My wife has been wanting a freeze drier so this summer we sprang for one. They ain't cheap and HarvestRight is the only maker of home sized ones on the market (made in Utah, not China). We've been experimenting some. I cooked up a big stockpot of elk stew with spuds, onions, corn, beans, peas, tomatoes,carrots, and who knows what else. We freeze dried a bunch of it and bagged it in 2 serving bags. When reconstituted, it's really good. I cooked a big elk roast then sliced and freeze dried it. It doesn't taste very good FD'd but when reconstituted, it's tastes very much like fresh elk meat. Eat it as is or mix it with other stuff.
We dried a bunch of tomatoes, then ground them to a powder. When sprinkled on anything, they quickly moisten up and give anything a good fresh tomato flavor. They're kind of tricky to preserve, though. Within 30 min of coming out of the drier they start to absorb water from the air. It's necessary to store them immediately or they won't keep.
We've done a bunch of fresh fruit right off the trees - apples, peaches, cherries, apricots, plums. FD apples aren't as good as dehydrated apples but the other fruits are excellent. You can carry a bunch of them for snacks on the trail and have no weight at all. Peaches and nectarines are especially tasty. Just slice and dry them.
Fats don't FD well so it needs to be trimmed off the meat. That's why FD stuff doesn't seem to be as filling as you'd like.
