Being an engineer that doesn't get paid as an engineer anymore, I've been playing with dehydrating. I dehydrated some food in my Brevil Oven which goes down to 120 F so it works okay.
Factor is the amount of weight lost. Onions weighed 1/13th as much after they dried, etc.
Beans are like pinto beans. You add water to cook them, then dehydrate it away, so the factor is 1.
dry oz/yr is the amount of dry ounces I use in a year, backpacking
packitgourmet is how much packitgourmet charges for that much
produce is how much it would cost at the produce store if it cost $1 a pound. Actually, I grow my own toms and peppers. I can probably get onions cheaper at some point here…
factor dry oz/yr packitgourmet produce
onions 13 20 $10 $16
tom 13 20 $20 $16
peppers 16 20 $15 $20
beans 1 80 $60 $5
I can see that it makes no sense to dehydrate onions, tomatoes, or peppers if I want to save money. And I don't spend enough per year.
Beans I save a little. And more than that, I can add some herbs and spices – the dehydrated beans from packitgourmet have no spices. I can buy soups from Nile Spice or Lipton's Pea Soup, but they're a bit more expensive, yet still not enough to justify my effort.
If I dehyrdated for home use and also did backpacking it could make sense.
hmmm…
