Pure Food: Dehydrating

Some days I don't drink enough water and I feel dehydrated. No silly, that's not what this post is about! It's about playing with my friend Kerry's dehydrator, and fruit of course! I know I said I wasn't going to go on about cherries anymore but I still had some in the fridge and I had to do something before they went bad. I even made more pop tarts. My neighbor and friend Kerry mentioned that she had a dehydrator in her pantry. I asked her if I could play with it and she so nicely said yes. I have had a dehydrator on my wish list of some time now, at least 2 years. I've researched them and forgot and researched them and forgot and the cycle goes on.

Fast forward to yesterday and I got the dehydrator from my friend and started to use it. I got to work pitting the rest of the cherries. After I pitted the cherries I pureed some raspberries, that I picked, strawberries that I bought and cherries that I, well you know the answer to that. I also wanted to try my hand at fruit leather. I looked up how long to dehydrate for and the answers varied tremendously. One site even said 90-100 hours for dehydrating cherries!! That's a LONG time! Someone else's blog said 8 hours. So I figured I would wait until morning and see how long it took. That way they wouldn't finish in the night and then keep going until morning and I wouldn't wake to ashes. :/ That wouldn't be very tasty. Well I put the puree on the special mats and I think I will need to try my hand at leather another time. This batch didn't turn out well. Some of it did. I didn't make sure it was all even thickness. So some parts of the leather were too dry and others too moist. I couldn't peel half of it off and some was still mushy. I did get some and the strips that I did get off were tasty. In the future I will try it again so that I can get good at it. Maybe when I get my own machine? (I hope my husband is reading this although he already bought my birthday present. Maybe anniversary? hint hint) Did I mention I love him? A lot? :)

The berries before puree.

The fruit leather dehydrating. (I did get a picture of the actual leather but on my other camera. It's getting late, so they will have to wait.)

This morning I halved the pitted cherries and placed them skin side down on the trays. I turned on the machine and let it go and looked at the clock, 8:30 am. At around 5 pm was when I finally liked the texture of some of the cherries. Some where done and others needed more time. I took the ones that were done out and let the others keep going. I think they are finally all done, it's 9:00 at night now. So I'd say anywhere from 8-12 hours for all my cherries. (Some were fatter than others.) Now, I have not too many but some delicious dried sweet cherries. I am going to put these into my granola bars right away. If I have more left over I think we will just eat them as snacks. Maybe if I have my dehydrator by next cherry season, ahem!, I will be able to dehydrate a bunch more and then we will make them last and I will figure out the best way for us to store dried cherries. For now, I'll just gobble them up and I bet both kids and the husband will help. (I'll be out by tomorrow night!)