Eureka!

About a month ago, I actually found it.  A FOOD DEHYDRATOR!!!  It was $6 at a Salvation Army in the Iowa City area.  I regret that I didn't celebrate sufficiently by running through the streets with my "As Seen on TV" American Harvester Snackmaster food dehydrator from the 1990's.  But I was pretty excited to find it.  Sadly, I didn't get a chance to experiment with it until Friday night.

We have a little tree in our front yard that we thought was dead the whole time we've lived in the house. Until this summer.  It started to grow tiny fuzzy bulbs... that turned into hard yellowish orbs that when we cut them open revealed a stone inside...  they eventually turned into peaches!  Tiny little peaches!!

The peaches are a pretty addition to our front yard.

Ryan has been  keeping an eye on them and periodically tasting them.  Friday night he realized they were really sweet and tasty and promptly picked several.  Not sure exactly what we'd do with another stash of peaches (our neighbor who also has a peach tree had just brought a beautiful basket of large peaches the week prior... which we are still eating!) I suggested we try them in the dehydrator!! Perfect for experimenting since we had nothing to lose, the peaches were plentiful and free!

It whirrrrrrrs like a fan when it's on. 

We cut them up into quarters, set them in the trays at 135 degrees and turned it on.  The next morning we had dehydrated peaches.  They are slightly chewy and not as sweet, but for free peaches from a tree we thought to be dead, it was a pretty cool experiment! I look forward to trying more food dehydration adventures... including homemade fruit rollups and possibly corn tortilla chips.