Drying

When I was in high school I bought a dehydrator to make camp food for my backpacking and ren fair trips. Lo and behold, my mom and sister were able to find it in their basement and brought it out to me. It arrived none to soon, for I found the first "bad apple" in the 35# crate we purchased. Every apple got processed that day. I made a pie for Thanksgiving, dried two rounds of apples in the dehydrator, and used all of the peels and cores to make jelly. Now that's the way to do the jelly, by using the scraps instead of actually using whole apples. I had to re-process the jelly because it didn't set the first time, but it did end up working just fine.

I have mixed feelings about the dried apples. First of all, they take about 8 hours in my little dehydrator to get completely dry. Once they've been dried, they don't look to amount to much. However, they make a simply wonderful snack, and they haven't stuck around long enough to find out how well they might keep! The first batch dissapeared by the end of the next day. It is nice to be able to just grab a handful of dried slices, and I do that when I wouldn't have stopped to mess with washing and dealing with a juicy apple. The verdict? I don't know that it's the best preservation method, but it works, and I'll experiment with it more next year when the garden is in full bloom. I'd like to try making soup mixes with veggies and herbs!