Sun dried food is one way by which a mendicant, who rarely is valued by any culture or religion, and survive, as a dedicated contemplative. Over the decade of my mendicant life I have on occasion sun dried food for long-term storage. I once picked about 5 paper shopping bags full of edible mushrooms, which I cut into trees and sun-dried on tarps at my camp.
Today I road my bike to the Sedona Food Bank, where I acquired 1/2 dozen organic tomatoes, 1/2 an organic cantaloupe, a container of bran muffins, and five loaves of bread. Almost any fresh food can be dried, and here in Arizona, it is mostly warm and dry, so it does not take long to dry food.
When Nikita was here he started sun drying all kinds of produce, and even bread. We discovered that placing food on the roof for sun-drying had a number of advantages.
1) The roof is a place were not much goes on, so the food can sit there in the sun and not be in the way, nor contaminated by human activities.
2) Bugs seem to live close to the ground, and the higher one goes, the fewer bugs one finds. Thus, drying food on the roof eliminates most of the bugs.
3) The roof often times has the best solar exposure.
Nikita introduced me to sun-dried bread. He says it is how Russians have traditionally preserved their bread. He says they call is "bread crackers." I Googled the term and found "Pilot Bread Crackers," which come in a can. It is a survival food. When I asked Google to translate it I got"хлеб крекеры," which I cannot read.
After coming back from the Food Bank with 5 loves of good whole grain organic bread I put them in flour sacks to dry. I found 3 loves will fit in one flour sack. I then left them on the roof. Nikita and I found that here in Sedona in the summer time the bread will dry by the end of the day. I prefer flour sacks for drying bread in, because they are made of tightly woven cotton, which will keep even the small insects out.
Last week at camp it was cool, shady, and I had daily rains, so I experimented with drying bread in a flour sack that was left in my window in front of the shade. It worked great
This is what bread crackers look like when they are fully dried.
For storage I put the bread crackers back in the bag the bread came in, and put a twist tie on the bag, then I store it in a plastic tub with a lid that fits tightly. I will have bread at camp for a long time this way.
