A few weekends ago, I bought a food dryer at a garage sale. We dabbled in food drying last year, drying apples after borrowing a dryer from a friend. This year will be my year to learn about preserving foods, so that we will have home grown food throughout the year.I saw that apricots were on sale at the grocery store, so I decided that this must mean it is apricot season. Using my new found localvore knowledge, I decided to seek out locally grown apricots instead of store bought. Since I live in an agricultural area, know for it's cherries,peaches and apples, I had no problem finding local apricots from a fruit stand. I was still about a week early for most of the fruit, but when I get a itch to do something, I know that I better do it now or it many never get done. I bought a half box.
My first attempts at drying this year were with dill and apricots. I noticed a number of voluntary dill plants in my garden and although I do not cook with dill more than a couple times a year, I thought this would be great place to start. I searched the web for ideas about how to dry the dill and finally decided to use all the parts of the plant, but the roots and the stalk. The leaves, the flowers and the seeds should all have a place in a future recipe. I broke the dill into manageable pieces, placed them on the racks to dry for a couple of hours.
In the meantime, I started preparing the apricots for the dryer. I learned that apricots should be sliced in half with the pits removed. After "popping" out the fruit (pushing the fruit inside out), they needed to be soaked in water and lemon juice for about 5 minutes. The fruit was now ready for the food dryer for about 12-18 hours at 135 degrees.
In my mind, drying dill and apricots together should not result in a mixture of flavors. This thought came from the picture I saw in my food dryer manual of many type so foods being dried on the same rack at the same time. The result of my dill and apricot experiment did give me slightly dill flavored apricots which I have to admit are not bad. I don't think anyone would consciously notice the subtle enhanced flavor, but who knows. Maybe I have stumbled onto something new.
I also decided to make my own fruit leather. My kids love the sugar rich versions they sell at the store, as well as the healthier alternative we call "sticky fruit". How hard could it be, right! My first batch of apricot fruit leather turned out pretty good. I did not have the special liner called for by the fruit dryer guide, so I cut out custom made parchment paper forms. These worked out surprisingly well. Once the fruit leather was dry, I cut it into pizza shaped pieces, paper and all. This I rolled up into homemade fruit roll-ups (minus all the sugar).
Now I am ready to begin drying plums from my backyard plum tree in the same fashion as I did the apricots. This is the first year I have actively harvested the plums from the trees, so I am not sure exactly when the fruit is best for picking. The plums we grow are yellow/ green in color with a hint of red when they are ready to eat. I have no idea what variety they are, but the are pretty tasty.
In the near future I plan on searching the web for plum recipes. I love baking, but my family, and waistline, can handle just so much dessert. With our raspberries and now plums, I feel like I need to be creative in how I can cook with these.
