Teflex sheets are those things we talked about in the “how to make kale chips” episode that prevent sauces and crumbs from falling through the trays of your dehydrator. They are easy to clean and a pain to dry. At least they were, until I had an attack of the obvious:
As I said in the video, I don’t think they sell the dehydrator I have any more, but most of my friends who have them use the Excalibur brand – there’s a 9 tray machine on Amazon
for $219 right now [affiliate link], and don’t think 9 is too big – the counter footprint is basically the same as a smaller one, and trust me on this, if you get into dehydrating you’ll wish you had more than 4 trays. If you’re in Canada, I haven’t purchased anything from the folks at Green Health but they seem nice and offer free shipping (we make no money off of sales from the GH link, just promoting a Canadian business, is all.)
On Monday we talked about how to eat more raw fruits and vegetables, and that’s all well and good, but what about at work, where you can’t prep a fridge full of produce at a time? Well, most of us can’t, anyway – if you can, let’s talk, I might want your job
Here’s a problem I was having with eating fruit at work, particularly in the summer:
Yeah, like there are ever just one of these. Photo by Mo Kaiwen 莫楷文
Fruit flies are a huge pain in the butt, and they will find you. And you know what? If they just stuck around my desk, I’d be OK with it, but they irritate everyone around. At my last workplace, the social pressure not to do things to promote the spread of flies was enough to seriously limit my snacking, which is a shame, because fresh fruit is a real pick-me-up that keeps my brain moving – and I hate to even admit this – even more than coffee does.
The solution to this was simple:
One box will last you a good long while, but hey, if you like to stock up... Photo by dulk
I’m not a huge fan of plastic, but here’s the beauty of this plan: the baggie isn’t for your food – it’s for the peels and pits and cores. Just pack an empty bag or two on your way to work and you’ll contain most of the mess – they rinse out easily so one box will last you quite a while. You’ll also want some kind of resealable container for your desk to hold the fruits themselves, but you’ve got lots of options on that side, and it doesn’t have to leave your workplace once you get it in place (though you might want to wipe it out from time to time.)
Baggies also work great when you’re on the go – I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had an apple core or banana peel wrapped in a thin napkin (or whatever else was handy) dampening up my pocket because I wasn’t near a garbage.
With the help of some practical storage solutions like a simple sandwich bag, you can dramatically increase your fruit consumption at work or when travelling without worrying about flies or messes. And at 100 or so calories in a banana, 80 in an apple, and similar numbers for oranges and grapefruit, they make much better alternatives than whatever expired crap’s in the office vending machine.
This week we’re focusing on raw foods, because newsletter subscribers regularly ask how to get more raw fruits and vegetables into their diets. I had the same problem, frankly, and this is where having a blog network can come in handy: sometimes I can ask other people how to fix something, but you’d be amazed [...]
