You may want to rethink oven drying fruit.  It can take from 6 to 48
hours at 200 degrees, depending on the kind of fruit .  According to
http://www.logicsouth.com/~lcoble/jg/dehydra/dryfruit.html grapes can
take 24 to 48 hours to dry.  

Nan
--

Nan

A wise man talks because he has something to say;
a fool talks because he has to say something.

Here's a site with good detail. I think that is a great idea!

http://farmgal.tripod.com/Dehydrate.html

Drying fruit for the squirrels  -  great idea.  Doing it in the oven - bad
idea.

Due to cost of running the oven that long, heating up the house in the
summer, running up the cost of running the air conditioner,  etc.

We had a dryer till just recently that my father in law made using light
bulbs, a thermostat, and window screen in a plywood box.  And we ran it out
in the garage in the fall to make apple leather, and flavored apple leather.
But I think the dehydrators you can buy now are pretty inexpensive.

Got anyplace you can harvest cheap or free sunflower seed?  They like those
too.

Jo

Clean the fruit well. De-core, pip or stone, and cut into slices if
necessary (if the fruit is more than say, half an inch thick,  you'll need
to slice it for it to dry properly)

Put on a wire rack, and place into an oven with absolute minimum heat. Leave
the oven door open a crack. IIRC, it takes 5-10 hours depending ont he type
of fruit and how dry you want it, so you may want to leave it overnight or
experiment.

You could also crystallise the stuff, or make "canned" fruit, or make jam,
or, for the kids, somewhat dehydrate the fruit till its the consistancy of
prunes, then wizz it in a food processor, spread it out on some greased
greasproof paper, and dry some more in the oven, then cut into fancy shapes
(or squares if you don't have a fancy cutter). Great novelty snack. Some
fruit can also be dried by salting, lemons are good, you get lemon salt
(good for fish and other dishes), or you could pickle them in alcohol and
make flavoured brandies / whiskies (brandied apricots are a wonderful
Christimas gift, the Apricots are yummy, and so is the liquer afterwards.
Don't forget to sweeten the brandy though). If you've got fruit to waste,.
you may even want to try your hand at making some exotic wines. Strawberry
wine is incredible. Or fruit chutneys  (yum). There is also freezing as
well, but that renders the fruit good for cooking only, as the cells
explode, and make sthe fruit mooshy. Icecreams and yoghurts are another
option.

Oooh, I"m jealous!

Yowie

You can buy dehydrator gadgets that do not cost very much.  You can
certainly do it in the oven, slowly at VERY low heat.  I wonder if it
would be possible to do it in a microwave - you can certainly roast nuts
in one, my first microwave cookbook had directions.

Well, you know, I just bop them under the radiator. ;)
Love,
Stinky

Theresa
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Like Yowie suggested you can make your own jams, jellies, chutneys,
snacks, wines etc. out of all that fruit too. Here's one of my "old
faithful" links where you might want to try out the recipes under the
headers Canning & Preserving, Chutneys, Relishes, Snacks, Jams & Jellies
etc. or you can do a search with the name of the fruit in question and
get all kinds of recipes containing that fruit.
http://www.recipesource.com/

AFAIK the recipes have all at one time or another been submitted by
"ordinary people", partly gathered from recipe newsgroups and partly
submitted directly to the site. See more details under the header About
Us on the left hand side.

Over 20 odd years ago, I threw caution to the wind and bought a small
dehydrator.  I wanted to make dried bananas for my youngest grandson,
who loved them.  It worked fine, but took a lot of time.  The smell of
drying bananas permeated the wole house.  I dried some other things
too.  But it was an awfullot of work for such a small amount of
produce.  I eventually told  that if he wanted dried bananas he would
have to do it himself and he accepted the dryer eagerly.  He did it
once -- never heard what became of the dryer.   MLB