Mama Jo's: STRAWBERRY!!! ( and plain ) Apple Rings

A snack. A happy apple snack. ...AND A VERY HAPPY STRAWBERRY APPLE SNACK!!!

On my list of school snacks and poolside-summer-snack-agenda are these HEALTHY and "healthy" apple slices. The strawberry dried apple rings get the "air quotes" and lower case "healthy" label as they are sprinkled quite generously with Jell-O. YUP!!! Jello-O. Not a typo. And they are so AWESOME, you will dust off your dehydrator, go out and get a dehydrator, or wish you had one and hunt down someone you know to borrow one from.

My dehydrator made its way down from the dusty cupboard above the fridge and found a permeant home these last few months on a pantry shelf. Its previous home was too tall and too inconvenient for weekly use. Now it gets hauled off of its new pantry spot when apples at HEB or Kroger dip below $1.00 per pound.

Here is a happy little apple ring that was scarfed in the HOV line on a rainy afternoon:

:0) And the kids love them too!!! A few weeks ago I ran out of my regular fruit leather snacks for my Sunbeam class at church... Realized my lack of fruit leathers too little and too late to run to Costco, and made these before going to bed the night before. They are a confirmed hit with 3 year olds!!! (Even the plain ol' just apple ones... and especially liked by the kiddos that don't love having sticky fingers after a fruit leather...)

So here's what you'll need to get this snack underway:

10-15 minutes :O)

dehydrator

apple corer

cutting board

slicer

1 apple per dehydrator tray

Strawberry Jello-O (or any Jell-O you may fancy)

Wash and core your apples.

One at a time, slice the entire apple top to bottom with a "multi-purpose" slicer.

NOTE: Slicing them with this amazing kitchen tool keeps all your slices one uniform thickness. All of the apples finish drying at the same time... BONUS! No babysitting thick, floppy, half-dried apple slices.

I have 4 dehydrator trays, (NOTE TO BRET SR: I secretly wish for more...) and am able to dry one apple per tray. EASY MATH!!! Which works out nicely since, as all of my kids know, I ONLY do math that is easy math...

The top 2 trays I keep "plain" and the bottom 2 trays I sprinkle a 1/4 package of Jell-O per tray. Keep your Jello-O apples on the bottom to eliminate any accidental Jell-O sprinkling on your plain apples.

My Easy-Peasy NESCO Dehydrator tells me 135 degrees will dehydrate my fruit. GREAT! I know that it typically takes 10-12 hours to complete... So starting a batch in the late afternoon or evening has me turning it off when I wake up. By the time I'm done cooking up some dreaded oatmeal, the apple slices have had time to cool off before I start packing them up into lunches.

If you're keeping them in the pantry, you can stack them into a clean glass jar and keep them dry AND CUTE at the same time... or just grab a huge gallon zip-lock, shove them all in and call it good! They won't last long, so you decide how much effort you're willing to invest in their storage.