The winter I was pregnant with my son Zach, I craved watermelon in January. Supermarkets in Iowa don't even have watermelon grown in Tahiti in the winter. My poor husband, who valiantly went to the store to try and ease this craving, came home with watermelon Jolly Ranchers. They were good, but not what I wanted. In the middle of cold, snowy Januaries, I often crave the flavors of summer. I want fresh tomato sauce made with herbs from my garden. I want peaches and sweet corn and watermelon. After a number of years of putting by the harvest from my own garden, I have learned to make and freeze my own tomato sauce with my garden's herbs. Poured over pasta, summer comes alive in my mouth. Corn, blanched on the cob and frozen off of it, is heated with a little butter and salt for picnic table flavor while it snows outside. Peach pie, baked in June, tastes like summer in the February doldrums. But watermelon? You can't can it, or bake it, or freeze it with much success.
But then I got the crazy idea to dehydrate it.
I have an inexpensive food dehydrator that I bought at Biggie Mart--it came complete with directions and spices for making jerky, not something I have any interest in making. I wanted another way to put by the products from my garden.
I started with tomato slices. I like snipping dried slices into meatloaves and burger patties to add an extra zing of flavor. I start to panic this time of year--the first frost is on the horizon, but I have oodles of herbs still fresh and green in the garden. Into the dryer they go. All four trays of sage. Then all basil. Oregano. Lavender. The house smells alternately of Italy or potpourri. I tried peach slices--good, but they lose their crisp color, turning a bit brown. I had great success with ginger. I grind the dried slices to add to baked goods, or throw a few pieces in a pot of tea.
And then, last summer, I tried watermelon.
I bought a seedless one at a local fruit stand (a pick-up truck with a wooden roof over it manned by a teenage girl in a tank top and shorts who had picked the corn and melons herself that morning), and cut it up into fairly uniform slices about 3/4 of an inch thick. I laid them out close together on the four racks of my dehydrator, and let it run on the highest temperature for about 24 hours--or until the pieces no longer felt gummy to the touch. About 85-90 percent of the slices are water, and I was left with crispy watermelon chips. Then I vacuum-sealed them and put them away until January.
Some reviews I have read say that dehydrated watermelon tastes only slightly like watermelon. That has not been my experience. I think that taking the water out of the fruit intensifies the flavor. The last watermelon I dehydrated this growing season was not a particularly sweet fruit, but the dried pieces were almost as good as fruit I had processed at the peak of the season. The only problem I have is rationing it out. Once I eat a piece of the crunchy fruit, I want it all. This year's pouches are hidden away in the cupboard, where I won't find them until the picnic table is buried under a foot of snow.
I can hardly wait!



