Sunday 10th March

Sunday 10^th March

Yesterday I – finally – bought a food dehydratyor.  This has been on my list of things-to-do to improve life on 2XS.  I imagine having a cupboard full of delicious mushrooms, onions, potatoes – all the things we can’t get, in the South Pacific.  Most people use dehydrators for fruit but this won’t be on my agenda - fruit is the one  certainty…large quantities of tropical fruit needing to be eaten right NOW.  I would look, slightly despairingly, at the mounds of pawpaw, about to go off – Pete hates waste!

So the project has started.  I bought a few bags of mushrooms, sliced them up to the required thickness, and stacked them on the shelves on my new Sunbeam Friend.  Oh and did I feel provident and old-fashioned!  I got up several times, to rotate the shelves, and to sniff the process – drying mushrooms smell delicious - and finally, at 2am, I triumphantly turned the machine off and went back to sleep, dreaming of how lovely it would be to find little sealed packed of mushrooms, just when they are most needed.  But…this morning I have looked at them with a more discerning eye and…they aren’t really very dry at all. Eight hours was obviously not enough…

I am not at all attracted to the idea of finding dear little plastic bags, vacuum sealed with love and café, but containing rotten slimy mushies… So the machine is back ON, whirring away in Pete’s laundry, next to the distiller.