De-Sugar Those Dried Crans!

I love dried cranberries. They're great in a dish of snack food, mixed with nuts, dried apricots and raisins, for instance. They also dress up a pasta/chic pea salad very nicely. But the commercial dried crans I get here are always coated with sugar. I don't want sugar on them. Sure, they're sour without the sugar. What's wrong with sour?? Sour puts a kick in the flavour sensors ~ aka taste buds! Sour is good!

So I dry my own. To do this, you need a dehydrator. It's an investment, but so far I've found it a really worthwhile one. As well as drying my own crans, I can dry other fruits ~ most notably tomatoes and apple slices or even apple chips with no sugar added, as well as veges and herbs. If you get the solid trays, you can also make your own no-sugar-added fruit leathers. (It can also be used to make jerky.)

Anyway, I'm all about the fruit, so to dry cranberries you need to slit them first, otherwise they blow up like little tiny balloons which "pop" in your mouth. (Kind of fun actually, but they dry better slit.) You can start with fresh crans or, as I discovered, you can buy a package of frozen crans, let them thaw, slit them, put them in the dehydrator overnight, and they dry beautifully. (See picture.)

I especially like them to change up that pasta/chic pea salad. I cook up about 1/4 to 1/3 cup brown rice small pasta, like macaroni, cook and drain it over about 1/4 cup chic peas. Then I put it all back in the empty pot and add: chopped green onion, celery, broccoli (yes, raw), 1/4 cup dried crans, a handful of chopped walnuts (great for lowering cholesterol, but don't overdo); dress with some fresh or dried dill weed, parsley, sweet basil, dash of olive oil, squeeze of lemon juice, sea salt and pepper to taste. If you're a meat-eater, you can also add strips of cooked chicken and some chopped fresh rosemary. Make it the way you like it!

But to keep some of that very unnecessary sugar out of your healthy diet, try drying your own cranberries and other fruits!