Flutterby™! : Intentional dehydration

While some of the tales of Burning Man and biking on this site deal with unintentional dehydration, there's another side.

Charlene's been wanting a dehydrator to play with some confections. Athena has a tree that's been showering her in apples, and we ended up with a large box. And Diana, down the road, has had surgery and hasn't gotten to harvesting from her apple or pear trees. So we popped up on Craig's List and sure enough there was an Excalibur 2900 9 tray beast, unopened in the box, for sale. The only feature it was missing was a timer, which we solved for $9 at the hardware store. It's now whirring away in the other room working on its first load of apples, while the jars for canning the load of apple sauce are sterilizing on the stove.

There's something wonderfully comforting about putting food by. It's something I remember from childhood, summer and fall weren't just times of harvest, they were times of storage and preservation, from canning cherries in June to the night in October when the frost forecast was harsh enough that covering the tomatoes wasn't enough, and we'd drag the vines inside to hang on the laundry racks racks, hoping that a few would ripen more, making of green tomato relish with the rest. I grew up in an area with a fairly short season. And the only time as a kid that I liked kale was after that big frost, because it turned sweet and wonderful.

And, yeah, the carrots packed in sawdust weren't as great as when they were pulled directly from the ground and wiped off on my T-shirt, but food had seasons.

I'm not saying that I don't really enjoy salads in January, but so much of food is in the ritual and meaning that we put into it, and the rituals of preservation are powerful ones.

And last night we talked with Owen, a young man from down the street, about prepping for his first trip to Burning Man. As we thought about ways to use our newly acquired toy, several "Oh, this'd be great for..."s came to mind.