Recap of dehydrator workshop

We were excited to have our first free workshop of the year earlier this week!

Since our original facilitator had some things come up and couldn't be there, I was the facilitator for the event. I used local Goodland apples for all of the fruit recipes.

On Monday, ten Fruit Share volunteers gathered together at the Robert A. Steen Community Centre to learn about how to preserve fruit through drying it.

After picking dozens of apples, it's nice to know all of the different things one can do with that fruit!

Along with a demo, volunteers sampled a variety of different dehydrator treats.

Among the samples were four kinds of fruit leather, two kinds of dried apples, 1 kind of "grassy" vegetable crackers, 2 kinds of zucchini chips, 1 kind of cookie and 1 kind of energy bar.

The samples were made in two different dehydrators: my own ancient Mr. Coffee dehydrator, as well as Fruit Share’s beautiful brand new Excalibur dehydrator (which was also about three times the size of the Mr. Coffee brand :)).

The Mr. Coffee brand isn't much bigger than a 12-cup coffee maker...
...whereas the Excalibur brand is much bigger than an already-large microwave!

We had a great deal of fun and are looking forward to upcoming workshops. Dehydrator recipes for the fruit you pick will be featured here on the blog over the next week or so. Please share with us any great dehydrator recipes you have, too!