Tuesday 3 November 2009

Oh food dehydrator of joy!

I bought this with the last of my birthday money, I've wanted one for sooo long, and next year when I have my own garden (my friend's contract on her flat runs out in 5 months and then were going to rent somewhere together with room for a veggie patch! Excited!) I have plans to grow all sorts of things and then dry them to eat them when they're out of season, to reduce the amount of imported (ie. with a huuuuge carbon footprint) foods I buy/eat.

If you ever read the Brambly Hedge books when you were little, I'm aiming to have a 'store stump'!
photo from here

I like to name my appliances, so this is Daphne the Dryer! She also came with a free LED torch (if I was being truley eco-friendly I would have declined the free gift as I don't really need it, but I only thought of that after I placed my order) Anyway, the LED torch came in very useful for shining through the holes at the top during 'is it drying, is it drying? is it drying yet?' moments!
After about 8 hours I ended up with this...

This is about 8 apples!

6 comments:

  1. Wonderful! I did a post about dried fruit last month; it's amazing to see how much that food shrinks isn't it!

    Bananas are still DD's favourite! COoking apples are really nice because they still have a bit of a 'bite' rather than being too sweet.

    I'm so glad you treated yourself to one of these :)

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  2. Hi Mrs Green,

    I saw your post...it was part of my 'see...EVERYONE's dehydrating food, you neeeeeeed one!' argument with myself to buy one! I'm still very much enjoying shrinking everything in sight - not too keen on bananas, but we have some damsons that are going in next!

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    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Priscila, Thanks for stopping by :)
    I'll be sure to check out your blog too :D

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  5. Hey! Daphne looks a bit like our dryer! :)

    Well, I still prefer the apples dried traditionally on a farm wood furnace or - the modern version - on nets put on our radiators!

    Not the apple season this year here in Slovenia, not many plums/damsons either, so do enjoy yours!!

    We haven't tried bananas yet, only the shop-biought ones and I didn't like them too much. Pears are awesome and so sweet, maybe depends on the sort too!

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  6. Hi Layla :)
    A farm furnace would be awesome i think, but sadly I don't have a farm, Id o have radiators but I'd never thought of that - we don't have the heating on that much so I think it would take weeks to dry anything on them though!

    I hadn't thought of drying pears - I'll have to see if anyone I know has a pear treee!

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