In The Garden

Why Drying is Effective To continue our series on Preserving the harvest let explore using a dehydrator. Drying foods is one of the oldest methods of food preservation dating back literally thousands of years.  Foods like grains and beans have long been a staple food for humankind dried to last not just one season but over many seasons.  Fruits, vegetables and meats can be preserved as well.  We found a few surprises when we started experimenting with a dehydrator; one of those surprises was dried cantaloupe.  The dried cantaloupe pieces delicious, chewy, exotic flavor and it actually didn’t take that long to dehydrate. My wife loves dried cantaloupe with cashews.  Another surprise was Strawberry-Rhubarb fruit leather.  We can’t make enough of it for the kids and we are always passing it to friends too.  It is simple and easy to make, we use 12 Rhubarb spears to make a batch so it is a great way to store, long term, a large amount of Rhubarb.  Drying Tips We found out that you can store 20 standard sized tom