For me, minimal/no herbs & spices though :( – I think it’s easier for my body to process simple foods with few ingredients, like the sort of food one eats when one is sick.

Herbs & spices as well as dried fruit are all high in salicylates, unfortunately. So YES! I have that fruit drying machine (it was only $187 when I bought it at Tangs with 10%discount a couple of years ago) – but I’ve stopped making dried fruit after my homemade dried apple contributed to making my lips swell up for one entire week :(.

Dried pineapple is really nice too. Western pears are OK, not as sweet as apples. Chinese pears have little gritty bits, which I don’t like. Mangoes can be too fibrous. Banana is too wet and sticky. I also dried drying carrots, bitter gourd, ginger – not so successful, I didn’t make them again. The carrots tasted really sharp and pungent, which I didn’t expect! Maybe I didn’t make the ginger dry enough so when I tried to pound it to make ground ginger, it didn’t really work.

I didn’t know about the dangers of tin cans! Thanks for the tip.

and i’m so waiting for you to experiement with the homemade luncheon meat recipe!! i imagine 5-spice powder is one of the ingredients? (i watched a channel 8 program on ngoh hiang and learnt that this is a common ingredient)

btw, did u see today’s Tangs advert (7 mar 08)? they actually sell a “fruit dryer” for $205. something like making ur own dried fruit snacks!! thot u’d be keen on something like that! (if u dont already have one, that is.)

I also stay away from canned foods in general, after I read that the tin used leaches into the food, causing estrogen dominance / other hormonal disruptions in women!

For this reason, whenever I buy things like tomato sauce (eg pasta sauce, etc) I also buy only those that come in glass jars…u know waht i mean :)