A New Toy

On Tuesday we had a new toy delivered, a food dryer. There is probably a fancier name for it but it dries food so it's a food dryer for me. As with various other purchases in the same line it will take a long time to get the monetary value (£56 delivered) back in terms of food shopping saved - the apple press a case in point - but it's fun, we get to have a store of free food, and when civilization comes to an end we are the ones looking smug just before the Morlocks come and grab our stuff.

I dried some apple rings yesterday and enough bay leaves from our tree to see us through a winter of casseroles, likewise sage leaves. My wife loves the apple rings in her packed lunch, Joe as a snack including for his upcoming DoE hike - all the goodness only 1/10th the weight.

If any damsons have survived the hurricane-lite a few days back I may try a few of those to see if they work when re-hydrated (in vodka left over from reviews?) as the basis of crumbles or dry in cakes.

The sell-by-date changes currently mooted have brought up the issue of food waste again, an annual figure of 5 million tonnes mentioned for Britain. I doubt this includes the vast quantities of fruit never picked from garden trees and little lost orchards. Maybe the third way politicians keep trying to claim they are following should be not throwing so much away: our personal budgets would benefit, and so too would the world's poor.