, slice mango into pieces. Put 1/2 t. cayenne in 1 t. agave and mix well. Coat the mango in the agave.  Spread on dehydrator sheets. The rest of the fruit is just plain fruit cut up into pieces with no added sugar.

I also made some spinach tortillas by blending about 5 cups of spinach with 1/4 c. flax powder, 2 small limes and some Himalayan sea salt. I spread that into a big square on the Teflex-lined dehydrator sheet

Lastly, I made some chocolate sprouted buckwheat cereal that I will break into pieces and use as layers in berry parfaits. I'm still using up meringue, so instead of nuts, I'll layer fruit, meringue, and chocolate buckwheat, which is a really high protein grain. I simply soaked the buckwheat overnight, then sprouted it for one day, then hand mixed into it 5 dates blended with 3/4 c. water and about 1/4 c. cacao powder and some vanilla.

The top of the tray held the seeds of the papaya from the Papaya Pineapple Smoothie posted earlier. I put the dehydrated seeds in my pepper mill along with peppercorns and use them as a spice. The papaya seeds take days to dehydrate. They must be really dry to keep from molding, so let them over dehydrate if you question when they're ready. I had them in there about three days while I rotated other things through the remaining trays.

I took some pictures of the dehydrator trays before and after dehydrating to give you an idea of what happens in the dehydrating process. I think the trays are so pretty when they are full of fruit. I also love the look of a full dehydrator. It feels so abundant.

I dehydrated everything at 105 degrees. The timing for the fruit and tortillas were the same. Basically I cut the fruit in the afternoon and took it out the next morning. I let the cereal stay in a little longer, about 24 hours, flipping it after about 18 hours. There's no science to the flipping. Just do it at some point to make sure the underside gets dehydrated, too.

Ah, the bounty....

beautiful fruit

before dehydrating

after dehydrating