This title may seem like a stretch of the imagination, and at the very least an exaggerated statement, but you’ll have to admit that today’s family is being challenged from a variety of angles. Not the least of these angles would be just spending quality time together. Family budgets are stretched to the max. School and school activities are taking up more and more valuable family time. Mom and Dad have to work longer days to make ends meet and family sit down for dinner is a concept that seems to have disappeared with the Cleavers. With all these challenges and more happening every day to American families, what are parents to do? This may seem incredibly simplistic, but here’s an answer to this dilemma… buy a food dehydrator.
ORIGINS
Never before in the history of our country have our children been so far removed from the origins of their diet. A recent survey showed that more than 87% of today’s urban American schoolchildren have never set foot on a farm. When asked where the milk came from, more than half of the children answered “from the supermarket.” You will have to admit that this is the rather pathetic result of our modern, urban, socio-economic family state. A home and kitchen food dehydrator can be an easy-to-use and highly effective catalyst in this educational gap. With a food dehydrator, kids can have a literal, safe, and hands-on experience with their food. This experience can certainly open up a variety of other avenues to educate them about that specific food source you may be working with. Dehydrating food can be a visual and inexpensive lesson at home or in the classroom about where our food comes from, how we get it, and even how they, the children themselves, can prepare and eat it. By the way, the nutritional values of these foods that can be dried in a food dehydrator are certainly far superior to many of the foods you’ll find in your grocery store. The various foods that can be dried in a modern food dehydrator range from fruits and vegetables to many different varieties of meat.
TRANSFORMATIONS
Remember when we were kids playing with our easy bake ovens or our spooky ovens. We didn’t know it at the time, but (perhaps our parents did) we were learning how to take a simple staple ingredient and transform it into an actual edible muffin or spider. These may have lacked nutritional quality and flavor appeal, but we didn’t care…we were creating and it was fun. This was an experience that we were able to share with our parents or the neighboring children who live around us. A food dehydrator can be a continuation of that experience. If you’re lucky enough to have a backyard garden, think about how satisfying it would be for you and your kids to take some of those garden delights you may have planted and turn them into great-tasting snacks. You really don’t have to have a garden to experience this. Even if you have a tomato vine or a single mint plant growing somewhere in the house, you can use your food dehydrator to transform this into a delicious and nutritious dining experience. Family time doesn’t have to be about trips to the mall or expensive theme parks. Quality family time, that is, the things your children or grandchildren will remember forever, cannot be more than creating tasty and nutritious memories with the help of your food dehydrator. These food dehydrators take up a minimal amount of space on your kitchen counter. They operate at a very low temperature of 85 to 145 degrees, thus creating a very safe, low voltage cooking environment. Food preparation can be as simple as cutting the vegetable or meat you’re about to dehydrate, and cleaning can take no more than a minute or two.
GIVING BACK
One of the biggest complaints (if you can call it that) from backyard gardeners is that there’s too much. The bounty of their garden is more than they could eat themselves. This abundance is not unusual. It is more often than not, the norm. Once again, as a teaching tool for families and classrooms, the food dehydrator could be used as a teaching catalyst to teach your children how to give back to the less fortunate in society. Grab a small slice of that garden’s bounty, from tomato slices to kale leaves (which can be dried into a delicious, salty, crunchy chip) and from apple slices to green bell pepper rings. All of these can be quickly, easily, and inexpensively dehydrated, placed in a zip-lock bag, and delivered to the local Salvation Army or church soup kitchen. This familiar teaching tool and giving experience may be priceless. Not to mention the appreciation and appreciation of the organization to which you donate your box of healthy and dehydrated food.
Today’s modern family faces a host of difficult obstacles that force family members to spend more time apart. It is becoming increasingly difficult for our children to experience meaningful, creative, safe, and affordable food cycle education. A food dehydrator may be the wisest and most effective kitchen equipment purchase you can make. For the amount of money you’ll spend (most quality dehydrators sell for between $100 and $175), the experiences and memories may be priceless.
