Project Shannon: I had no idea!

Did you know you can make fruit roll-ups? Like, actual, fruit roll-ups?

For years I thought this was one food that was pumped out of a machine - totally processed, no redeeming qualities or ingredients that would make your mom proud.

Turns out, ~~for the first time ever,~~ I was wrong. And I actually made some this weekend.

The Hubby and I went strawberry picking at a nearby farm on Sunday. The weather was wet and foggy, but it was lovely and a bit romantic. When we arrived at the farm, we were the only ones crazy enough to pick strawberries in the mist. We had to haul out to the fields (a nice little walk), and we picked and picked.

The strawberries were perfect, and boy we came home with a lot!

Fresh picked, right from the vine. Not only did these taste spectacular, but it made me feel good to support a local farmer. I'm not the {green-ist} person on the planet, I admittedly don't buy local as much as I should. But it did make me feel good to know that I am helping support a local business, in whatever small way.

But fruit rolls ups (or fruit "leather"), take a lot of strawberries. Four pounds, to be exact.

Do you know how long it takes to hull and slice up 4 lbs of berries?? A while. My fingers were stained red when I finished. Good thing I skipped that manicure I had been contemplating this weekend.

Making fruit leather "batter" takes a little while on the stove too. Like an hour. And you have to constantly stir so it doesn't burn.

But eventually, you get to pour it into nice sheet pans, and it starts to resemble something that looks recognizable. So then the fun part. If cutting in strawberries wasn't fun, and stirring a pot on the stove for an hour wasn't fun, now these babies have to bake.

For like 10 hours. I used this recipe, from one of my favorite blogs, Fly Through Our Window. So here's where the fun really began. The recipe says to bake these for about 10 hours at 145 degrees. So I scheduled accordingly. I started these late Sunday night, so they would be ready when I got up for work on Monday morning.

Only my oven doesn't go down to 145 degrees. It only goes down to 170. Humpf. Alright, improvise. So I decided to bake these at 170 for 8 hours, instead of 10. Which means these babies would be good and ready around... 5:15 am. Perfect. Only like two hours before I get up for work. (And yes. For anyone who is paranoid, that means I slept with my oven on. I didn't have a problem with this, but if that freaks you out a bit, then make sure you start these puppies early in the morning - when you don't plan to leave the house all day.)

Luckily, my oven has a "cooking time" - so it would automatically shut off, when the cooking time expired - like an egg timer - only way handy. So I set the timer, and went to bed. Peaceful slumber.

Until 5:15 am, when the timer went off. So apparently "cooking time" will shut off your oven, but will not prevent your oven from announcing it. So in a sleepy daze, I shut off my timer, and crawled back in bed. And left the fruit leather in. the. oven. Mistake. I woke up (again) at my normal time, to find my fruit leather, a bit more like fruit vinyl. Tough and not so edible.

So, defeated, I left it sitting on the counter while I was at work all day. Which turned out to be a great move. The humid weather warmed those babies right up - and when I got home they were gooey and chewy, and all sorts of delicious.