DEHYDRATING: Brown Sugar Cinnamon Apple Chips

Apple Chips have become quite popular among snackers looking for NON-GMO/organic food products. However, they can be quite pricey! Good news is, they are extremely simple to make at home!

INGREDIENTS:

3 lb Bag Apples*
8 c. Water
1 tsp. Lemon Juice
2 c. Brown Sugar
1 tsp. Cinnamon

Combine water, lemon juice, sugar and cinnamon in a large mixing bowl. Stir til brown sugar begins to dissolve. The lemon juice will prevent browning.

Slice and core apples**. As you slice the apples, soak them in your brown sugar solution for appx. 5 minutes before loading them onto your dehydrator trays. If you wish, you may sprinkle additional cinnamon over the trays before dehydrating for a stronger flavor.

Dehydrate apples on 135 degrees for 6-8 hours, depending on dehydrator wattage. Store chips in a ziplock bag for easy snacking, or store long term in mason jars in a cool, dark, dry place with an oxygen absorber in each jar. One batch will make about 1/3 gallon baggie full.

*We prefer Granny Smith, but any apple variety will do! Red Delicious pictured above.

**We use an automatic Apple Peeler, Corer, Slicer. Works EXTREMELY well for large batch processing. Be sure to leave skins intact.

DEHYDRATING: Celery

About a month ago, I took advantage of a 10/$10 sale on celery. I found the pic on my phone and realized I'd forgotten to post the instructions for dehydration! It really couldn't get any easier, no blanching or other special preparation!

No blanching is required, but be sure to thoroughly rinse each rib. You'll then slice the celery. Nice thin, uniform thickness slices work best, about 1/8" or so.  (I use a food processor with a slicing blade to prepare the celery.)

Once you have a bowl full of thin slices, spread them out on your dehydrator trays in a single layer. You'll want to use screens or fruit roll inserts, a little overlapping of slices is OK. There is no need to meticulously arrange each individual slice!

Process the celery at 135 degrees for about 6-8 hours, depending on the wattage of your dehydrator. You may wish to rearrange slices about halfway through processing time to ensure even drying.The finished product will be crisp, and easy to crush, and slightly brighter green than the fresh celery.

Store your dehydrated celery in a clean glass jar with an airtight lid in a dark, cool, dry place. Add an oxygen absorber for long term storage. 2 bags of celery will fill a pint sized jar.

Dehydrated celery is especially convenient for throwing in homemade soups, and embellishing box mix stuffing (along with dehydrated mushrooms!). It's also important to have for homemade dry mixes.

Duckies!

Saturday afternoon, after our 4H meeting, we stopped off at Tractor Supply... and picked up 2 more residents, Pekin Ducks!

This is our first time raising ducklings. They are quite a bit messier than the chickens, they love to slop around their water! They're still pretty shy, but we're working on that. In a few days or so, we'll be able to let them go for a little swim in the bathroom sink. Ducks are sold "straight run" meaning we do not know if they are male or female just yet. . Regardless, I want to name them Duckie and Andie after the characters in Pretty in Pink! 

It's a good thing we bought our chicks when we did, they were already sold out of the Ameraucanas and Jersey Giants at Family Home and Farm. Here's a short clip of everyone this afternoon. The chicks are getting wings already! Duckies are getting a few little tail tufts: