I never "got" fruit leather. In college, I saw the vaguely shiny rectangles of fruit my friend bought from the local co-op as another sign that the health-food folks had taken a good thing too far. They had stolen fruit — beautiful, never-harmed-anyone fruit — and not just dried it to preserve it (which I could have understood; I love a good raisin or dried apricot as much as the next person), but boiled it down into a tough-to-chew, OK-tasting mess. Fruit leather, I was convinced, was the fruit version of carob: Health-food peddlers try to convince you that carob is just the same as chocolate. But oh my, buddy, it is not.

Web sites for commercially available fruit leather don't really help shake the leather's "Let's go hike naked and snack on this superfood" vibe. The Stretch Island Fruit Co. seems to think that fruit leather can inspire a domino effect that will ultimately reconnect man with nature: "We envision a world of tasty fruit experiences that inspire people to celebrate nature's goodness." Noni Fruit Leather from the Hawaiian island of Kauai, meanwhile, promises that you can not only eat their product, but that it can also be used internally and externally for such tasks as relieving toothaches and covering wounds as a bandage.

Of course, fruit leather is by no means a new invention, nor was it created by the American health-food scene. According to Nancy E.V. Bryk at Made How, a Web site that details the production process of everything from air bags to temporary tattoos, "Antiquarian cookbooks refer to fruit leathers as Persian or Middle Eastern.” These fruit-leather chefs would mash up fruit, then leave it to dry on a piece of muslin in the sun. While that sounds nice, it brings me back to part of my original point: These people had to preserve fruit to keep eating it year-round. We can get fruit in the winter.

Fruit leather's reputation has also been sullied for me by its flashy, trashy cousin, the Fruit Roll-Up. Utilizing bright colors and flavors (plus lovely ingredients like "dried corn syrup"), Fruit Roll-Ups attract children like shopaholics to a 5 a.m. sale at Wal-Mart. Hell, I was once so excited to eat a Fruit Roll-Up as a child that I accidentally shoved the whole thing in my mouth without removing the plastic backing and ended up with a mouthful of goopy blue-raspberry-plastic mess. It was, shall I say, a turn-off.

So, after all of this, how did I start making fruit leather? Well, as with potholes, taxes, and the economic crisis, I blame the government.

I had been searching for information on canning, and I ended up on the website of the National Center for Home Food Preservation, which is run out of the University of Georgia Cooperative Extension. Established in 1914, cooperative extensions were created by the government to assist Americans with agricultural pursuits. Over the years, the extension program has been responsible for such outreach efforts as victory gardens during the war, 4-H, and the dissemination of information on safe home food preservation.

Anyway, while I was looking up these canning instructions, I clicked on a recipe for fruit leather. Until that moment, I had no desire to make fruit leather, but as I read the recipe, I realized how freakishly simple the process was, especially in comparison to canning. Even though the idea of eating fruit leather still didn't really appeal to me, the recipe did appeal to my sense of "lazy adventure": It was something new to try that required minimal effort. All I had to do was puree fruit, put it in a warm oven, and wait for my treat to complete.  I had some strawberries, a pear, and mango that were all on the edge of becoming too ripe for me, so I went downstairs, pureed them together and let them sit in my oven for a bit.

Later that week, my boyfriend and I decided to go hiking. As I tossed the fruit leather in my bag, unafraid of it bruising, I was forced to admit that it was highly portable. And when we took it out for a snack later on, I discovered that it was also quite delicious. No, it wasn't the same as biting into a sweet strawberry and letting the juice spread across my tongue, but the leather did taste surprisingly fresh and vibrant, much better than any pre-packaged fruit leather — all-natural or corn-syrup laden — that I had ever tried.

As my boyfriend and I kept on up the trail, I realized that we were eating fruit leather while hiking. "I feel like such a 1970s health-food hippie right now," I said, wondering if I should save some of my fruit leather in case one of us accidentally got cut and needed it as a bandage. Then, still hungry, I dug in my backpack for another snack: a bag of peanut M&Ms.

Meg Favreau is a writer and comedian living in Philadelphia. She blogs at ihearyoulikestories.com.

Photos by Meg Favreau, "DIY" photograph by John and Eliza Forder/Getty Images, "Pantry" photograph by Áslaug Snorradóttir.