Strawberry Picking, Eatwell Farm, Dehydrated Strawberries

We belong to Eatwell's CSA and we were pretty excited to receive info on Eatwell's Strawberry Days! My good friends Hannah, Isy & Emma joined Nichole & I for a day of strawberry picking in the sun. Eatwell has two large strawberry crops, one was smaller strawberries from last year's crop and the other was larger, brighter strawberries from this year's crop. We nearly filled our baskets on the new strawberries before walking across the field to the small strawberries where we quickly discovered that the small strawberries from the previous year were much sweeter and juicer! Almost as though the strawberry flavor was more concentrated in the smaller berry, so we double stocked up! We froze some, made some strawberries pies, and dehydrated a bunch which were delicious!

Isy

 Nichole

 2 legged strawberry

Isy & Emma

 A nice poem about friendship at a thrift store in downtown Petaluma:

 It says: "Friendship is the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with the person having neither to weigh thought nor measure words, but pouring all right out just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful friendly hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping and with a breath of comfort, blow the rest away"

 With all the strawberries we froze some, made some mini strawberry mint pies (above) and dehydrated a whole of strawberries (below).

 Dehydrated Strawberries
Slice the strawberries as evenly as you can, and place on the dehydrator. Let it be for 6-8 hours at 135 degrees. Store them in an airtight container and try to not eat them all at once. enjoy as you wish!

Go pick your berries with your friends and be fearless...

Dehydrator Diaries ~ Apple Rings!

I recently bought a Nesco home dehydrator. It arrived, I was excited, and then it sat in its box next to our washing machine for a little over a month. I was beginning to think it was an impulse buy that would never be used. Then one day my roommate, Nichole, came home with a box full of green apples from a farm. There were so many that it seemed like little apple elves were coming in the night and replenishing the box. Nichole made a whole feast for her friends centered around the apple, she froze them, made some into apple butter and then we pulled out the dehydrator. This is the first of many Dehydrator Diaries:

We've been experimenting with different thickness of apples slices for dehydration and Nichole prefers thinly sliced apples that dehydrate into chips and I prefer thicker slices that dehydrate into rings.

Apples Rings & Chips


Ingredients:
For rings: Slice apples into 1/4" - 1/2" thick pieces
For chips: Slice apples into paper thin pieces

Directions:
1. Place apple slices evenly on dehydrator trays.

2. Turn temperature to 145 degrees Farenheit
3. Dry apple rings for 6-9 hours

Enjoy!