Dehydrated Pumpkin - An Experiment

[Maro2Bear]

Greetings all.

There is always discussion this time of year about feeding pumpkin to our torts. I know our Sully loves to gobble up fresh pumpkin and seeds and innards of a fresh pumpkin. BUT, one can only feed so much fresh pumpkin... My neighbors and co-workers know that our Sully enjoys pumpkin....as do our Red Wrigglers in the compost bin, i now have about 15 pumpkins in the garage with thanks to friends.

FACT: Pumpkins keep only so long, and go bad. Last year I tried freezing fresh pumpkin cubes...but they get mushy on defrosting. Cubes in cold fridge....not so good either.

Soooooooo, I'm trying a new method to preserve all the good fresh pumpkin. Ive sliced up the pumpkin and have placed in our dehydrater. So far, so good. The pumpkin wedges have dried up, and are ready for bagging up for future rehydration and feeding. I'll probably bag n fridge.

Anyone else try this? Good bad other?

I plan on rehydrating a tad before feeding.....

Heres a pix of the dehydrated cubes.

 

[wellington]

I cut big chunks and freeze. Yes, they do get pretty mushy when thawed but torts still seem to like them. I have not tried drying them. Will be interesting to see how well they hydrate and if still liked. Keep us posted.

 

[Maro2Bear]

So far, the chunks/slices have reduced by 2/3s or more. I plan to let them dry to texture of dried, not crunchy, apple slices.