Friday, February 5, 2010

Dehydrator Love

After expressing my appreciation for the dehydrated bananas my friend Lacie gave me this week, she offered to let me borrow her dehydrator.  I didn't realize that meant she would be bringing it to me today!  I was caught quite unprepared for having this piece of equipment in my kitchen.   Luckily I knew right where to look for some inspiration.  Green and Crunchy makes some delicious looking fruit in her dehydrator and I broke down and bought some fruit to try my hand at dehydrating.  And by some fruit I mean that I used my newly aquired Costco card to buy enough food to feed an army. 












The apples are actually from the farmer's market which makes it just slightly worse that I went to two different places to get this haul.  Even worse than that is that this isn't all I bought.  I got a huge thing of pistachios that come in a reusable container, dates for potential dehydrated cookies and boca burgers that are specifically vegan!  I had no idea Costco carried these, or that they even existed. 

But back to the dehydrating.  So this is the beautiful dehydrator:

 
It runs a little loud which was sort of disappointing and  runs quite a bit warmer than I expected it to but I am excited to experiment.

Here is what is (un)cooking away in it as I speak type:

 
Plain sliced kiwis

 
 Cinnamon coated apples

 
 Half a tray of plain bananas and half a tray of my attempt to recreate Green and Crunchy's yummy flax/cocoa/agave bananas.  I coated the bananas in a little honey and then poured on the ground flax and cocoa powder.  They were a little sticky but I think they will turn out fantastic.

I didn't plan very well and started them at about 7pm which means I may be in for a long night.  Luckily the thought of dehydrated yumminess is enough to keep me going for quite a few more hours.  Look forward to more dehydrator posts as my current plan is to dehydrate all weekend.  Muahahaha.



3 comments:

  1. Those cocoa bananas look pretty good. I may have to give them a shot.

    I'm growing pretty fond of Costco myself. They have a surprising number of veg/vegan food items not to mention organic AND fair trade.

    I love my dehydrator, too! I made a ton of dried cranberries last fall as well as pear and apple fruit leather and dried pears.

    Nothing like a little reminder of summer in January!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sadly my venture into the world of dehydrating did not go as anticipated. I think the bananas would have turned out better if I had let them dehydrate a little longer.

    Someday I may try again. We will see!

    How do you do fruit leathers? Do you puree the fruit and then put it on some sort of sheet?

    ReplyDelete
  3. I tried it a couple of ways - turned into a puree in the Cuisinart and also simmered until they basically disintegrated.

    The pears that went through the Cuisinart turned out okay but the apples done the same way weren't as good, texture-wise. They didn't break down as much as the apples and the leather was coarser.

    There plastic trays available for the dehydrator. The plastic looks a little like that of a milk carton. They sit on top of the regular trays.

    ReplyDelete