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Friday, April 24, 2009

Nutritious Air Freshener

How's that for a weird blog title? But it's a good one!

I am not big on buying air fresheners; well honestly, I don't think I have ever paid for an air freshener in my life. I just prefer to open windows if necessary, that's free and always available.

But right now I am enjoying the smell of my house--apples and strawberries. I am using my dehydrator. So, if you are a person that likes fruity smelling air fresheners, don't buy fake stuff, buy an inexpensive food dehydrator and use it! Buy bulk fruit on sale and make your house smell beautiful while you are making a long lasting nutritious treat.

I have found that the dehydrated fruit I make myself at least once a week now comes in handy. When I get the munchies it is a more healthy to grab some apple chips than something else less healthy that I am always tempted to eat. And I am loving putting it in my homemade granola cereal, granola bars and instant oatmeal packets. But even if you buy store bought oatmeal or cereal, you can add your dried fruit to add vitamins and other things you need to your breakfast. I have also found it to be a great way to use up things about to go bad or that my toddler won't finish (she'll eat the top half off of the apple and leave it, if I am not feeling like finishing her apple, I just cut up the bottom half for drying.)

3 comments:

Liz said...

Do you dry banana slices? I've tried that, and they come out chewy like fruit leather. Do you know how to make them crunchy like the store bought ones??

Melissa Jagears said...

Elisarose,

If I am not mistaken, those bananas are freeze dried, chemically enhanced and I don't know of anyway to do it at home. You freeze it in a vacuum with blast freezers, my guess is any equipment you could possibly buy to do that is expensive. My bananas are chewy too and not my favorite thing to dehydrate because they are so tough. Maybe if you pureed it and added applesauce it would come out less chewy as a fruit leather? Or I have heard of drying a whole banana intact and slicing it. Someone on a forum said dipping them in honey makes them harder and sweeter. Haven't tried these ways, but now I might have to try, if anything comes out better than banana chips, I'll post it to let you know!

Liz said...

Thanks! I'd really like to know if you try it. My apples and strawberries always turn out yummy... and they get eaten fast, too! Last summer, I had a LOT of apples given to me so I dried a bunch and also made applesauce in the crockpot and froze it. That worked really well.