Dehydration Experiment I - Before

The winter rains have started here in Oregon, so there's really no chance of our figs drying on the tree. I looked though some online recipes yesterday for fig jam and preserves, but didn't think canning was the best option.

Sami and I had wondered if we should try a food dehydrator. They tend to be kind of expensive though, and some of them use a lot of energy.

I didn't really expect to find anything on craigslist, but I was curious and Fridays are slow days in the library. I typed "dehydrator" in the search button and a few options came up. One lady in Hillsboro (near where Sami works) was selling one for 15$. We decided that was an OK price for an experiment and Sami picked it up on his way from work.

I looked inside the thing to figure out the model number and see if I could find any instructions or advice on the pros and cons of this particular dehydrator. Apparently ours is a Ronco (as seen on TV infomercials). I found a mix of good and bad reviews on Amazon.

So, this morning I got up and picked some figs, grapes and tomatoes for our first test run. There are two trays of grapes, two trays of figs and 1 of tomatoes. I started the dehydrator at 9:30 AM. According to reviews it may take 24-48 hours till things are completely dehydrated. We'll see. I'll post the results later this weekend.

Time to Start Dehydrating Again

Cherries and Strawberries from our Garden

We have more fruit than we can eat right now. I've already got some rhubarb in the fridge ready to make a pie, so I thought I'd dig out the dehydrator we got last year and try it out on some of the extra fruit.

At the end of the season last year, I bought a cherry pitter. Surprisingly I'd never used one before. It's a pretty neat little tool.

Dehydration Experiment 2

It's the end of the season for our grapes. We figured we'd better pick them and dry them (after eating some of course) before they started rotting on the vine.

There were too many to fit in the dehydrator that we used for the previous experiment so I put a few grapes on a tray on top of the pellet stove to see if they'd dry up there.

Sami saw them and decided to make it a serious experiment. He took the broiler tray and a sort of screen type thing that you use to cover the frying pan to keep the oil from popping out and put grapes on those as well. This is them after about 1 hour. It's hard to tell if they're actually drying or cooking. We did rotate the trays just now.

BTW, we're using the pellet stove today because for some reason the heat pump stopped working during the night last night. The installation guys are coming to work on it in the next hour or so.

It's Plum Season!

Strawberries and Plums from our yard.

We have day neutral strawberry plants that produce continuously from June to frost. They are excellent and surprisingly easy to grow.

The plums are italian prune plums. Sami picked about 5 gallons off the small tree in our front yard and estimates that there are still about 3 gallons left.

Plum puree (for the baby)

I filled up all five trays of the dehydrator with halved plums.

After that we still had a lot more than we can eat fresh so I decided to cook some up for baby food (yes, I know it's quite a while before the baby can eat it). Anyway, the results were amazing, and I'd happily eat them all by myself.

Strawberry Crisp

We first made this recipe last weekend. It was so good we decided we had to have it again.

I changed the original recipe by doubling the ingredients for the crisp topping and baking at a higher temperature (375F )