Hey everyone:

So I've got a menu planned thanks to Sarah's great site, but I NEED freeze dried veggies!

Can I get these at Shaws? I checked Trader Joe's and found nothing! Where do you all get yours?

http://www.justtomatoes.com/dried_vegetables.html

They're in CA, but they ship for free on orders over $100. (It's not hard to spend that either, unfortunately.) There's also a store finder on their site, with many shops in the NE carrying some of their products. Calling a bunch of them to find out what they have in stock might get a bit tedious though.

Often upscale grocery stores carry Just Tomatoes stuff, as do "natural food" stores. I can find them in most places like that. Kroger owned stores as well.

Look for Just Tomatoes brand as well as Crunchies. Ask! Often they are carried and no one knows it :) Sometimes in with natural foods, other times with nuts/chips/snacks.

Last summer before I moved to Montana, the Nashua and Manchester EMS stores had a collection of dried veggies with their freeze dried food. You may want to try them. I never had luck finding a lot at Trader Joe's.

Try Whole Foods Market, they have a pretty decent selection of the Just Veggies line of ingredients for making Sarah's great recipes.

Cheers
Jim

harmonyhousefoods.com has a lot of dehydrated stuff

Edited by simplespirit on 07/01/2008 15:24:37 MDT.

You cannot go wrong with www.harmonyhousefoods.com
Good food, great service and free shipping often. And most of what they sell works great in bag meals and one pot meals. No presoaking needed.

Andrew,

I often dry my own because of the expense of freeze-dried veggies. Plus this way I can dry entire meals and all I have to do at camp is rehydrate them.

That said, www.JustTomatoes.com is a great source.

For mushrooms I go into one of several asian grocery stores in my area, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and Korean. All kinds of stuff: Shitakes, forest mushrooms (also called skitakes but closer to button style with cracked looking caps) you can get them large and very small too, a new one I just got that's called "reishi" (looks like strips of rosewood and smells like wood - have not tried it yet), White fungus (looks like a yellow sponge with dry texture a bit like paper - tasty in soup), black fungus (really woodsear mushroom - kind of leathery but with a crunch).
You can also get 2 or 3 types of seaweed, dried shrimps and little fish, oodles of noodles, and various other items I just can't think of right now.
Forgot....will try to add photo of 'shrooms this weekend once I figure out how to add it to the post.
That was easy....
Clockwise from top Left: Forest Mushrooms large and small, White Fungus, Reishi, Black Fungus.


Jim Bailey - Whole Foods? I'll have to check that out - have one just around the corner from my office, never noticed dried veges of any kind in it.

Edited by NormanB on 11/02/2008 11:29:30 MST.

Norman, you might ask - they often hide the Just Veggies (why I will never know!). Some stores put them near the chips/crackers or the nuts as well......

Packit Gourmet has a great selection of freeze-dried and dehydrated veggies. Some meat and fruit too.

Don't laugh but Gerber Graduates sells freeze dried fruits and veggies as toddler snacks... I saw them at the local grocery store and they are the same thing.

i tried the gerber fruits. they were terrible. they are made to dissolve in a toddlers's mouth, so when you put them in oatmeal or the like, they become mush...yuck you still get the favor if that's what your after....

Edited by clt1953 on 10/30/2008 13:09:48 MDT.

In the US it seems their corn has disappeared - most likely it didn't sell well. All I have been seeing is the fruit, which as Victoria mentions....it mushes up bad. For making powder they are ok, but not for plain eating.

Packit Gourmet started carrying freeze dried zucchini and black olives recently as well. Just got an order yesterday, along with their freeze dried green bell peppers. Should be fun to play with soon.

The ones I had weren't all that much different from the FD Fruit packages we bought from Natural High. Maybe I was just lucky and got some packages where the pieces were bigger?

Just Tomatoes is fabulous though and the Natural High Bananas are really great too. I used them in a trail banana cream pie recipe that appeared in Fork.