Toys in the Kitchen

Here's the unit itself.

Yes, I've been playing in the kitchen yet again!

A couple of years ago, I bought a cheapo dehydrator.  It's from a reputable company, Nesco/American Harvest, but it is the lowest priced one they made at the time (around $25.00).  I never got around to trying it out until a few weeks ago.  I'd never used a dehydrator before, so I wasn't sure what to expect.   Some friends from my Boy Scout days dehydrate their own backpacking food, and I was intrigued.

Well, I screwed up my courage, brought it into the kitchen and studied the instructions.  I figured I'd start with something easy and straightforward - apples!  Simple enough.  I cored and peeled the apples (Galas are my all-around favorite), sliced them with my mandolin into a bowl of lemon juice and water, arranged them on the racks, and plugged the dehydrator in.  It took a good twelve hours.

The end product.

I was going for a crispy apple-chip-type thing - SUCCESS!   The problem is, I like them so much, they're almost gone!  I'll just have to make some more, I guess - darn!  Ha!

Now that Christmas is almost here, I'm in a cookie-baking mood.  So out came the chocolate chips, peanut butter, and oatmeal.  But instead of the typical oatmeal raisin cookies, I want to make oatmeal "craisin" cookies.  I was about to put Craisins(TM) on the grocery list when it occurred to me that there was a boatload of cranberries left from Thanksgiving, just languishing in their bag in the fridge.  Hmmmmm...  The dehydrator manual does indeed have instructions for drying cranberries - YAY! 

The pretreatment for cranberries is to dip them in boiling water until their skins split.  Well, that sounds pretty easy.   I was in for a surprise, though.  I got the water boiling and dumped in the first bunch of sorted cranberries. 

Here they are - homemade "craisins!"

Well!

In about thirty seconds, it sounded like I was fixing popcorn!  When a cranberry's skin splits, it happens suddenly, and with a loud POP.  The first couple made me jump!  HA!  After the popping slowed down (just like with popcorn!), I poured everything into a colander to drain and started another pan of water.  I spread the berries on the dehydrator racks.  This was messier than the apples because when the berries split, they spilled their guts a little ("All right, youse guys, talk!").  I filled all the racks and plugged in The Machine.  They took longer than the apples, but they look pretty official to me.  Next - cookies!