Watching paint and mushrooms dry

I used to think it was interesting watching paint dry, but tonight I am attempting vegetable dehydration for the first time and the experiences don't compare...

(Second day of walking 30 minutes per day according to the RealAge(tm) workout. Fasting BG 11.2/201 would have been better if I hadn't had a bowl of bran cereal before bed.)

I spent 3.99 CAD on a food dehydrator (at Value Village) and 2.00 CAD (at No Frills) on fresh white mushrooms, and, without benefit of an instruction manual, am attempting to add to my pantry (food storage) by dehydrating veggies for soups and such. I'm a pretty good online researcher, but the world wide interweb doesn't throw up much in the way of instructions on dehydrating. Lots of advice, yes ("Don't dry celery or you'll end up with celery dust") but no suggestions on how to use my particular model -- which has no brand, model, year, or anything to hint at what it is or how to use it. Or how long to dry any particular vegetation or how to cut it to dry optimally. Or any information on how to use a basic 5-layer warm-air/no fan dehydrator. So I am winging it. If it doesn't work I can easily return it to Value Village.

January 10/08 update: I got about 1 cup of leathery (i.e., perfect) dried mushrooms, but wasn't sure about storing them so I put them in a freezer bag and put them in the freezer.

For the first year that I lived in T-dot I made my own bread, for something to do and to save money (that was still when I ate a lot of bread on a regular basis. Now I just binge on it). When people asked me what kind of bread machine I used I just held up my hands.

I also make yogurt once in a while, but last summer I changed to a probiotic-low cholesterol plain yogurt, in hopes that my endo or GP wouldn't want to add at least a statin something-or-other to my already choking level of pills (mostly supplements).