Senior Sea Kayaker

@ElsieD Stick with your original plan if the portions are too thick it will form a 'skin' on the slices and inhibit further dehydration. As advised leave the oven door open. A dedicated dehydrator allows moisture to escape as part of it's design. Have fun.

@ElsieD The reason for the lower temp. of 105 is, as noted by @TdeV , is for better texture in the finished product and more uniform dehydration. Saying that my experience dehydrating fruit such as peaches, apples.... was to have a summer temperature stable product for extended backcountry and canoe trips so uniform drying was a necessity. If you're going to freeze them that isn't a concern. With respect to rehydration our standard practice was to start rehydrating when we stopped for lunch and turn into a crisp or grunt for the evening meal. The result was pretty indistinguishable from doing the same at home from frozen fruit.

@ElsieD Your plan sounds good. You don't need to dry your peaches unless you're concerned about any liquid dripping onto the oven bottom. Going through my notes and my dehydrator manual the recommended temp for fruit is 40 C. / 105 F. so if you can get your oven that low it may not be necessary to leave the door open. They'll be done when the peaches are 'leathery' but still pliable (think dried apple slices). They'll most likely exhibit a shrinkage of 50 to 70 % (dependent on the initial water content). Hope this is helpful and please report on your results.

Dinner cold plate beginning at 6 o'clock: garden cherry tomatoes, coleslaw, baguette, gravlax with fresh dill, pickled herring with some added Chioggia beet to absorb some flavour from the brine and radishes.

Pan fried shrimp, green beans, zucchini and green onion tops with garlic, ginger and chili crisp oil. Side of garden tomatoes. These are black cherry, red cherry and gold nugget, picked about 15 minutes before eating and still warm from the sun, with a light touch of salt. With my choice for Nova Scotia's craft beer of the summer: Nine Locks Brewing Bohemian Raspberry Weisse.

Breakfast sandwich of kielbasa, cheddar, egg with chili and green onions and tomato on toasted baguette. A quick breakfast as I was making some sausages rolls when still cool enough to use the oven. These are pork, minced creminis, onion, zucchini, grainy mustard, bread crumbs, chives and tarragon and finished with a sprinkle of sesame seeds and black salt.

@YvetteMT To be honest I'm surprised that this sort of practice still goes on. Introducing non native fish species to an area, usually with 'the best of intentions', usually has unforeseen consequences and very few of them good. Examples I can think of offhand are the deliberate introduction of small mouth bass to northern Ontario lakes and pushing out the native lake and brook trout, the deliberate introduction of lake trout in Yellowstone and many cases of the accidental or plain stupid ones such as sea lampreys into the Great Lakes, Asian carp seemingly everywhere, snakefish, rock bass...... Just my opinion. Do you cold or hot smoke your salmon?

Montreal smoked meat on a pretzel roll with grainy mustard. Served with garden tomatoes and cucumbers and baby dills finished with chives and tarragon.

Now that is something I am going to do. I've used blackberries in the past as a sauce for duck breasts but wouldn't have thought to use it with salmon We're in the height of blackberry foraging season here so the next time I get some salmon.......

Breakfast wrap after an early morning garden pick. Egg, zucchini, mushroom, onion, aged cheddar, Scotch bonnet, zucchini flower, green onion tops and dill. Kiwi and plums on the side (plums dropped off by a neighbor).

I'd like to add that when dehydrating many fruits it's a good practice to give them a quick dunk in acidified water (lemon, lime....) to prevent browning during the dehydrating process (and improves the flavour). Commercial producers of dried fruit generally go with the addition of sodium bisulfate but for home dehydrating I would go with acidified water or even diluted unsweetened pineapple juice. Just my $0.02 as I've owned an American Harvester Dehydrator and have used it pretty extensively.

I'll catch up on the thread when I have more free time. A few recent dinners. Montreal smoked meat on a ciabatta roll, oven fries with sriracha, coleslaw and tomatoes. I picked up some mussels on the way home and cooked them over this sauce (made the day before and refrigerated to mellow). No photo of the finished dish that was served with toasted ciabatta. Leftover mussels and sauce with beet greens, Italian sausage and orecchiette with a tomato, cucumber and Chioggia beet salad.

I've been busy with local events lately so here are a few early morning breakfasts. Herb and chili scrambled eggs with gravlax, garden tomatoes, WW bagel and a mix of peach and foraged blueberries. Egg with duxelles, onion, blood sausage, Scotch bonnet and cheddar on a 'croissant' bun. 12 C. that morning so an egg, shrimp, green onion and chili on a WW muffin with a cup of garden vegetable soup.

Shakshuka with a tomato, onion, hot and sweet peppers, zucchini, parsley and tarragon base and finished with green onion tops and zucchini flowers. With toasted baguette.

Egg, shrimp, onion and chili on a WW bagel with tomato and lettuce.

Yesterday's dinner (it's been cool enough to use the oven) of a quick saute of shrimp and haddock, oven fries with sriracha, off the cob corn with garlic, green onion and Roma bush beans with a salad of tomato, cucumber, radish and red onion. Enjoyed with a rather disappointing raspberry radler.

I finished the gravlax prep I started on Thursday. Dry cure of pickling salt, brown sugar, dill, mustard seed and black pepper. My low tech set-up. Salmon in it's brine (20% reduction in starting weight), rinsed (retaining some of the cure elements), dried and ready to portion out for freezing. This will be about a two month supply. The nice thing about this is that there is no difference between the just finished product and the frozen.

I went in a different direction this morning. Breakfast wrap of egg, Italian sausage, mushroom, zucchini flowers, mozzarella, green onion, Italian parsley and basil 'tomato' tortilla. With cherries and sour apple.

Breakfast sandwich of an egg scrambled with green onion, shishito and Thai chilis, cilantro and globe basil with salmon belly, tomato and lettuce. Peach and V8 on the side.

It's going to be another heat advisory day so I was out early while still relatively cool. Sugar snap peas are holding in there (the trellis is just short of 2 meters high) and producing. There are also purple long bean vines all along the trellis with lots of flowers and not quite ready to pick beans. A lot of produce for such a small footprint. The empty area is where the garlic was and has been planted with 2 types of bush beans, orange and red chard and watermelon radishes. Second bed with lettuces, beets, chard, bush beans cucumbers, 'mouse melons', zucchini, some determinate tomato plants and a late planting of more long beans (the snow peas didn't do well during the heat and had to go). Carolina Reaper plant doing well and showing a lot of developing peppers. Successful red shiso and purslane. And lots of tomatoes just starting to turn.

I picked up a side of salmon yesterday most of which went to replenish my supply of gravlax. So yesterday's dinner was pan fried salmon 'trim' (and some held back for tomorrow's breakfast, corn with garlic butter and garden bush beans.

@Kerala Can't see anything 'unhealthy'. Lots of vegetables and lamb.

This area is rampant with old apple trees, many planted many decades ago and some older, as well as crab apples and old varietals that I can't identify . I can easily pick a few Kg. on a walk through the old back pasture areas. I'm unclear what you mean by 'winter over'. Apples on the trees fall, ferment, provide winter fodder for the deer , and get the deer drunk, or rot.

I treat them as I would chard since they're very closely related (chard is also called silverbeet). Young for salads and more mature as you would chard. I've used them as mixed greens, along with radish greens, as a spanakopita filling, braised greens with some sausage or ham....lots of applications.

Blueberries and apples from this morning's walk.