Fabulous Fruit Leathers Too!

So yesterday I decided to be a Fun Mother and serve healthy ice cream for breakfast. Jake the Great woke Sullen saying, "Sullen, wake up! This is like, the most exciting day of our life! Mom is serving ice cream for breakfast!" and he was totally serious.

Unfortunately (or not) my children are not used to a very sweet breakfast fare, so although they all liked the idea of having ice cream, and even liked the taste of it, they were not able to eat as much of it as I thought they would.

So what's a woman to do with so much leftover breakfast ice cream?

I could have put it into containers in the fridge and called it pudding later. I could have made popsicles. But instead, I decided to try something else, and I spread the stuff on teflex sheets on my dehydrator trays, and started it up. By afternoon we had delicious, nutritious, chewy, fabulous chocolate fruit leathers! If you roll it up it makes a nice chewy treat, and I can see that it could make a very acceptable alternative to chocolate candy.

I have an Excalibur dehydrator and when I use it, I only dehydrate things at about 100 degrees or less. This is high enough to dry the stuff, but low enough that it doesn't kill off any enzymes, so the health benefits are the same as fresh ingredients. It just allows me to have some more flexibility on raw things to eat.

Today I will be making some Chili Lime Chips that are a much better alternative (in taste, texture, and nutrition) to tortilla chips. We love them and they are very easy to make. I'll have a picture for you later. :)