The Accidental Fruit Dryer!

A couple of days ago, this little surprise arrived in the mail. Well, more that it arrived by delivery rather than the post box. I had read a post in the past weeks (I’m sorry, I can’t exactly remember whose blog it was) about a food dehydrator, and I was really curious about doing something similar as we eat a good deal of dried fruit in our house and it tends to be quite expensive to buy them from the fruit and nut shops. Also, it seemed like a good thing to do with fruit that was starting to get past prime eating stages, and would otherwise be thrown out.

Anyway, after chatting with the blog owner (again, apologies, I don’t remember who it was!) I had picked out a fruit dryer that wasn’t too expensive on Amazon, and then saved it to my wish list for later. This last week, we had to do an Amazon order for a few things (mostly replacement batteries and some sheet music, nothing exciting…), but it turns out that I hadn’t saved the fruit dryer to the “Wish List”, but instead, I had put it in the shopping basket! Ooops… or was it on purpose?

Anyway, seeing as it had arrived, I thought it would be a good idea to give it a spin! It’s actually a pretty simple device, with a heater and fan, and some racks to dry the fruit (or vegetables) on. There is only an ON/OFF switch (as it is only a cheapish model) and no timer, but that is something that can be easily fixed with some home automation smart plugs that I have lying around the house. Or even perhaps one of the old analog timer switches for when you are travelling and want your lights to turn on and off at pre-set times. It boils down to whether or not I want to be able to control the dryer from my bed…

The first thing that we were going to try and dry were the good old favourites, apple and grapes! Nothing too adventurous for the first attempt, just a quick run to see how it all worked. So, a few red apples that were going to need to be eaten very soon, and some green grapes that were hanging around in the fridge. Definitely loving the fact that we had thought to buy an apple corer a few years back, these things are great!

After coring, there was the touch experimentation with the skin on or off, and also with how to slice the apples.

After I did all the hard work, the kids were helping with laying out the slices onto the tray…. Although, I have to say that some of the apples and grapes were lost to corruption, and factory line inefficiencies.

However, enough of the apples and the halved grapes did make it onto the racks, and we had enough for 3 full racks for the first test run!

This time, I didn’t bother with the smart switch or even with timing the drying at all. We just turned it on, and went to bed.

As a result, the apples were a little bit on the crispy side of things! However, they were still pretty tasty! The grapes on the other hand were just perfect! So, now we have to look around for new things to stick in there, and I will set up the smart switch so that there will be an automatic timer to stop the dryer when the time comes.

All in all, this was quite a pleasant accidental purchase! My wife is a bit cranky about the fact that we don’t really have anywhere to store it easily, but I’m sure we can find a place. Now, I only have to “pretend” to accidentally order a homemade ice-cream maker….