Twigs, Nuts, Berries and Granola Bars

I've embarked on a quest to make as many of my toddler's snacks as possible. It makes me feel good about what I'm feeding him, plus they're fun projects to do together. And, as you might be noticing if you've been following my little blog, I've got a lot of energy to burn. Projects make day go round. So, here's a roundup of this week's productivity:

"Playgroup Granola Bars" from Allrecipes.com

They turned out well, especially since I'm not quite yogi enough yet to like sunflower seeds or nuts in my granola bars. They're just a little too sweet for my tastes, well, a lot too sweet, especially considering the intent was to make a "healthy" snack. Next time I'd cut out the brown sugar entirely and go with just the honey. I'll execute the plan and report back after I've made them.

Dehydrated Fruits

I started out with apples and pineapples, I moved on to strawberries and bananas. I originally had this Nesco FD-37 Food dehydrator:





Its a good dehydrator for the price ($45), however, I am impatient and forgetful. It was taking over twelve hours to dehydrate apple slices. I'm not staying up past my bed time to check on the drying status of my snack food.  It also doesn't have a temperature setting and I would like to experiment with Jerky, which seems to be more safely dehydrated at a higher temperature. So for $20 I upgraded to the Nesco FD-61 Snackmaster (picture below). Snackmaster, now there is an appliance I can get behind. It is the master of the snacks, not the other way around. Perfect. It has 100 watts more drying power, which makes it speedier, and also that adjustable temperature sensor I wanted. Admittedly its not MUCH faster, it seems to cut the drying time of my fruits by about two hours- those 12 hour apple slices are now 10 hour apple slices. Small victories.









Even better the Snackmaster came with a fruit roll tray! As an experiment I dumped some apple sauce in it- four hours later I had a fruit roll up! Tomorrow's task is strawberry roll ups from our freshly picked strawberries- if that goes well I'll move on to the Jerky tray. 

What does one do with dehydrated fruits? First of all, they're fantastic munchies- but they're even better in cereal or oatmeal. Especially the apples and strawberries. I have a friend who is an expert dehydrator and says you can just dump a bag of frozen peaches or mangoes into the tray, turn it on and have mango and peach snacks. Since peach picking season coincides with my due date I'm going to try to induce labor by collecting peaches at mid-day with James on my back. Wish me luck.

Peanut Butter

This has to be the easiest substance on the planet to create- and lucky me, we live in the self proclaimed "Peanut Capitol" of the world. Every few blocks in Dothan, Alabama there is a four foot tall peanut painted to look like a Sheriff or a Hooters Girl or a Sam's Club employee.  When my mother was visiting we got a map and scouted out all of the peanuts known to the Dothan tourism center. There were 28 of them and we spent the better part of three days with James in the back seat defying traffic laws trying to take pictures as we spotted them.

So, back to the peanut butter. I purchased a 1lb back of roasted, shelled, unsalted peanuts. Throw them in a food processor and add vegetable oil in 1/2 teaspoon increments until you have a substance slightly looser than you'd like (it will firm up in the refrigerator). Mine took three minutes to get smooth enough- and it will never be as smooth as Jiff. It is better for you, though, and in my opinion has a richer and more delightfully peanuty taste. After reading quite a few canning guides I've determined that the long term canning of peanut butter is not a great idea- apparently its density and the added oil makes it difficult to heat to the point where all of the bacteria is dead. So its one jar at a time for the Chamberlins.