I agree to just get a new MW, and one with controls that work well for you. Operations on that one are a fire hazard. And you could mess up again, as you are pre-programmed to enter numbers differently! I also wonder if unseen damage could have occurred, not just what had visibly melted. Yeah, that is a really bad design to not have a value range for what can be entered. I would write to the manufacturer and let them know what happened. Have no idea what mine does with minutes! Will have to check it out. It does have valid ranges for other entries. GE. Scary stuff. I had a door malfunction and the unit fizzled and smoked. Luckly, I was right there. Yes, that odor is horrible! This post was edited by snookums2 on Fri, Jul 5, 13 at 13:05

WOO HOO! What a great way to start. ;-) Dehydrated apples are a BIG part of our diet. They are used to make all kinds of things - apple pie/crisp, applesauce, added to quick breads and homemade granola, as well as a favorite out-of-hand snack food. Once new-crop apples are available, I'll dehydrate 50- to 75-pounds of apples and store them in canning jars in the basement. I'd REALLY suggest a hand-powered peeler/corer/slicer if you do a lot of apples. Otherwise, I suggest one of those corer/slicers you push through an apple. Then with a paring knife you can quickly slice each large apple slice into several 1/4-inch slices. You can also use a cutting mandoline and slice the apple, starting at the bottom to the stem in complete apple "rounds", core and all, for very little waste. You will get a decorative star-shape center where the seeds were. Don't bother removing the seeds, they generally fall out during drying. If not, a poke with a toothpick will take care of them. Bananas, not so much..... In order to dehydrate bananas until they are crispy dry, you need to choose bananas that are UNDER-ripe (less sugar developed in them) and firm, and over-dry them. And when they do get crispy, they quickly rehydrate and soften. The crispy dried bananas you have probably eaten, and are more familiar with, are actually deep-fried, not dehydrated. I will incorporate bananas in fruit roll-up mixtures, which work best if they are ripe and sweet. I do have a handy-dandy banana slicer that cuts a banana into even slices which helps them dry evenly, and if you are going to dehydrate a lot of bananas, I'd suggest getting one. Back to apples.... You can sprinkle apples with cinnamon or cinnamon/sugar. You can also sprinkle apple slices with Jell-O powder (a little goes a long way, so use a VERY light hand - place the powder in a salt shaker and cover all but 2 or 3 holes). Keep this in mind if you have some less-than-tasty apples. My favorite apples to dehydrate are Jonathans, but I pick a LOT of free apples and if they aren't as sweet and flavorful as I'd like, I'll "doctor" them with cinnamon, or occasionally, some kind of sweetener (Trehalose) and cinnamon if we're going to use them for snacking (although we normally just eat them plain). Otherwise, less-flavorful apple slices work well for applesauce since it can be easily flavored with cinnamon and sweetened (if necessary) after it's rehydrated. PRETREATING: I'd suggest an acidic bath (1 quart water + 1 T. ascorbic acid powder, citric acid powder, or Fruit Fresh - which is a mixture of ascorbic and citric acid) rather than full-strength lemon juice. If you'd rather use bottled lemon juice, the ratio is 1 c. lemon juice to 1 quart of water. Lemon juice is only 1/6th as effective as ascorbic acid. This pretreatment does several things. It helps prevent the fruit from oxidizing/browning - Vitamin C is an anti-oxidant - it adds a little Vitamin C to the finished product, and most important, it helps prohibit microbial growth (such as Salmonella and E. Coli 0157:H7). There are new recommendations for drying that nearly always includes some form of acidic bath pretreatment to prohibit microbial growth. You will find a lot of up-to-date information about dehydrating at the link below. The recipe for Mango Leather is one of my granddaughter's favorites. I also mix fresh (or frozen) peaches and mangos using this recipe. -Grainlady Here is a link that might be useful: National Center for Home Food Preservation

The recipe I use does have lemon juice as well as sour cream, so that helps with the problem of lack of acidity in very ripe bananas, which seems to be all I ever have. I do agree that King Arthur AP flour is high protein and it takes some adjusting when using it for something like quick breads. Right now I have King Arthur AP and Whole Wheat, some Bob's Red Mill Rye, some Swansdown cake flour, some White Lily and plain old Gold Medal. I also have cornmeal, both white and yellow and THREE kinds of oats, LOL, the "quick", the regular 5 minute oats and some steel cut. I also have wheat berries that I've been grinding for flour for bread. My pantry looks like I could open a bulk food store. I use the King Arthur for bread, the cake flour was a leftover from the last wedding cake I baked, I get picky about those. The White Lily is for biscuits, the Gold Medal for everything else. Two kinds of cornmeal because Elery is from Tennessee and his sister says it isn't cornbread if it's yellow, although I don't particularly care which color it is. In short, I'm also going to blame it on your flour, or on overbaking. If you are using new pans and they are glass ones, I'd be watching the bread carefully to be certain it is not overbaking, and probably be using a thermometer a couple of times until I get used to the new pans. Oh, and Christine, I also have the smaller Danish Dough Whisk, it gets used regularly. Annie

The food charts I have for how long you can keep bananas in the freezer gave no amounts of time, and one said "extended freezer time" - whatever that means (LOL). I guess the goal should be to use the frozen bananas in a timely manner (few months), but I was moving some things around in my refrigerator freezer and I found several ripe bargain bananas that were quick-frozen then placed in a FoodSaver bag, vacuum-sealed shut -- early last summer and promptly forgotten about. I made them into banana bread the other day for yet one more offering to the "throngs" for breakfast during their Christmas visit. When you vacuum-seal peeled bananas (or most food destined for freezer storage), they will last longer than in a typical storage bag because they are stored oxygen-free. Oxygen-free storage prevents the moisture inside the food from migrating from the surface of the food into the bag, drying out or creating ice crystals in the bag. A food science tidbit about using overly-ripe bananas for banana bread. When a banana bread recipe only calls for baking soda as the only chemical leavening, overly-ripe bananas are not as acid (6.5-7.0 pH) as a regular banana (4.6 pH) in order to react in partnership with the baking soda. The reaction may be a weak one resulting in a heavy banana bread. A good banana bread recipe, one that ensures adequate leavening, will use both baking powder and baking soda. If the recipe only has baking soda, make sure a portion of the bananas aren't overly-ripe, or there is another ingredient in the recipe that provides an acid ingredient. That could be some lemon juice added to the bananas to keep them from oxidizing and turning dark, orange juice, honey used as the sweetener, or yogurt, sour cream or buttermilk, which are all acid foods that will react with the baking soda. -Grainlady