Dehydrated Salad

Possibly the coolest thing I've come up with this year! If kale chips are good, why not go the whole "loaded" salad route?

Red chard (any sturdy green, lettuce is a bit too delicate to hold up), grated carrot, grated radish, super finely diced celery, green onion, white onion, 2 strips of thick cooked bacon, skinned canned Roma tomatoes with the juice squeezed out and finely diced (skinless makes it less chewy), salt, pepper, vinaigrette of half bacon fat and half olive oil with rice wine vinegar and coarse ground mustard, a small bit of anchovy paste worked in, zest of one lime and juice of half a lime, copious amounts of Romano cheese, and I even tossed in some prepared croutons I had at hand (click to read the rest).

After you lay out the leaves in your dehydrator rack, lots of the tiny bits of bacon, onion tomato etc. are left in the salad bowl. Distribute evenly over the leaves. The croutons soaked up all the great flavor and re-dried out!

I made it like I would make any salad, but not being shy with the flavorings, very strong. It dries out absolutely crispy crunchy and all of the sudden when you put it in your mouth, it comes alive with all the flavor of a great green salad. It's an amazingly wonderful snack treat!