Food Reviews

This article is about preserving flowers, leaves, and other foliage from your garden, yard, or bouquet, in a food dehydrator, thus extending their beauty in flower arrangements that will last to, and through, the winter months, or even beyond. Here you will find simple steps on drying flowers with a food dehydrator to produce a potpourri of color and fragrance.

The starting point is the selection of flowers. I use flowers throughout the following explanations but it includes other foliage that can be dried as supplements to a wreath, or any other dried arrangements that the imagination creates. Flowers, selected for drying, can be anywhere along the bloom but not past the point of full bloom. Do not use bloom that is damaged, by blight, insects, wind, or withered. If the flower has been subjected to pesticide, or dirt, it can be sprayed with a pump type mist sprayer, similar to one of the window cleaner sprayers, then gently shaken to remove as much water as possible. Never use detergents, or cleaner sprays.

Most food dehydrators have trays that are inch apart, that provides plenty of clearance if drying flower petals, or leaf type foliage separately, but for drying a complete floral bloom remove one or two trays, on the drawer type dehydrators, to accommodate an entire flower. The trays should be clean. I have lined the trays with parchment paper, but many food dehydrators have non-stick sheets available that fit their drying shelves. You need room when drying flowers keeping them spread out so as not to touch each other causing discoloring or distortion. A thermostat on the food dehydrator should range between 100 deg F and 140 deg F. Flower petals will dry well around 100-120 deg F for 2 to 5 hours.

A discussion about drying flowers would not be complete without mentioning Roses. Of all flowers from the garden, or florist, to me, roses and dried rose petals, produce the best aromatic fragrance, and potpourri, as any other dried flower. Their perfume seems more permeating, and is longer lasting than most blooms.

In earlier times flowers were dried by burying them in sand, as well as hanging them in a bag made out of paper, or porous cloth. These methods were time consuming, in most cases up to several weeks. It becomes clear now, why food dehydrators have come into vogue for making dried flower arrangements. The drying process is very less involved, less mess, and the drying time reduced to between the two to three hour range. This reduced time in processing contributes to a better quality of dried flower.

In summary, drying flowers, or foliage, in a food dehydrator has advantages over a microwave. Food dehydrators provide a wider drying area so items do not come in contact with each other causing spoilage of the petals during the drying process. Food dehydrators are able to provide for higher volumes of produce, not only do they have larger drying capacity, but can accommodate larger and more bulky flowers.

Does junk food require any introduction?. Well, everyone in this age of convenience are enjoying the taste of junk foods. Junk foods always remain the most popular food because of their simplicity to manufacture, consume and of course their taste.

Junk food is all good tasting, except the fact that it is not nutritionally balanced. It might affect your health if consumed on the regular basis.

In the following article, i have listed few harmful effects of junk food.

In the age of fast food, obesity is the most common problem. Junk foods are loaded with lots of fat, sugar, calories, salt and carbs and therefore not all healthy. Eating excessive amount of junk food leads to obesity and malnutrition. Apart from causing obesity and malnutrition junk foods lowers the energy levels of the body too.

Junk foods are not so easy to digest due to excessive content of fat and oil. When we consume the junk foods in excessive amount, major portion of the blood gets diverted to intestine and thus we feel drowsy and encounter reduced concentration.

Since fast foods are full with fats, calories and cholesterol, there are chances of damaging the liver too. Junk foods are deficient in dietary fiber and micro-nutrients such as vitamins and minerals.

Major heart diseases such as cardiac arrest or atherosclerosis can be caused due to the consumption of junk foods. Your heart might stop functioning in the long run because of excessive cholesterol absorption in the body.

Junk foods also causes damage to the pancreas resulting in insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus.

Once we start eating junk food, we get addicted to it. And then we find very difficult to opt for healthy foods. Thus, eating junk foods on the regular basis can cause many health hazards. Bringing out the changes in eating habits is not so easy. But you can begin with decreasing the frequency of the consumption of junk foods and try to include more fresh foods and vegetables in your everyday’s diet.