New gadgets!

A few new kitchen gadgets arrived at our door recently and we are excited to put them to use.  We purchased a mandoline/food slicer for uniformly cutting fruits and veggies to dehydrate.  We also picked up a few more Paraflex non-stick sheets for the dehydrator  - the two that came with the dehydrator are always in use now that we know how easy it is to make fruit leather!  How exciting that we will soon be using all 5 dehydrator trays at once!! 

The third gizmo is a spiral slicer and we put that to work last night to make dinner.  The spiralizer (a dark green contraption that looks like the microscopes I used in High School Biology class) has 4 blades to create a variety of spiral thicknesses.  Last night we whittled two zucchini squashes down to a bowl of zucchini "pasta"! (top right in the photo)  To top our "pasta" was tomato basil sauce (Vitamix blended shallot, balsamic vinegar, sundried tomato, olive oil, and garlic) .  The sauce comes out quite thick, more of a paste, and is very tasty!  Our makeshift spaghetti with sauce was really good and packed with vitamins!  To the left of the sauce we have guacamole which we put on romaine lettuce leaves for a refreshing wrap.  Also on the plate of lettuce are tomato crackers we made on Sunday night with a few fresh tomatoes, sesame seeds, flax seeds, and seasonings.  The meal was eclectic and tasty and we followed it up with a fruit and spinach smoothie for dessert!  Yum!

Throughout all of our preparations Shep kept his distance from the ruckus of blending and slicing!