Edible Leather

Last night I had 5 over ripe mangos.  This morning I had mango fruit leather.  Rather than toss the mangos in the trash, I peeled them...they still tasted great, they were just really juicy and messy to eat.  So I got a fork and mashed the heck out of them, spread the mixture thinly and evenly over the non-stick dehydrator sheet and dehydrated over night for about 12 hours.   Next time I will put the mangos in a food processor to eliminate those lumps.  This morning when I woke up I had fruit leather with no added sugar...great treat for kids.  What's great is you can make any over ripe fruit into leather.  You can store the leather wrapped in wax paper in the fridge, it is delicious cold.

I made one batch of leather just plain mashed mango.  Another batch I added hot pepper relish to the mashed mango.  Nothing goes better than mango with hot sauce and this proved that point one more time.  The sweetness of the mango and the hotness of the peppers is a taste treat, try it sometime.

* I have 2-1gallon bags of frozen fresh peaches (I purchased a huge case of peaches for $5 at the Hartford Regional Market) taking up precious room in my freezer.  I defosted one and processed the peaches to a smootie texture in my Vitamix.  Then I made Peach Leather with it in my dehydrator....delicious!

Shopping the Perimeter

When I go grocery shopping I rarely go down the aisles I shop the perimeter of the store.  That's where all the real food is located.  Almost everything else in the store is processed, look at the  list of ingredients you don't want lists of ingredients when selecting food.  Some foods do come in packages for ease of transport, like nuts, I love nuts, I buy them raw from Trader Joe's.

Oatmeal is another real food that comes in a package choose the steel cut oats over the rolled oats because you'll get more of the real food with steel cut.  Steel cut oats are cut into small pieces but all the good stuff remains, the stuff that lowers cholesterol.  Steel cut oatmeal takes longer to cook but it is so worth it.  When I add the steel cut oats to the water I also add raisins.  The raisins plump up nicely in the water, add a tiny bit of grade b maple syurp and you will have a real food treat.

Here is my recipe for homemade granola made with steel cut oats.

2 cups of steel cut oats soaked in water for a couple of hours

1/2 fresh coconut cut into small pieces

1 cup of raw nuts chopped

1/2 cup goji berries

1/2 cup raisins

2 Tbs grade B maple syurp

dehydrate in an Excalibur dehydrator you will find dozens of uses for it.  I bought my Excalibur on Amazon and I use it all the time to preserve real food.