I have been wanting to do Meals in Jars for some time now. This isn't a new concept. For me, I want to use them as my convenient meals. Yes, I realize that some of these are crock pot meals. So I will explain. I want to be able to grab my crock pot, grab a jar, pour the contents of the jar and the water in the crock pot, cover, and set time. I don't want to have to gather everything  and measure it all out the morning of. I would rather use that time for sleeping :). I hope you enjoy these recipes. If you have suggestions or variations, I would love to hear them. Please note that all the recipes are adjusted to my tastes. So if you don't like a lot of salt, or you hate mushrooms, you can leave them out or adjust the recipe to your tastes.
Some of the items I dehydrate myself but for the majority of the dehydrated & freeze dried items I purchase from Honeyville.

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These recipes are for me to use within the month - even though they will stay fresh for longer, if you are going to store them for longer periods of time, I recommend using oxygen absorbers. Here is a great page on making your Meals in Jars for Long Term Storage >>Go to Page<< Chef Tess has more great recipes if you want to experiment with more Meals in Jars.

I have a hodge-podge of fruit in my fridge this week, so.... I decided to make some fruit roll-ups.

I am making 6 different kinds. Here are the ingredients for each one.

I blended each set of ingredients in my blender.

1 apple, 2 cups fresh strawberries, 1/4 chia seeds, 1 kiwi, 2 tbsp Splenda* (I used Splenda to help cut the acidity of the kiwis)

1 cup fresh cranberries, 1 1/2 apples, 1 kiwi, 2 bananas, 2 tbsp chia seeds

2 kiwis, 1 apple, 1 cup fresh strawberries, 1 tbsp chia seeds, 1 cup fresh cranberries, 2 tbsp Splenda*

1/2 cup fresh cranberries, 2 kiwis, 2 cups fresh strawberries, 2 bananas, 2 tbsp chia seeds

2 apples, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1 tbsp splenda*

5 ripe bananas, 1/2 cup almonds, 2 1/2 tbsp cocoa powder, 4 tbsp splenda*, 3 tbsp milled flax seed

They are all on different trays. Temp at 135 degrees. Will check after 4 hours to see if I can flip them so they get fully dehydrated on both sides.

See you in about 4 hours :)

Update: After 5 hours, they were still a little wet on the tops, so I left them in for a couple more hours. That seemed to do the trick. I flipped them all and left in for an hour or so longer (the Chocolate Banana Nut one took quite a bit longer - about 9 hours in total - but totally worth it!)

Dehydrating times may vary depending on your dehydrator, your climate and the moisture levels of your fruits. Make sure to check on them during the process to make sure not to over dry - which will make them brittle. Have fun and Happy Dehydrating!

----------  A NOTE ABOUT SPLENDA ----------
I know most people are not a fan of Splenda and you can definitely make these without the use of Splenda, just substitute with your sweetener of choice or just leave the sweetners out completely. I personally use Splenda because I can not eat Sugar - and most of these roll ups I can only eat a little at a time because of the high concentrate of fruit sugars. I am still in the process of trying other sugar alternatives but since I live in a rural area I have to order them over the Internet since they only sell Splenda at our Lil market.