Dry Your Own …

Plums I feel are very yum
I love to have them in my tum
Dry them out in the oven?
That’s an idea I’m really lovin’!

A little poem to open up this article, which will be about dryin fruit using your own oven. Air Fryers are the go at the moment, and I have one of those, or rather we have one of those, in our kitchen.

I don’t feel ownership for that device though, in the same way I feel ownership of the oven. When my husband retired, and became my carer, taking on the cooking of our evening meal, and various housework tasks, he also began bringing more such devices into the kitchen.

I know one should be gender specific, but I do feel men tend to like fiddling around with various tools, wheras women are more inclined to stick with the ordinary things that have been around ‘forever’ because they do the job well …

I know many people may disagree about that, so feel free to leave a message, telling us all about it, I love having discussions about things, as long as no-one gets hurt!

Anyway, today I decided to try out a plum as a dried fruit to go with my lunch. I often include an item of fruit I’ve dried out in the oven, bananas and pears being the items most often used. Today though, a plum was my fruit of choice.

The reason fo rthat was simply that the pears aren’t ripe enough yet, and the only banana will probably be part of my husband’s breakfast or lunch tomorrow.

He’s the one who buys all of our fruit and vegetables, so it doesn’t feel fair for me to scoff down the only banana we have at the moment. Day after tomorrow will be the day he goes to the Adelaide Central Market, his much favoured spot to buy the very best fresh produce!

Anyway, the plums … After turning the oven on to 220 degrees celsius, I found the ripest plum in the fruit bowl (the least firm one), and sliced the plum into skinny wedges, then lay each down on a baking tray with baking paper on it.

When oven is heated, cook sliced plum for ten to twelve minutes. Then take out of oven, and turn over each slice, then place back in oven for another ten minutes.

This is how I cooked the plums in the photograph. I’d only taken out those three…