Shopping Online – A New Experience
An interesting feature of Covid times has been the online shopping. I know a couple of busy folks that use services like Instacart to save time. Since I have all the time in the world and am picky about my fruits and vegetables, I’ve never resorted to online shopping for fresh produce. I love walking the fresh produce aisles to touch, to smell and sometimes taste the freebies that are displayed in and around the grocery store. Based on what my mood dictates and what looks absolutely fresh, I pick up greens, and fresh produce for the following week.
With the current reluctance to step inside a store, as we are trying to figure out the best way to buy organic produce from various stores (home delivery, curbside pickup, farmer’s market pickup etc.), we are also ending up with way more produce than what we actually need.
One of the recent online orders was organic apples from Costco. For those that don’t know of these large stores, these are membership-based mega stores where items are available in large quantities. They typically tend to cater to a family of 4 or 6 than for a family of 2, like we are. However, I do love purchasing several organic produce from Costco. They have great frozen wild blueberries, frozen sweet cherries and of courses, their wonderfully large avocados, which I use to make Guacamole every week. I also love the top shelf quality of their toilet paper (ha! didn’t not hoard them).
Swimming in Apples!
During one of these curbside pickup forays, we landed up with several pounds of deliciously sweet organic apples. However, there’s only so many apples one can eat, right? I added some to our afternoon salads. Some went into my weekend smoothies. I topped up my Chia Seed Pudding with these fresh lovelies. We sliced up a couple of apples, added a generous smidgen of almond and cashew butter and munched on them. And there were more left! This would be the last time we’d be purchasing such a huge quantity of apples!
Food Wastage – A Real Crime
Indeed it is, although we don’t think about it that way. Food wastage – right from the farm, all the way to the warehouses, to the grocery stores and wastage in our own homes. Think of the amount of food that’s thrown out from the time fresh produce is picked to the time you consume (or don’t consume) it. We hanker for the perfect looking produce, so most disfigured produce gets thrown out even before it leaves the farms.
This is when I saw the dehydrator lying in my pantry and got this idea to preserve my apples. A gift from our nephew, we’ve used it a few times to dehydrate fresh organic fruit to take on our world travels. Now that travel was not going to happen in the foreseeable future, I had tucked away the dehydrator, and forgotten all about it.
Why Homemade?
I’ve seen bags of dehydrated fruit in grocery stores, and most of the time, they have preservatives like sulphur dioxide and sodium metabisulphite in them. Really unnecessary additives, which you won’t need to ingest if making this at home. Another reason why homemade is preferred is that you can make smaller quantities and consume them when fresh. Think of all the plastic bags that house more air than dehydrated fruit! Not to mention how expensive store-bought dehydrated fruit are.
Dehydration is a very simple process. You slice your fruit, place it in trays, turn on the dehydrator and turn it off after a few hours. However, you must have a dehydrator in your possession. I am not sure if you can dehydrate your apples in the oven. The heat may be just too much, so you’d have to make sure you are not burning the slices.
Where Can I Use Dehydrated Apples?
- Travel: When I travel, I always have a bag of dehydrated fruit and another bag of my homemade trail mix as my constant travel companions
- Snack: Simply snack on these if you have no fresh fruit at hand. Or chop into small pieces and mix it up with the Fruity Nutty Trail Mix
- Salads: Cut into smaller pieces and add to Kale Pear Turnip Goat Cheese Salad or Colorfully Crunchy Strawberry Grape Kale Salad
- Breakfast: Sprinkle small pieces over your home made Whole Grain Hot Cereal
- Dessert: Use it to top up your Chia Seed Pudding
If you love healthy snacks as much as I do, check out
- Balsamic Caprese
- Pesarattu Kura
- Uppudupindi
- Vegetable Uthapam
- Creamy Hummus
- Baba Ghanoush
- Zesty Carrot Garbanzo Usli
- Spiced Cauliflower Sweet Potato Bake
- Baked Raw Banana Nuggets
- Vegan Walnut-Goji Berry Fudge
- Cabbage Wada: Savory Cabbage Lentil Bites
- Fruity Nutty Trail Mix
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Dehydrated Apples
Ingredients
- 10 Apples
Instructions
- Wash and dry the apples. Core the apples using an apple corer. Remember to compost the waste!Cut the apples into 1" thick pieces. The thicker the slices, the longer it takes to dehydrate them. But don't slice them thinner than 1".
- Arrange the pieces on the dehydrator racks in a single layer
- Turn on the dehydrator and allow the apples to dehydrate for about 8 hours. After 6 hours, check the consistency every couple of hours. Dehydrate for an addition 2 hours if you like your apples to be dry.
- When the apples have reached your desired level of dryness, turn off the dehydrator and store the dehydrated apples in an airtight box. You can leave this in your pantry for 3-4 weeks. Else refrigerate them. Use as a snack during travel, or to pack for your kids' lunches, as a topping on cereal when you have no fresh fruit on hand, or just eat it as a mid-day snack.
