ShanHale.com

I’ve been waiting and waiting for the bananas in the dehydrator to get crispy like store bought dried bananas. It seems like it shouldn’t take three days. So, I started looking around, and I found out that store-bought dehydrated bananas are actualy DEEP FRIED and dried. yuck.

So, I guess my bananas are done. They’re a little spongy like dried apple, but they taste really really good.

The apples turned out good, and the nectarines turned out great.  The Nectarines dried the fastest, then the apples, then the bananas. The hot peppers are still going. I probably should have pierced the skin or cut them in half. I’ll try that next time.

I recently worked on a project where I had to edit all the generic ‘dashes’ in the text to conform to some rules about when to use a hyphen, an en-dash, or an em-dash.  I wanted to write about them here so they’ll be easier to find the next time I need them.

Hyphen: Used to join words or to separate syllables of a single word when the entire word won’t fit on a single line (most software does this for you). You would also use a hyphen to create a compound noun, verb, or adjective (mother-in-law,eye-opener, awe-inspiring, respectively).

Dashes: The en-dash is called en-dash because it is roughly the width of the letter ‘n.’ It’s used to separate numbers in a range (4–5 pieces), or to describe the relationship between two things (Father–daughter dance, Detroit–Chicago train). There is a keyboard shortcut when using most desktop publishing softwares: hold down ‘control’ and hit the ‘minus’ key. This doesn’t work in WordPress, though.

The em-dash is named because it’s roughly the width of the letter ‘m.’ It’s used to emphasize a parenthetical thought, or an interruption in dialogue instead of using an ellipsis.  Examples:

• Please use my email address—shanhale at gmail dot com—for any correspondence.
• “I never said I wanted you to—,” she yelled into the phone, but he hung up before she could finish.

Em-dash also has a keyboard shortcut: Control + Alt + Minus.

Grammarbook.com has a nice page showing the differences between en-dash and em-dash.

Last week, I used my credit card reward points to get a food dehyrator. TJ and I planted so many tomatoes and hot peppers that there’s no way we’ll be able to use them all without some sort of preservation. I ended up getting the VegiKiln 6-tray dehydrator after reading a ton of articles and reviews for various dehydrators. I didn’t want one that was round, and I didn’t want one that dehydrated from the top or the bottom. This model dehydrates from the back, so all the trays get dried evenly and at the same time.

I haven’t had a chance to try it out yet, because I want to have enough stuff to fill all the trays. I want to try fruits and vegetables. Dehydrate2Store has some really great videos on YouTube about dehydrating food, and she uses only lemon juice to prevent discoloration and to help prevent spoiling. I like that much better than Sodium bisulfite or some other poisonous-sounding chemical.

I can’t wait to try it out!

I picked these things from our garden last night.  We’ve got tomatoes and peppers. Those cherry tomatoes taste like poison, though. I have no idea what happened, but they taste terrible. The yellow pear tomatoes are delicious and sweet. I’ll probably dry some of the hot peppers and I’m thinking about making Jalapeño Poppers.

I’ve been standing up at work for about a week and a half now, and I’ve noticed two things:

1. I’m hungrier

2. My feet hurt

3. Wasting time is harder to do

The hunger could be caused by other factors, but I have definitely noticed an increase in appetite. My feet are killing me, and my knees have been a little sore, but I have an anti-fatigue mat on order, so that should help. On the other hand, my back feels GREAT! As far as wasting time, it’s just a lot harder to stare at the computer and not do something productive. I feel like I’m getting more done as a result. So far, it’s a definite inprovement.