Wednesday 17 September 2014

Dehydration...not always a bad thing.....

...at least not when you are applying it to your food!!

Let me start at the beginning. Last year a friend of mine signed a contract to carry out a job in London and asked me if I would like to borrow 'Excalibur' whilst she was away. Excalibur being a food dehydrator. Of course I jumped at the chance to have a play and enjoyed doing some experimenting. But as with all good things I received a text message and the playtime came to an end!!

So what was I to do??

Look into buying my own of course!!

There are lots of dehydrators out there, different makes, models and designs and, to be honest 'Excalibur' is probably the most expensive on the market but my friend had tried a few before going for that model and found that none were as good.

So this left me doing a little research and purchasing my own dehydrator.

UK Juicers

I got my dehydrator from!! UK Juicers as after much research nowhere could do me a better deal...including Ebay.

Postage was free standard next day delivery with a text giving me an hours delivery slot. The dehydrator was packaged securely.

Excalibur food dehydrator.

So this is the front of the dehydrator. The door totally removes in order for you to get the trays out. I went for the ten tray model.....

Excalibur food dehydrator.

....with the timer on it so that I didn't have to worry about putting it on whilst I was out. It is quite big and a little noisy so mine lives in the shed. This way it isn't take space up in the house and the noise doesn't bother us.

I also got.....

dehydrator parraflex sheets

some parraflex sheets too. These aren't necessary for drying dry foods but they are easier to use than cling film if you intend on making fruit leathers and such. I purchased 5 of these as I didn't feel I would need one for each shelf.

also included with the dehydrator was your usual users manual with some handy tips and a few recipes plus an extra book free of charge.

Excalibur, preserve it naturally, complete dehydration food guide.

This is a great book with lots of recipe ideas and tips to help you make the best out of your dehydrator that usually retails at £18.95 so I was very happy to get it free of charge!!

So there we have it...my latest purchase in order to help me to make the most of the produce I grow and also create some other things whilst I'm at it.

My total purchase cost was £328. So certainly not cheap but after getting the chance to 'try before I buy' I know this is a good investment for me!!

I will let you know in time some of the things I try out.

Still not totally up on everything but hoping to get caught up with some of my favourite blogs over the next few days and also hoping it won't be another week before I get another post up!!
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Wednesday 10 September 2014

I have a plan.......

Organization!!!

Sorry that's as good as it gets. This year I have been so bad at everything and organising to get things done has been none existent. Now don't get me wrong I have got plenty done...just not the right stuff at the right time and this had led to some disasters regarding planting, harvesting and making things.

I guess it has kind of been a busy year and I have helped others out quite a bit and then with committee commitments as well I think I have let it all get away form me. I haven't had chance to catch up with my favourite blogs let alone write posts of my own but things are going to change. I need to get back that me time where I kick back in front of the computer and enjoying both my reading and writing and I am going to worry less about what others may think of my haphazard ways.

This isn't sounding very organised so far is it?? Oh well...I guess I will sort something out...I think the main thing at the minute is just to take one day time and not let things get on top of me and I will catch up eventually.

Many things have happened over the past few weeks (or is it months?? I could check but that might be depressing so I won't even bother!!) We had an  event in the village which was nice and I had a little stall selling my honey...yes that's right I got some of my own honey which I will tell you about later in the week.

I tackled my jungle of a garden...it was really bad...but it is again now so I need to get back on it again.

We had the annual veg and flower show. It went well but due to my bad planning this year I didn't have much to enter though I did get a second prize for my Blackcurrant jelly.

I went to a wedding.

I did tidy the allotment...you wouldn't know it to look at it now though.

Oh and I have had plenty of trials and tribulations with the bees.

These will all be posts to come and I am hoping to get the time over the next few weeks to write plenty on short instalments so as not to bore you all to death and include plenty of photos...after all photos are so much nicer to look at than reams of writing on a page.

With that in mine I will let you all go now...after all my thoughts are kind of scatter brained and I am really going nowhere so I will give you a nice random picture to look at now and my next post will be a lot more coherent in my next post and have some sort of reason to it. Well at least I hope it will!!

Happy Wednesday to you all!!!

Grantham town to Barrowby Vilage.
This is the walk from our local town heading towards
our village. I love the fact that you get the greenery
before you reach the village.It's a welcome sight
after leaving the built up areas.
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