Dehydrator!

If you know me, you will know how much I love fruit. I love baking with it, turning it into jam and chutney, eating it fresh, dreaming about it (this has been happening the last few days), and now I love dehydrating it. That's right folks, I finally splurged and bought myself a dehydrator for my birthday, and I love it. My birthday isn't until the end of the month, but having had it on layby for a while I couldn't go another month without having it in my life, especially because if I did it would be too late to dehydrate some of the fruit.

So, I have been experimenting. I made mango, and greengage fruit leather. I hadn't had fruit leather since I was a kid and had forgotten how great it tasted.  I also had a go a drying apricots, greengages, grapes and pears. All of which turned out quite well. I am also keen to dehydrate some vegetables, and herbs and spices in the next few months. 

Mango fruit leather before it went into the dehydrator.

I was blessed actually this summer with kilos of greengages from a friends tree. I didn't think I was going to taste any fresh greengages this year after my cousin sold her house, but thankfully this has not been the case. So last night Daniel and I stayed up stupidly late cutting greengages in half, as well as boiling, peeling and blending them together in order to make fruit leather.

I also had the opportunity to make some Greengage and Orange Jam which I have been adding into my porridge on a daily basis. I tried this first time last year and loved it, so I thought I would make it again.

This is what I did:

Greengage and Orange Jam
-2kgs of greengages
-2kgs of sugar
-juice and rind of 2 oranges
-juice and rind of a lemon.

After washing the greengages, I halved and pipped them and placed them in a large pot with the juice and rind of the oranges and lemon. I then let it heat up and continue to do so until the fruit was very soft and the skin had started falling off the plum. This only took about 10-15mins. I then add the sugar and stirred until it dissolved. After this I let it simmer until it reached setting point, and then put it in steralised jars.

I'm not sure if this is the correct way of making jam, but this is how I have been making it for the last few years and it seems to work so I just stick with it. Do you do it differently?

Nicholas was being super grumpy again as I made jam, so I carried him around with me as I prepared the jam. He doesn't really look like he is enjoying it. Oh well!