Emily Richards: Hi, I’m Emily Richards and I know you wondering, what I’m going to do with this basket of peaches. Well, peaches are around to long here in Ontario, so you want to tried to keep them as long as you can. Freezing them is an option but what we are going to do today is dry them. The first thing I need to do is actually get these water solutions together, so that they would keep their beautiful golden color. So what I had here is about 3 cups of water, and I am going to add some lemon juice to it now, I am going to use fresh lemon juice here because I really want that tang and sweetness of the lemon, as well as the acidity to help with the peaches.

Okay, just going to need about to one third of cups you might need about 2 lemons, and then we are going to also add a little bit of salt, that is going to help preserve them as well, so I need about a tea spoon of salt, and here you can just use regular table salt, what ever salt you happened to have it at home. Okay and then just give that little stir now if you want you can also add a little bit of spice to this. Now I like cinnamon so I am going to use cinnamon, but you can also use little bit of ground cardamom would be nice, ground nutmeg or something a little bit more exactly like a Chinese spice powder would be absolutely delicious. So here you just need about it tea spoon of the ground spice fried in there and I am just going to get that little stir, so that its ready for our peaches to go in.

Now what you are looking for in your peaches, a nice firm peach, but it is still ripe so not over ripped those once are really good Cobblers and Crisp. I am just going to cut across the Pit here just like that and twisted off. And then I am actually going just to use a small pairing knife to slice them you can use your chefs knife what ever easier for you. Okay and some other sour if there is little bit of softer pieces in there you just want to leave those behind, you want the firm texture of the peach to come through okay. I am going to get another one here and you can do the same process to dry other fruits as well if you want it. Apples and Pears absolutely beautiful, dried and keeping the dried fruit is nice you can have them as a snack during the day. And you’re always going to have that fresh local flavor, which is wonderful; you can also add them in to muffins and cakes and things like that. So they can be incorporated very, very easily into baking.

Once you have them sliced you are going to put them and here you are looking in about quarter inch thick fairly thin slices, you don’t want them to be too thick. So once they have sat for 10 minutes we can start putting them on to our cheesecloth. Now our cheesecloth is actually on a cooling rack, and that how we are going to be putting them in oven to dry. So we are going to be using a fairly low temperature as low is your oven can go. My oven goes down to 170, which is pretty standard for lot of ovens and at that temperature you are looking at about 4 and 41\2 hours to dry your peaches. Now where you can also use if you wanted to kind of have a variety of dried fruit is other Ontario fruit like Apples and Pears which they would be done exact same way you can slice them thinly , make sure you core them and takes the seeds out. And then you slice them up and put them in the lemon water the same way. Now I prefer leaving the skin on, just to have that little added fiber, which is always nice but you can peel them as well, and do the exact same process. So I’m going to put this into 170 degree oven, so after they have been in a oven for about 4 and 41\2 hours what you want to look for is kind of a appliable leathery texture, so that they still have some bend to them but they are completely dry, now what you notice is you can going to pull them off and you literally do have to pull them off, that why the cheesecloth is there, so you want to lift them up and do this when they cool let them come to room temperature before you start doing this, so that they are completely easy to use and pick up, and you just want to lift them up and then you can store them, I am going to put some here on a beautiful tray with my Pears and Apples, but I also have just a canning jar which is a great place to store them or cooking tin is nice.

Something that they are still chance of air to circulate, so that they remain dry as opposed to getting some moisture in there, so you can just drop some in there and these are great you know if you making out meal in the morning anyone you just through couple in be dehydrated if you going on a camping trip you can pack some up and have a snack you can mix them with some nuts and other things have a nice trail mix, so you can enjoy your logo peaches little bit longer than they may be around fresh. And then what you want do is just lightly screw this on and you can keep this in your backing cupboard on your kitchen counter they look really pretty too not too tight, and then you can enjoy them just like the pears and Apples whether you use flavors or not will be great snack for you.