They dried down from 22 fresh bananas to 370 g of dried bananas. The cost of the 22 fruit was £2.20 ( reduced in the Co- op)
Drying took 30 hours and used 5 kW/hrs of electricity - a total of £0.75 from our suppliers Good Energy if paid for but
at least half the time our pv's were providing the electricity for the dehydrator, for free - so let us say £0.40 cost for the electricity purchased ( from Good Energy so carbon neutral) and I am being generous with this estimate!
So 370g of dried organic bananas cost me £2.80 in total to buy and dehydrate and an hour ish to prepare, and monitor ( turning regularly etc)
Looking online a bag of dried organic bananas weighing 125g costs £.1.35 (the very cheapest I could find).
So my efforts if I had bought it would have cost me £4.00, or possibly more. And actually cost me £2.60. Or possibly less.
I could have done another two trays in the dehydrator which would have bought the overall cost down even more. But I foolishly did not buy all the bananas on offer ( was worried about looking greedy - rolls eyes - will not do that again!) If I had done so it would have reduced the overall cost even more.
Ok I have not costed my time but how long does it take to slice up some bananas, while drinking tea, eating breakfast and listening to the "Today" programme? ( and eating a few slices :-) ) It took me about 20 mins in total to do all of this - and very enjoyable it was too.
I think I win, with this one! And at least I know EXACTLY what went into my food - which in the current times is actually very important, I think.
BUT I only managed to do this without a cost penalty, because the bananas were really discounted?
How on earth do the suppliers of dried banana chips manage - who gets less, so as to provide the discount?
I am guessing the grower?
Makes me think hard about the economics of things when I actually make them myself.