One of my hobbies that I enjoy most and my family gets to reap the rewards of is canning. It all started when a family friend showed us how to make pickles, they were so crisp, tasty and some were even spicy. Once we were settled in our own place I took a free intro class into canning at our local extension office and was hooked. I haven't done as much as I'd like to but one day I hope to can so much that the hubby has to build me a new room for all my treats. We were lucky enough to have someone give us a dehydrator a while back but we never did anything with it ourselves besides the one time we pulled it out for jerky. Just in the last few months I've seen pineapples for a whopping .99 cents what a deal. Being a canner when I see massive amounts of fruit or vegetables for cheap I wonder how I could preserve them. It's kind of like hoarding but the good kind, right? When I missed out on that good deal on pineapples I said to myself the next time they're that cheap you gotta do something with them.
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| Our Nesco Dehydrator |
Lo and behold I was browsing through our grocery store ad and they had .99 cent pineapples again so I jumped at the task of dehydrating them. However I had no clue what I was doing or how many to pick so I settled on four of the golden gems. Papa was goofing off and found a handy dandy tool for coring the pineapple placed right next to them, nice marketing Fred Meyer so into the basket it went. I referenced my newest Ball canning book for the thickness and size of pieces to cut the pineapple into, any chance I can look into that beauty I take it. I could have referenced the dehydrator manual but that thought didn't even cross my mind until afterwards.
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Checking out my Ball canning book
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Papa got the pleasure of flexing his muscles to core them while I cut and placed them on the trays. The tool we picked up leaves the core and shell behind all the while cutting the pineapple into rings. We let dehydrator be all day and at bedtime checked on it, the pineapple didn't look done even though we really had no idea, we went with our gut. So an alarm was set so we (Papa) could look in on it at about 2 am which is when he turned it off. They transformed as if by magic into sweet little chunks of deliciousness. I don't think the quart it made will last a week, I keep walking by and eating one then I have to go back for another.
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| Papa flexing while using awesome tool. |
We also found something else on sale, mangoes. Mangoes fresh are one of my favorite fruits and then I had them dried in the Costco nut and fruit bag and I couldn't stop eating them. I get so excited when I can make something at home for way less than store bought. Once again being my wild and crazy self I just bought 4, since they were 4/$5.00. This time I did look in my manual for instructions it stated to peel them which I didn't know was possible with a simple old vegetable peeler. Every time I've eaten them I just cut a chunk off and scoop out the mango from the peel. Who knew you could use a peeler and it would peel like a potato. The hard part of dealing with a mango is the pit I use a thin blade knife and try to run the blade long the curve of the pit to get the most from the fruit. I then cut it into chunks and onto the tray they went to dry out. They are quite tasty, next time I think I need to cut them thicker though.
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| The mangoes before the peeler. |
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| The mangoes after the peeler. |
The whole family has jumped on the dehydration train. On our last trip to the grocery store lil man pointed to the bananas and says we can dry those. I'm doing a good job at teaching him if he sees a large quantity of fruit that we preserve them. He's a great helper too, he loaded the trays once I cut the bananas. My plan this week is to make our own trail mix with the fruit we've dried. I love that this hobby has become a family activity.
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I had to borrow papa's measuring tape for cutting reference.
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| My best helper he does a great job!! |
I want to encourage those who are even in the least interested in preserving to give it a try. If you would have told my teenage self that I would be canning as an adult first thing I would have said is "what is canning?", but I love it and will explore more ways of doing it. It is such a rewarding hobby and not as hard as it seems from the outside. Dehydrating is especially easy and a good first step into the rabbit hole. If by chance you would like to try your hand at dehydrating we have provided a link to our dehydrator through amazon if you do buy anything it will help us to bring more content to our blog.
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