My food dehydrator has been running 24 hours a day the past week -- we're drying a bunch of food in anticipation of a 5-day remote canoe trip into the Boundary Waters. Pre-kids, I used to dehydrate a ton of food for backpacking trips. Not only is the food incredibly lightweight, it's easy to rehydrate on the trail and the taste is fantastic. No chemicals either. A handful of dried blueberries rehydrate perfectly overnight in a water bottle, ready to be folded into pancake batter!

At the risk of sounding like a perky infomercial, did you know you can dry homemade fruit leathers (e.g., fruit roll-ups), all sorts of fruit, beef jerky at about half the cost of store-bought and even veggies to stir into your dried spaghetti sauce on the trail? Even if you're not camping, a food dehydrator is a great way to prepare healthy snacks for the pantry.

Right now I have some cherry fruit leather drying, and to date have dried blueberries, a ton of teriyaki beef jerky, cinnamon apple slices, banana chips, chopped onions/green pepper, spaghetti sauce (which peels off the drying sheet just like fruit leather) and peas/carrots to stir in with our kid-friendly trail mac 'n cheese. Home-dried banana chips (chewier) are much healthier than store-bought dried banana chips which are typically crispy fried.

So next time that food dehyrator infomercial comes along, take a closer look. The National Center for Home Food Preservation offers helpful tips to get started. I own an 11-year-old American Harvest Snackmaster dehydrator -- it's still drying like a champ.

Source