Wow! Sixteen plants Lilacs! You must have quite a spread. I had 3 in my garden, and pulled one out before it ate the tomato plant next to it. I'm really having a moment of garden envy, thinking of your peach trees and imagining the space you must have to have 16 zucchini plants. Sigh.

My blender is also an old Oster, got it as a wedding present in 1974, so it's been going strong for 35+ years. I seldom use it, though it got a good workout when the girls were still home, making chocolate malts and power shakes and fruit smoothies and salad dressings. Now I use the Kitchen Aid food processor for things like hummus and Jessica's lime chipotle marinade, it does a good job, better than the old Oster. I could go the rest of my life without a smoothie and I don't drink to speak of so the blended icy drinks the girls made in the summertime aren't an issue either. the Kitchenaid is harder to pour a chocolate malted out of without spilling, but it can do everything that I used to do in the blender, plus some. It's not that good at making bread or pastry, though I didn't do that in the blender either, and if I want big chunks of something like tomatoes for salsa, I still use a knife, the FP makes mush too quickly. Annie

You've diagnosed your problem and the link I've provide below at the National Center for Home Food Preservation (their drying section) has a couple articles about making fruit leather. "Test for dryness by touching the leather in several places; no indentations should be evident. Lift the edge of the leather, which will adhere tightly to the surface, and peel it back about an inch. If it peels readily, it is properly dried. If the leather has cooled, it may need to be warmed in an oven at 150-degrees F for a few minutes to help it peel away more easily. If the leather cracks or chips, it has dried for too long, but is still edible." I know I've had this happen before, but don't worry, there is a secondary use for over-dried fruit leather. Cut it up (I use my kitchen scissors) or break it into smaller pieces and add some water or fruit juice and make a fruit sauce to use as a topping. Add it to homemade applesauce for a mixed fruit applesauce. Hope there is some information there that will help you out. -Grainlady

VitaMix is nice but not for everyone. I have a Ninja. In response to nyrgirl's comment above about lead being present in the Ninja, most power cords are made of PVC, which contains trace amounts of lead. So really, you should wash your hands after handling pretty much any power cord. The reason Ninja had the warning on their box is California's ridiculous regulations that require pretty much anything sold in California to be labeled that it can cause birth defects, cancer, or reproductive harm. The cutoff is 200 ppm but Ninja did not have their cord tested, so they had to put the warning on anyway. This freaked out consumers so they ended up getting it tested and of course, there were only small amounts, nowhere near 200ppm. So the warning is being taken off. No parts of the actual Ninja blender contain lead. So if you're considering buying one, don't let that scare you away. It's a great product. This post was edited by hvtech42 on Wed, Jun 11, 14 at 18:46