Priorities, right?

I like this guys take on it, scroll down towards the bottom of page



http://forums.egullet.org/topic/149399-freeze-driers-and-freeze-dried-food/page-7


If you want to have an ROI for the machine...here ya go.

Rational:
#10 cans
Beef                  47.00
White Chicken   40.00
Ham                   50.00
Sausage            36.00

Scrambled Eggs   30.00
Chedder Cheese  44.00
Ice Cream              26.00

From my experience, 4 trays of meat will make 1 to 1.5 # 10 cans.
Lets just say it makes "1" can at an average of 40.00/can of "whatever" product.

It'll take aprox. 100 cans at 40.00 ea  = ($4000.00 investment)  MAX to get your ROI to 0... we know it'll happen faster as you get more than "1" can of product in a run...I'm talking about "bulky" stuff.  Ok.. so you went all out and it cost 4300.00 with "xtras"... add 10 more cans to the ROI just to cover any loose ends.

SO... if it takes 1.5 days to process a "batch" it'll take 150 days to do 100 cans...if you were going full bore, flat out gett'n it.  Let's just say a few days off in between runs for what ever reason...  it'll pay back in about 6 mos if you want it to.  ok.. 8 months if you're not hitting it real hard.

6-8 months for a pay back...??? WOAH...  That's an incredible ROI....  And it "could be" a bidness write off.. capitalize it over 3-5 even 10 years... easy peasy.

Powdered eggs.. takes a LOT of eggs to fill a #10 can. easy 2-3 runs of liq. egg product to fill one.

I figured about 75-100 Runs max. to get my money back if I were to buy product.....  the example prices are from Honeyville site as a reference.
Figure at a maximum 3-5 buxs a day. for round numbers for 'letric.

I KNOW they are not doing Marinated-grilled chicken breasts like the pics below... or canadian bacon, Turkey pastrami, Pulled pork, ribs- Brisket, ham, Gyro meat, or grilled asparagas or spaghetti with sauce my way and meat balls or, or, or...

My homecooking for later consumption is well... PRICELESS...

I want one for sure.

Want

sorry for the late reply, work is killing me lately!  we got a cabelas ten tray model, wanted the excaliber but got this on sale. it seems like a nice unit but were really expecting the results only achievable with the freeze dry machine.  the fruits were not fully crisp dry where we could store them for years.  we did dehydrate and vacuum seal. I guess we could slice thinner but I just don't think that we can get those results.

thanks for your reply and again, sorry for the delay

Freeze drying is a different process than dehydrating, so the results are very different.

I spent quite a bit of time last night going thru the linked thread showing people's results using this machine..... it's killing me. I want one of these terribly bad, but I can't see a way to do it unless I sell my subgun. If I do that, I'll never own a full auto again-the value has gone up so much since I bought it that I could shoot it for another year or two at my going rate before I wouldn't be making money on it. It's crazy.

I have several years worth of FD food for the two of us, but there's a difference between being fed and being "not hungry". If I didn't already have thousands tied up in my current FD preps this would be a much easier purchase but as things sit I just can't dump 4-4500 on this thing and feel like I'm doing the right thing.

I need a well on my property too now that I think of it.... Fuck.

Is this a long way of saying that Astronaut Ice Cream isn't really ice cream at all?  Please tell me you're not saying that.



 

Yay! how about cake?

In all reality, I want one of these.

Yea that shit was tasty.

 

Bought 2 gallons of pickles to dry, then used the glass jars to make some homemade strawberry brandy, my food stockpile ever increases..


DSCN0520 by gaelic33, on Flickr" />



DSCN0521 by gaelic33, on Flickr" />

Brandy? how do you make that?

 

one gallon jar filled with whatever fruit you want to use, add three cups sugar, add to within 1/2 inch of the top 40, 80 100 proof vodka of your choice i used Orloff 40 proof this time, stir or shake once a day for a week then let sit in a dark place for 3-4 more weeks, drain off liquid into a bottle and your done, some folks cook the left over fruit into jams or whatnot

Awesome!

What sealer and bag system are you using ?

Since one component that is mostly missing from freeze dried foods is fat and that is both a ton of good calories and a lot of taste, a friend years ago suggested taking shelf stable fats with me on climbing trips, at the time I used squeeze tubes of crisco , now I would do what he did and make tallow in ice cube trays and have a zip lock full of them.

Just drop one in each meal while reconstituting. Add more if the situation is requiring maximum calories. It significantly changes the taste for the better and ups your calories by 1/3.

i was using this guys trick to vacuum seal mylar Vauum sealing mylar trick but i have recently been just using my food saver vac bags then putting the sealed bags into mylar bags with a oxy absorber, no light or air is getting in hopefully

i carry these to use for upping my fat intake  Fat stuffs

Good ideas...

Yes, I carry a large flask of olive oil while mountaineering.  

From a pure survival / preparedness standpoint shelf stable solids are better.

That's pretty slick , I'll have to try that.

Right now I just seal my meats in cabelas vacuum seal bags and freeze sub zero. Would their longevity be increased with O2 absorbers ?

my understanding is air and light decrease longevity, so i use mylar bags to avoid light and oxy absorbers to avoid air(they are so cheap), some people nitrogen flush there bags with a system similar to this i think Nitro flush

I'm not overly concerned about light as they are in chest freezers but getting more oxygen out of the bags for cheap and easy would be nice. Especially when packaging whole rabbit, duck, etc that has air spaces.