Fruity Trail Mix

I have been spending every free minute at the lake or the ocean this past week.  Summer is short on Vancouver Island and I want to soak in every sunny minute!

Salads and smoothies have been our staple menu items.  No need to turn on the stove!  They are quick and easy and allow us to get back outside.  I did have to pause our nature adventures to deal with my fig tree that has gone crazy this year.  It is yielding way more figs than we can eat so I decided to use my dehydrator. I keep the dried figs in the freezer and will reconstitute them in the winter as needed in recipes. 

Since these very ripe figs take two days to dehydrate, I took the opportunity tondo a few batches of other fruits to make some home made trail mix.  I did bananas, pineapple, mangoes and apples.  The process is so simple if you have a dehydrator: clean, slice, place on rack and wait!  If you don’t like your fruit to be brown when dried you can dip the slices in lemon juice and water for a few seconds before placing on the rack.  For the bananas, I sprayed them lightly with lemon juice.

This dried fruit tastes completely different than store bought.  The pineapple was particularly amazing!  Sweet, chewy and tangy.  My bananas were very ripe when I put them in and the result are sweet chips that taste like banana bread – delicious!  I divided the fruit into portion baggies, added some raw cashews and now we have lots of easy grab snacks ready.