So, we’re now up at the cabin for the next several months.

We’ve decided to keep the loft in town for the next little while because we’ll likely need to travel back and forth a bit to see my parents (who are now too old to travel to our place on Denman Island). Anyway, as I may have mentioned, after embarking on the latest plant-based jag, I’ve acquired a few new appliances, but could use them only in a very limited way at the loft in town because it’s so small (and you couldn’t swing Buster around by his tail in the tiny kitchen). Anyway, I’ve been DYING to experiment a bit with my new dehydrator, so today I’m making dehydrated, marinated onions and mushrooms.

The marinade for both is the same. It’s an adaptation of the Thug Kitchen Smoky-Maple Marinade that I frequently use; however, I keep adding adjustments, so it barely resembles the original. I also doubled the original recipe and keep it in a jar in the fridge because you can use it for a base for salad dressings, stir fries, etc., and it’s great to have on hand. If you like a peanut-y sauce add a few TBS of peanut butter or PB2. You can thicken it up with a bit of corn starch too!

Universal Marinade (SO good)

• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 tsps. BTB mushroom paste (this stuff is SO good for mushroom gravy)
• 2 TBS Sambal Olek
• 4 TBS maple syrup
• 2 TBS liquid smoke
• 4 TBS white wine vinegar
• 2 TBS chopped garlic
• 2 TBS chopped fresh ginger

Blend it up in the bullet.

Use about a pound of mushrooms:

Peel them, so they absorb more of the marinade:

Then slice them (a bit thicker than you normally would):

And let them marinate for an hour (use half the marinade recipe outlined above) or so:

Then place them in the dehydrator one layer deep. Don’t let them touch each other:

Keep the marinade for the onion, which you peeled and sliced thinly. Toss the onions with the marinade (you don’t have to let them soak like the mushrooms; we want them just lightly coated). And pop them into the dehydrator as well:

And then dehydrate them all for one hour at 135 degrees, and another 6 hours at 115 degrees (for the mushrooms). They end up looking like this:

And the texture and taste is perfect….but you don’t get much from 3/4 of a pound of mushrooms!

I tasted the onions after the first hour, and they were DEE-licious, but not crispy….that’ll take another twelve hours or so!

After twelve hours, I expected the onions to be crispy, but they are still kind of chewy–they taste great though!

Keep the left-over marinade for tofu (it’s really good marinade!).

Then, if there are still a few tablespoons of the marinade left, mix it with 1/4 cup hummus and a couple of tablespoons of savoury cashew cream for a really nice, creamy salad dressing!