I was given a food dehydrator for my birthday in February and to my shame I only decided to use it today. I wasn’t quite sure until now what I could dry in it – all the produce I either bottled or cooked and we had it there and then. I grew a number of chilli plants, I found a new one that is rather prolific – Havana Gold. It has lovely little fruits, they start as pale yellow and slowly turn darker yellow to orange.

These chillies were growing in the greenhouse at home so in the early afternoon I harvested them and then started reading the instructions about the dehydrator. They were reasonably easy so it didn’t take too much time to fill the trays and plug it in. The temperature was then set and the time – there is a very helpful booklet on how to do it all. All is done and it is sitting on the table in the studio, quietly humming. It’ll be interesting to see the result. Next time I must try to dry something a bit more challenging.