I have this fantasy that one day I will be able to have a container garden that will produce at least 20% of our food.  So far it’s been wishful thinking.  But instead of letting go of the idea, I’ve added on to it.  Once my garden starts mega-producing, we will have to conserve a part of it for those long winter months. And what better way than sun drying it?

from our Parian roof

Years ago while driving around Crete, I saw many many roofs covered with figs and grapes (it was September). Flat roofs and a lot of sun make sun dehydration an obvious choice. So I decided to experiment with it here on Paros.

A few days before, Mr. Wolf had constructed a “dehydrator” from some wood we found on our way to the store and from the same kind of screen utilized for the structures used for drying out octopus so common here in Greece.

To prepare the vegetables we took an eggplant, four small zucchini and a cucumber, thinly sliced them and put them in a large bowl together. We add some sea salt, cumin and olive oil (just a bit), mixed it all together then let in marinate overnight in the fridge.

The next morning I went up on the roof to lay the veggies out in our homemade dehydrator.

The dehydrator with the vegetables all laid out.

The vegetables covered with the screen.

Of course, we knew it would take much more time than it would have had we used a commercial dehydrator. So we left the veggies out to dry for two days. Hopefully, we can come up with an idea as to how to use aluminium foil to speed up the process.

Sun dried vegetables.

As you can see, the vegetables shrunk quite a bit.  But the taste is good and the chewy texture is ok, too.  However, I plan to experiment with other vegetables (I have some tomatoes and carrots marinating right now) because I think these sun dried veggies would make a great snack to go  with our aperitif when we watch the sunset.