Fruit Leather - Strawberry Banana

Fruit Leather - Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy and loved by R, what can be better?

Only fruit, no dairy, stabilizers or preservatives.

Ingredients

1 cup of strawberries, stems left on for added nutrition

1 banana, pealed

Directions

Blend strawberries and banana well in blender.

Pour onto Paraflexx or parchment paper.

Spread, making the circle thicker along the edges than in the middle.

Place in dehydrator for 4 to 8 hours depending on thickness.

Peal and flip, dehydrate for an additional 30 to 60 minutes to completely dry.

Cut into strips and store in a zip lock bag.

Hide from children.

Over ripe is best, rotten is not

Pour and spread into a nice circle

Pictured here is a Paraflexx tray liner which fits perfectly on an Excalibur tray

Kitchen parchment paper can be used

 Excalibur Dehydrator

Peals easily 

Mom Humor

Sweet Potato Chips

This is my new KitchenAid Pro-Line Dicing Food Processor and my adorable youngest, M.

These are my paper thin slices of sweet potato and apple which will be turned into chips.

Hot from the oven sweet potato chip, which lasted all of 15 minutes.

Last night I spent the evening reading the manual and sorting through all of the blades and attachments to my new food processor.  The manual had a lot to be desired.  I am thinking that the writers of this document thought that anyone buying this particular model was upgrading and knew something about food processors.  I am not upgrading as I have spent the last 44 years of my life without owning one of these gadgets.  Needless to say, all those blades and setting are a little intimidating.

Now that I have this fancy toy I had to make something right away.  Being that I have an abundance of sweet potatoes in the house, sweet potato chips seems like an excellent starter dish.  I searched the internet and found that most recipes use a lot of olive oil which is not something I wanted to do.  Several recipes used the oven, several used a dehydrator and one used the microwave.  Well, I certainly didn't want to wait 10 hours for my chips and my microwave is loud and does not hold many chips,  so I decided that the oven was for me.  The following is what I came up with.

Ingredients

Sweet Potato

PAM

Salt

Directions

Wash and dry sweet potato.

Slice very thinly using food processor.

Spray a light coating of PAM on a cookie sheet.  

     -my one potato used two cookies sheets.

Spread the slices on the cookie sheet without overlapping.

Spray a light coating of PAM on the potato slices.

     -this helps the salt to stick.

Sprinkle with just a touch of salt.

     -if you are going to omit the salt, also omit the coating of PAM on the chips.

Oven temp is 375 for about 20 minutes, flipping halfway through the cooking time.

     -depending on the thickness of the chips, the cooking time may be longer.

     -chips can burn fast so keep an eye on them toward the end of the cooking time

     -the chips are so thin that they will cool down immediately.

Banana Bread Bites - Oven Not Needed

Today I really wanted to make an effort to use this new toy of mine.  The Kitchen Aid Pro Line Dicing Food Processor.  It came with various blades which I am greatly intimidated by, but am slowing learning to use.  I decided that today I would make almond flour so that I could make Banana Bread Bites.  The Banana Bread Bites recipe, originally is found on the MyWholeFoodLife web site.

KitchenAid Pro Line Dicing Food Processor

Almond Flour

Banana Bread Bites

Ingredients 

2 cups of almonds

1 ripe banana, sliced

10 to 12 pitted medjool dates

Directions

In a food processor grind the almonds into a fine consistency.

* I used a sifter to sift out the larger pieces, to roll my finished product in.

Add banana and dates and pulse until a dough starts to form.

Scrape down the sides of the bowl occasionally, to fully incorporate all of the ingredients.

Roll dough into little balls.

*If you sifted out the larger almond pieces, roll the balls in the almonds, at this time.

Place the balls on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

Place in the fridge to set.

These will keep in the fridge for several weeks.

I made 1/2 of the recipe and had 15 little balls when I was finished.