Here is your opportunity to tell me what you would like me to be publishing here! Please email me here – dave@digivu.co.za or simply make a comment at the end of the post. Everyone who makes an input can supply me with information, which will be posted on www.digivu.co.za – what about using this as an advert?

You will have noticed I’ve been posting a bit more of non food processing bits and a bit slower in the last while – but remember you can access the information in many ways.

1) Remember though you can look at particular types of posts by going down to the bottom left and clicking a category, or even by entering an expanded URL.

eg food processing – http://www.digivu.co.za/category/food-processing/
African Businesses – http://www.digivu.co.za/category/african-foodbiz/
waste – http://www.digivu.co.za/category/waste/
biofuels – http://www.digivu.co.za/category/biofuels/

2) You can search the site/blog from the the “Search Just The Blog” google search box.

3) Scan bookmarks I make to interesting articles under “STORIES NOT POSTED” to the left or in more detail from News buttons in the top menu.

4) You can email for free assistance – see “Free Q&A Service” in the top menu.

5) You can also watch other of my channels like Facebook & twitter although I need more feedback on whether these are at all useful.

Although we will cover some of the basics over the next while, I want, in this post, to illustrate how simple it is to dry. I use a document distributed by Echonet to illustrate what can be done with little effort and little cost.

This pdf document is an extremely useful and practical manual for the solar drying of foods. It presents a simple drawing and describes a method of construction based on specified materials. As is obvious from the photograph below, this is not a flash and expensive piece of equipment from industry, but rather a device anyone with a little mechanical aptitude could construct and even redesign to make use of other materials which might be locally available.

As well as information on how to build the dryer the manual contains detailed information, originally from the University of Georgia, on drying and how to dry. The information covers the basics including hygiene, pretreatment, determining dryness and conditioning but also provides fruit by fruit and vegetable by vegetable information on preparation, drying conditions, storage and even how to reconstitute.

I am continuing to try and get permission to email the documents I discuss to those requesting copies and having difficulty with connectivity – however, for now it is probably best to make contact through the website and request that the document is emailed.

There is one other option, which is to use the web by email system that I will describe in a future post.