Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Foodie Friday

Today's food focus is oh-so-yummy black bean dip!

If you like salsa, this is a great way to add some substance to chips and dip or even a meal.  I've spread some on a tortilla with cheese, chicken/beef, and sour cream, and it was yummy!  Plus, it's fat free, and the beans provide additional protein and fiber.  I first discovered it at our local grocery store (Harris Teeter), but I'm sure many other places carry such a dip, and it wouldn't be difficult to make it yourself.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Foodie Friday

For those of you who read my blog a few weeks ago about my first attempt at dehydrating, here's a little update. I've ALWAYS wanted to dehydrate watermelon...I mean, for years I've talked about this. Watermelon is easily my favorite fruit, and pretty much embodies for me the wonder of summer. :) So, I broke out the dehydrator once again and this time tried dehydrating a few different fruits, including...WATERMELON! I sliced up nearly a pound of strawberries, about 6 bananas, and the rest of our watermelon leftovers into 1/8-1/4" pieces, resulting in 2 trays of bananas, 1 tray of strawberries, and 2 trays of watermelon. For some fruits that tend to brown, you can pretreat with lemon juice (I'd consider it) or sulfite (no thanks), but I decided to just see what happened with the bananas.

I never really know for how long to let these dry, because the suggested range of time varies so greatly. I did, however, put the watermelon on the bottom, closest to the fan. For the first few hours of drying, our kitchen smelled like a yummy fruit cocktail! After ~12 hours, all the fruit still felt a bit gummy, and I think I ended up letting them go for about 18 hours total. None of the fruit ever got "crunchy," which is what I was expecting, but maybe I got impatient with the drying process.

The bananas, well...tasted like bananas! They didn't taste quite like the banana chips you may have had from the store because (1) they weren't fried and therefore weren't crispy, though they may have gotten more crispy if I'd have left them in longer, and (2) they weren't coated with honey or sugar before drying them, which would add sweetness. It might actually be just as easy (or easier!) to make banana chips in the oven, so I may try that next time.

The strawberries tasted a lot like the dehydrated strawberries you might have had in cereal, and the watermelon....well, it was interesting. It certainly paled in comparison to fresh watermelon, but it wasn't bad, either. It didn't taste quite like the delicious candy that I'd read about a couple of places online, but I am considering trying it again with more of a leather approach: blend up the watermelon, drain off the liquid (I'll probably drink it...yes, I love watermelon THAT much!), maybe add some applesauce (apparently leathers need pectin, and applesauce helps with that), and then pour the puree into the trays to dehydrate. If you get the hankering to dehydrate watermelon chunks, I'd definitely recommend larger strips than the little square pieces I used...not thicker, just longer.

Overall, I found that a LOT of fresh fruit makes a LITTLE dehydrated fruit. This is the end product of nearly a pound of strawberries, about 6 bananas, and a "good bit" of watermelon, and yes, those are small sandwich ziplock bags:

So, if you're looking for a way to preserve your garden's harvest or summer's great deals on fruit and vegetables, this may be a good way, especially if you are planning on using the fruits/veggies later in the year for cooking purposes. However, you'd have to perfect the drying process to make sure you've removed all the moisture, or else your dehydrated food will spoil. I also read somewhere that you should put the finished product in the freezer for a day or so to make sure all the bacteria are killed, so, whether that works or not, I tried it. It certainly made things a bit more crunchy, which gives me more reason to think that my batch of fruit was not completely dehydrated (since none of it was crunchy when it wasn't frozen).

My "take home" from this experience is that fruit leathers are the way to go. The prep work is a good bit less time consuming, since there's little/no slicing involved, and the fruit leather actually tasted better to me. Happy drying!

Wordless Wednesday