Fun for all ages

For everyone that has read last weeks "Food- shrink it then expand it" you will know whats happening when I say I bought my own piece of medieval information extractor.  And I even got the whole family to help out.

Its a typical spring saturday afternoon in Melbourne.  Dark grey clouds covering the skyline and it only will rain if you open the front door to leave the house.  If you stay in side for long enough the sun will even come out, of course only until you put your shoes on and reach for the door.  At this stage it will start raining again.

We decided to use our new $19.95 apple corer, peeler & slicer.

I won't say where I bought it because the saleswoman didn't actually know its functions.  It describes 2 of them on the box!

As you can see we cored, peeled and sliced 5 apples into equally thin slices.  It is important to have them equal so that the dehydration process in consistent through out the entire batch of food, I wouldn't want to get sick from eating the thicker piece that didn't dry out fully.

We also coated the apples in lemon juice, freshly squeezed.  It's important to use fresh fruit in dehydration as it keeps the flavours crisp and enjoyable.  After allowing the apple slices to soak in 1 cup of Lemon juice to 4 cups of room temperate water we rinsed them through a strainer and used towels to absorb any surface moisture left on the apples.

As 5 apples only made 2.5 trays of fruit to dry out we also took to the pineapple with the carving knife and soon had all 5 trays ready to dry.  Again, 135 degrees is the recommended temperature for these 2 fruits.  Apples in our area of the world ( humidity levels change the time required for dehydration) are about 14 hrs to dry where as the pineapples will need to hang in there for another 2 hours longer.

As is evident above, the drying process significantly reduces the size and weight of the fruit.  These will now form part of my trail mix blend for next months short training sections in which I plan to take some newly purchased gear for a test run.

What have I learned today.  Kids love knives! We all love machines that do 3 jobs in one and no matter what age you are too much fruit, especially tropical fruits like pineapple, will give you an upset tummy....... and mouth ulcers.