I love to work in the small garden we have and with years, have accumulated nice fruit trees (in California). Now we end up these weeks with far too many and here are some ideas on how to make them save you !! * of course we make jams, well sterilized they will last you years ! we also found that our local organic coop will gladly trade these jams for other fruits, vegetables .. * we do freeze them, just washing, a bit of drying and plastic bags will keep them last for the year until the next harvest when out of the freezer, they go on top of a tart dough and in the oven in minutes ..... * now when the jam closet and the freezer are full and we cannot eat them anymore, and have distributed to all our friends and neighbor, we dry them in the oven we did not buy a dedicated oven, we dry for 15-20 hours at the lowest temperature (150F for us) we are still adjusting the conditions (tips on drying fruits most welcome !!), the last batch of apricots is using lemon to avoid oxidation while drying .. Enjoy and please share !!
Oh wow, this is a great thread. I just took out some books at the library on fermenting foods and dehydrating them in order to store them longer. We are also growing our own foods, not all yet...but some, and even though we have given a lot away...some still go to waste and them is something that I abhor: waste. So, I have been looking into dehydrators and I saw online (just by random googling and searching) that you can make your own solar dehydrator in order to dry your fruits. I did not know about the lemon etc...but I am learning. Right now, we are playing around with yogurt making and cheese making and it is so much fun...and it is amazing how much our food bill has dropped. So cool. Love what you are doing. Keep it up. I will paste some helpful sites when I find some...
I have a dryer that I bought years ago at a yard sale. Then I read the instructions. They said to get a bunch of different chemicals in order to do this. I almost gagged, and never did use the thing. I mean what chemicals do you use? It sounded like such a monstrous thing that I just set it aside and never used it.
I've been experimenting with building a solar oven. Once I get that perfected, I'll try to make a solar dehydrator. I got the garden in really late, so I may have tomatoes coming out of my ears when they get that far along. I am planning on adding fruit trees and bushes as my budget allows.
You don't have to follow those instructions. To dry fruits you don't need to add a lot of different chemicals. I have dried some fruits before. What I use is just plain sugar. I cut the fruits into strips, dip them in sugar solution, then put them to dry in the sun. You wouldn't consider sugar to be a lot of chemicals, would you?
