DIY Fruit Leather

 Molly got a new issue of Food Network magazine this weekend.  In it was how to make your own fruit roll ups.  The kids decided that we NEEDED to do that!  We were headed to the farmer's market anyway so we grabbed some extra fruit while we were there.  I read through the Food Network recipe and realized that they used a lot of white sugar, not gonna' happen in my house.  The kids helped me pull out every book that might reference fruit leather and we sort of just did our own thing.  We had a pass/fail thing all at one time so we learned a lot in just one try. 
 We started with three pints of fresh raspberries rinsed off and put into a large pot.  Then we added about half a cup of raw honey, but we just eyeballed that.  Mush it up (this is the kids favorite part).  Cook the berry mush down until it starts to get sticky just like when you make jam. 
While it is cooking set your oven to 200 degrees and place parchment paper on some cookie sheets.  Lightly coat with oil or cooking spray (kinda important but not devastating if you forget).
Pour the sticky mess onto your covered cookie sheet in a nice even layer.  I found this bit tricky but if you have one of those off set frosting knives it is probably a lot easier. 
Bake for four hours and then start checking it as often as you think it needs it.  Like if it's super sticky forget about it for another hour or so. 
If you have two trays remember to check each one!!!  This is the mess that was left after my thinner tray burned it was a tragic mess.  Part way through I checked the bottoms of the sheets and then decided to flip over the leather for more even cooking.  That is were the oil would have been nice but it really wasn't horrible to get the parchment off just a little more time consuming. 
The slightly thicker tray was beautiful nice dark color texture was great everything.  I cut the leather into strips and Jeff wrapped them up in wax paper strips and twisted the ends like candy, very cute right?   
Jack said he loved the leather, Molly didn't like how tart it was.   Next we are going to try plums maybe that will be sweeter for her. 

Dried Apples

This past week we were gifted to grocery bags full of apples.  We got our dehydrator last summer and hadn't used it yet.  So we sliced up one bag of our apples and placed them in the dehydrator.  Just before bed Jeff played musical layers with them and put them in reverse order from were they started since the bottom ones were getting done much quicker than the top ones.  About 24 hours later the apples were done.  I"m not sure that we were the most efficient with how the vents were open but we don't have a manual and can't find one online (crazy right?) so we are winging this thing all the way!  What's in the jar is all that is left from what we started with mostly due to the kids eating them like candy, so much for stock piling supplies :)  Oh well at least they are going over well with everyone.

Jar Sorting

Wow time sure has flown here. I can't believe that July is gone already. The Fourth of July tomato has been giving us little red tomatoes every day and they are so sweet and delicious. Everything else is getting there. We look at the number of tomatoes on each plant and can't wait to get canning. The kids helped us count the jars, lids and rings this weekend so we knew what to buy more of. Those wide mouth pint jars were so great that those are on the list of 'can't have enough', there are tons of the quart jars just waiting for tomatoes. Life is good.