The dehydrator has been sitting on the worktop, looking at me, for some time now.
I keep meaning to use it, but I decided that setting it running overnight was the best course of action, and I've ended up being too busy, or too tired, or whatever, every evening so far.
Yesterday I decided to bite the bullet.
I used a food processor to slice a nectarine. I wasn't paying attention to the food processor blade setting, and I ended up with wafer thin slices. I shrugged. I didn't have any more nectarines, the dryer was going on whatever, so I put them on the drying tray. They fell apart as I picked them up, so I ended up putting out one tray full - which with wafer thin slices isn't much - and I ate the rest.
Then I chopped a green chilli. And I tried to use the food processor to cut some celery. That didn't go well, and I distributed the remains all over another tray.
Then a pear - which wasn't too bad as I corrected the slice size. And another pear which I cut into segments.
And then a banana. I used my latest cutting aid, a metal butter cutter from the US, which worked well. It was only hindered by the fact that the bananas were waaaaaaaaay past the stage where they are good for drying. The beautifully evenly sliced bananas squished under my fingers as I tried to lay them out.
Finally, I found some tomatoes. Not cherry ones, but normal ones. I halved and then quarted them, roughly scraped out the seeds, and put them on a sheet.
And I put it on and left it.
This morning,the chilli slices had dried well.
I left them in the dehydrator, so they've kind of absorbed moisture from the air now.
I had chewy but rather tasty banana slices (I'm going to put them in lemon juice next time, maybe that will help with the cripsness). I tried to remove the nectarines, but they shattered. I rescued the pieces and tried them. The pears were reasonably successful. A bit chewy, but reasonably well flavoured. I don't really like pears, but they were much more palateable this way.
During the course of the day I managed to eat them everything apart from the chillis and the celery.
This happened last year when I made apple leather.
I've decided it's best not to think of the dehydrator as a way of preserving food.
No. It's better to acknowledge that it is a way of making me heathy(ish) eat-that-day snacks.
