Susan Gast, Food Dehydration Expert
Name: Susan Gast
Occupation: Work-from-home owner of various websites, blogger, writer, and home designer
Place of Residence: Central Florida
Background and Personal History:
Growing up in the UK. Susan’s family ran a couple of small farms in northern England. On one of the 40-acre farms grazed a small dairy herd which meant Susan learned how to milk cows – along with other chores such as lambing sheep, feeding calves, and baling hay. She says she never had a day off for years.
She also discovered a love of DIY due to her father’s passion for farmhouse renovating. She earned pocket money helping her dad repair stone walls in the fields, and mended interior plaster walls that revealed their fascinating wattle and daub history.
Growing older in the USA. Susan left the UK in August of 1980 and now resides in Central Florida with her husband – along with a Miniature Pinscher that pretty much runs the household.
Back in 2004, central Florida was ravaged with back-to-back hurricanes – Frances and Jeanne – and Susan’s home was in the direct path of both storms. Thankfully, the home survived, but the food supplies did not. Susan and her husband were out of power for a few weeks and as the fresh food went bad, it was very painful to have to throw away what couldn’t be eaten along with the once-frozen but now totally thawed food languishing in the freezer.
Fast-forward to mid-2010 and Susan was concerned with job layoffs and “what if” scenarios swam around in her head. What if people panic and purchased food in bulk, leaving the rest of us without fresh food (or canned goods)? She decided right then and there that she wasn’t going to be among the unfortunate and unprepared should disaster strike. A light bulb went off in her head and she went to work learning all she could about drying food for long-term storage.
At this point, Susan also was getting fed up of throwing away spoiled vegetables because she’d forgotten they were tucked away in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator. Of course unrefrigerated veggies go bad, too. Have you ever had to put up with rotten potatoes? She swears they are the stinkiest rotten veggie on the planet.
December 23rd, 2010, was the launch date of her website called Easy Food Dehydrating. She wanted to teach people what she’d learned and so made it easy for you to learn the process of dehydrating food, too.
To that end, join Susan in dehydrating fresh fruits and vegetables while they are in season, and stock ’em away for when they’re not. Keep your food pantry full of nature’s goodness – whatever the reason or season!
Current Projects: Creating and maintaining her websites. She has also been busy shooting how-to video courses based on food dehydrating which are readily available on the Udemy platform.
Other Fun Facts: Susan absolutely loves designing homes. In particular, she loves small homes. Why? She says it forces you to downsize and truly makes you realize just how little you really do need to live a comfortable life.
Susan’s Books and Videos: Susan currently has three eBooks on the topic of food dehydrating available at www.Amazon.com. The most popular eBook, Easy Food Dehydrating and Safe Food Storage is available in paperback, too.
Susan currently has these publications available:
Easy Food Dehydrating and Safe Food Storage (eBook)
Easy Food Dehydrating and Safe Food Storage (paperback)
20 Taste-Tested Easy Recipes Containing Dehydrated Food
How To Dehydrate Food Top 20 Topics…Over 225 Questions Answered
Find Susan on Facebook:Easy Food Dehydrating on Facebook