Dried apricot
An apricot dried in the sun — fruit shrunk and concentrated for keeping.
A dried apricot in a dream is the dream's image of fruit shrunk and concentrated for keeping. The fresh apricot was sweet and brief; the dried one is portable and intense. The dream brings the dried apricot when something in your life — a summer of joy reduced to a few stories, a vacation distilled into a single image, a love concentrated by absence — has been preserved by having most of its moisture taken out. A dried apricot eaten with appreciation in the depth of winter is the dream affirming the kept concentration. A dried apricot expected to still be the fresh fruit, and disappointing, is the dream noting that the preserved form was honest and was being asked to be something it is not.