all this idea of dried fruit is making my stomach growl . so keep us posted Matt on how you make out. Lee
\On Fri, Jul 09, 2010 at 12:42:06PM -1000, Betsy Whitney, Dolphin Press wrote: > Aloha Matt, > My friend made trays with extruded aluminum just > like some folks use to make window screens. Then > she could just take them out in the yard and squirt them off with the hose. > She made a tent out of screen that was open on > the bottom so it could just be set over the whole > stack of trays. She used some sort of round metal > sticks to separate the stacked trays. I remember > that she had some sort of round stops on the > separation sticks, and the frames of the trays > had wholes for the separating sticks to fit into. > I'll try to reach her via email. She lives in > California now, but she used to dry apples, > pineapple, bananas, papaya, mango, parsley, and basil when she lived here. > Betsy > At 11:37 AM 7/9/2010, you wrote: > > > > > >Hi ya folks. Lately I've gotten into drying > >apples and cooking pies and stuff out of them. > >Mainly, I started out buying them already done > >from a Mennonite owned store. I quickly got > >addicted to them as snack food, then found > >recipes for making pies and breads out of them. > >I looked up instructions on drying your own. > >They suggested oven on the lowest setting, or in a car on a hot day. > >The oven works, but your spouse complains about > >the oven always being busy, and you can only get > >so many in there at 1 time. And it does take at least 6 hours the way I did > >it. > >My wife suggested I not buy a dehydrator, > >because as it is I am a gadget buyer. And ya > >start running out of space to live after so long. > >Just now I am considering building a wooden > >frame which would hold cookie sheets stacked but > >spaced from one another 1 on top of the other, > >and buying screen to cover the outside to keep > >some bugs out, and putting an old fan I have out > >in storage in one end of it. My idea lacks the > >heat element factor, but I live in east tx, and > >am figuring, I could set it up in the attic, or > >out in a back room where there is no air > >conditioning. I could go to the trouble of > >forming my own screen trays, if I wanted to > >build them, but then cleaning something like > >that with a wood frame? I don't think that would > >last long. Anyone ever done this stuff, say, to make jerky or whatever? > >just curious. > > > >Matt > > > >[Non-text portions of this message have been removed] > > > > > -- In vino veritas. [In wine there is truth.] -- Pliny