http://www.canningpantry.com/dehydration-of-food.html

er, hit submit before i actually wrote the rest of my comment! anyway - that link appears to have some useful info. give it a try?

Yes!!! These are amazing and sell for about $10 a bag at healthfood stores!!

Kale Chips
http://www.grassdirtcorn.com/how-to-make-delicious-kale-chips-in-the-dehydrator/

I love my dehydrator. Apples and pears are especially nice, especially this time of year. Maybe try slicing the fruit thinner, to avoid "hunks"? And giving your apples and pears a soak in water with some honey and lemon juice can bring out the flavor of the fruit. Other favorites have been pineapple, beef jerky and turkey jerky (of course), herbs, peppers, and others. Maybe take another look at the recipe book that came with your dehydrator and see that you followed the tips? The Excalibur recipe book recommends treating fruits with lemon juice or other acid before drying. Tomatoes don't need anything.

All we've made so far are apple chips, but they've been amazing! Just thinly sliced apples dried for ~4 hrs. And thanks, Kit, for reminding me to try kale chips!

My mom makes jerky all the time. It's good!!

Also, next summer when the farmers markets are in full swing you can make your own 'sun dried' tomatoes. And what about some sun dried peppers?

Look on the raw-food boards for more ideas.

This is a great book: Mary Bell's Complete Dehydrator Cookbook. Lots of tips and recipes, worth checking out. Good luck!

Thanks everyone! Is there any particular recipes that you use, especially for dried vegetables? Dried fruit and vegetable chips are wonderful on their own, but I have never cooked with dried vegetables, tomato powder, so on and so forth.

Are there any recipes that are particularly good with the addition of dried ingredients? (I've heard a lot of people mention that dried tomato is great for soups and stews, but that's where my creativity and understanding ends. :P)

It sounds like you may be letting the food sit in the dehydrator for too long, if it is a "jaw-aching chunk." You can pull it out when it is still flexible & leathery; you just don't want any real moisture left on it.

I often spritz my dried tomatoes or other vegetables with just a bit of olive oil spray; makes them release from the tray much easier and also keeps them a softer. Olive oil is also a natural anti-bacterial and will prevent mold & spoilage should you not get quite enough water out of them.

I dry a lot of fruit for granola and make a lot of wacky fruit leathers; you can find those recipes in the preserves section of my blog: http://localkitchenblog.com/recipes/preserves/

But the real King of the Dehydrator is Joel at WellPreserved: http://wellpreserved.ca/ He dries *everything* and uses a lot of dried & ground veggie powders in cooking all winter long. It's a great site to browse through for inspiration.

The main problem you have here a lot of people (myself included) has when they first get a dehydrator is they're used to dried fruits you buy at the grocery. Chewy, relatively soft and yummy. Or something like banana chips that are tooth crackingly crunchy and sweet. If you look at the ingredients you'll see why. Som banana chips are flash fried for crunch and most dried fruit is packed with sugars or preservatives to keep them moist and soft but not spoil.

I gave up on a lot of dried fruit/fruit leathers after I realized how much sugar I'd have to have in there to make it like what I was used to. Wasn't worth the trouble. I stuck to apple chips and jerky.

I've been trying various fruit leathers, with just plain fruit and maybe a bit of lime juice to prevent browning... so far:
Pineapple, really weird, ended up with dried flakes, I'm going to make powder with these and sprinkle on desserts.
Apple: a bit mealy
Strawberry: excellent! But you may need to add a bit of sugar if the strawberries are not that sweet
Strawberry and Kiwi: Need much more kiwi than strawberry
Peaches: Really good, but a pain in the neck to process
Papaya: weird tasting, don't thing I'll try it again.
Canteloupe: it was too watery, so I boiled it down to reduce it, but then it developed some weird flavors.
Mango: By far the best of al

I am also a backpacker and have recently started using our dehydrator to dehydrate whole meals. You can find several books on the topic, but stews and gooey (but low-fat/ low-grease) casseroles and pasta work the best. It's light to carry and in camp you just add water and boil until tender.
I also second the votes for jerky and fruit leathers (we like spiced peach and mixed berry).

You could try raw food websites. People who eat raw use dehydrators as their ovens. There's a plethora of really creative dehydrator recipes out there. One of my favorite sites is www.rawmazing.com/. The recipes are very straightforward and the photography is great.