The Nesco Dehydrator arrived this week.

Two days ago I made my first batch of fruit and veggie slices. They came out of the dehydrator looking like miniature charms, incapable of having taste. But when I bit into them, I tasted the WHOLE fruit.  How can something so small and charm-like taste exactly like the fruit they came from?  The shrunken oranges, tomatoes, cucumbers, banana and apple slices could just as well have been mounted with a magnet and stuck to the refrigerator.

My new mandolin slicer and “no-cut gloves” arrived yesterday, in time for my second batch.  Now I sliced away with no worries of cutting myself.

I had read about blanching sweet potatoes. I decided to experiment, labeling each of my six dehydrator trays, 1 through 6, and labeling each half of each tray, 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B. I wrote down what was on each half-tray:

1A: sweet potatoes  (plain); 1B: (oil and salt)

2A:  sweet potatoes blanched  (plain); 2B: (oil and salt)

3A and 3B:  sweet potatoes blanched (oil and lemon pepper)

4A: bananas  (with cinnamon); 4B:  sweet potatoes blanched  (sliced wider, plain)

5A: beets  (plain); 5B:  (salt)

6A:  apples blanched  (cinnamon sugar);

6B:  apples not blanched (cinnamon sugar)

This morning at 6 o’clock, after 12 hours of drying, I sampled and bagged the above tray contents.  Guess what?  I like the un-blanched and un-oiled pieces better. The beet chips had little taste.  My favorite of the batch: The cinnamon-sugar-coated un-blanched apples.

I just loaded six more trays with kale, sliced apples, oranges and pineapple.  I can’t wait until this evening to munch away on some good stuff.  And the stuff I don’t like?  How cool it would look on my fridge.