Salt and Vinegar Zucchini Chips

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I whipped up a batch of zucchini chips for the first time on Saturday. Loved them! But I am not sure they were worth losing a finger tip. Yes, my healthy treat took some of my blood, sweat and tears. Let me explain.

When I checked the outside temperature at 7 a.m., it was a not so balmy -18C. I decided to wait a few hours to run while it warmed up outside. I started getting restless after I reading and commenting on a few blogs. 
I had bought all the ingredients for my chips on Friday. The plan was to make them along with my regular food prep on Sunday. But I reasoned I might as well use my time wisely. I washed the zucchini (all six of them) and let them drain in the sink. I don’t think I ever bought so much zucchini all at once before in my life. I knew this would be the perfect time to dust off my fancy German mandolin.
  

And that’s when the trouble began. I have only used it once since I bought it last summer so I watched a “how to use” tutorial online. Feeling confident, I started slicing and dicing my zucchini. I was feeling pretty good. I heard so many horror stories about people losing their fingers using the sharp cutting device. Not me. I was on fire until I wasn’t anymore.

I was on my last zucchini when I moved it a little too fast through the blade. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. I immediately flung the mandolin into the sink, grabbed a cloth and gripped it tightly around my fingers. Blood was everywhere. I turned on the faucet and let the hot water clean the blade while I tried not to look at the blood. Did I mention I have a habit of passing out?

Still I unwrapped the cloth to see my blood oozing and oozing out of my fingers. The damage didn’t look too bad. I wasn’t sure if the doctor could do anything but I didn’t want to risk infection.

Thankfully Josh doesn’t live too far from me. He immediately agreed to take me to a nearby clinic. I had called ahead so I didn’t have to wait. I didn’t want to waste anybody’s time at the ER. I knew I wasn’t seriously hurt but I wanted that reassurance. 
The doctor on duty gave me a tetanus shot and bandaged up my fingers. Because the tips of the two fingers were MIA, there wasn’t much she could do. I promised to come back in three days for a check up. Sigh. The bandages were not conducive to doing anything like typing or washing my face. They didn’t last long so I used Band-Aids. After all that, I went home and cleaned up what looked like a crime scene and finished making my zucchini chips.


Zucchini Chips

Ingredients
Six (or more) zucchini 
1/2 cup of Apple cider vinegar 
1 tablespoon of Oil
Pinch of salt or other spices 
Instructions
Wash zucchini
Cut off ends
Slice zucchini using mandolin or sharp knife
Mix the oil and vinegar together
Add the zucchini into the oil/vinegar mixture
Sprinkle in some salt
Assemble the zucchini on dehydrator trays
Dehydrate at 105 degrees for eight hours (or in the oven for half the time)

(I learned that you can turn the dehydrator up to say 125 degrees for about an hour then turn down to 115 or 105 degrees and the food will still be considered raw.) I hope you will ignore my silly tale and give these zucchini chips a try. They were a nice change from regular chips. Next time I would like to try different spices as opposed to a sprinkling of salt.
*Just be careful when using any sharp devices especially mandolins or other vegetable slicers.

7 Comments

  1. omg! Hope you heal up okay! The chips look awesome but I would change that one line in the recipe to "Slice zucchini using plastic KFC knife"!

  2. OUCH! I would have passed out for sure. If I cut myself I immediately just lie down with my hand in the air for awhile until I feel ok.

    I was looking for you on the trails on Sunday morning when I was out!! I expected you to be out there.

    1. Ahh on Sunday I ran with my friend Laura around the Lancaster area. Hope you had a good run. It was a nice weekend for running! Yeah slicing my fingers was not fun 🙂

  3. I have a dehydrator and I love salt and vinegar potatoes. I’ll give these a try and let you know.

    1. I made them and they were good. I want to cut down on sodium so I used just a little salt and added in some ground black pepper and a little cayenne. It worked well.

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