The season's bounty of fruits is just beginning...but the season is ever fleeting and before you know it, the local strawberries and blueberries will be gone for another year. This year, I've decided to preserve a bit of the riches and try dehydrating to preserve these goodies in some form for a later day, maybe just to snack on or sprinkle over my granola. 
If you buy in bulk, most local farmers will give you a big discount on the price. It's a bit tedious to slice the fruit into thin slices, but then, a couple of hours in a dehydrator and you've got some delicious dried fruit on your hands. I even dried some not so local mangoes that were on sale at WholeFoods.Four quarts of strawberries sliced filled up the five strays of the dehydrator and took about 2 hours to dry. They then all fit into the jar in the picture! Even though I blanched the blueberries until their peel/skin split, it still took about 12 hours for them to dry. I don't think I'll do that again. The mango tood about 3 hours.While I should have bought the dehydrator at a local shop, I opted to buy a slightly scratched new dehydrator at a discount on Amazon. What I'm not so sure about is the energy efficiency of the dehydrator, but for now I'm enjoying it immensely!
