Posts Tagged ‘drying’



Dehydrating Series Pt IV

Monday, January 24th, 2011





Part I
Part II
Part III

Dehydrating Part IV

Or

Soup’s On!!


I’m sitting here listening to my sweet hubby laugh his head off as he is pulling up YouTube videos of “Carl” (Billy Bob Thorton) from the movie Slingblade making prank calls to restaurants and asking the clerks for “French fried pertaters and biscuits and I like some mustard with those biscuits, uh-huh”. The clerks are attempting to take this order with as much grace as possible. I have to admit that I’m laughing too. I guess I’m remembering the phone calls I used to make, from our church phone on Wednesday service nights no less, to Weigel’s Dairy Store in Knoxville, Tennessee to tell the clerk, in high pitched squeals, “Your cows are out!” immediately hanging up the phone. Real smooth, huh? Kinda like the phone calls my grandparents used to receive in the ’30’s, at their grocery store, where a voice asked if they carried Prince Albert in a can and with the answer in the affirmative, young voices would yell, “Then let him out!!” We are so brilliant when we are young. However, it seems that Mr. Thorton is still brilliant – he’s entertaining my husband, anyway!


I’ve noticed that in the blog world, bloggers of the feminine persuasion have dubbed their loving husbands with honorary names that reflect everything from their appearance to their personality. The Pioneer Woman refers to her life partner as her Marlboro Man while another at the Rural Revolution refers to hers simply as Husband of The Boss. I’ve been musing for the past few days about what I should title the perfect man in my life – the one who can fix literally anything, including a sad day. He can take a car apart and put it back together, as well as a computer and its software, a refrigerator, an antique telephone and my hair dryer and have them all working as a result. He fixes up Christmas for our adult kids, fixes boo-boos on the animals and is currently fixing a whole new room addition on the house complete with a wood stove. He says he’s suffered through the last ice storm without heat!! He even has a tool belt like Tool Time Tim of Home Improvements. So yep, that’s what the love of my life’s moniker shall be from now on; Mr. Fix-It. And as an aside, just to let you know, he says that he married me because I came with power tools!!


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There is nothing I enjoy more than putting a piping hot meal before Mr. Fix-It after a long day’s work. I especially love him because he loves soup and that is one of my favorite things in the whole world on these cold days. But I’m weird. I love it on warm days too – homemade that is. When I go to Olive Garden, I’m the “Never Ending Soup and Salad” kinda gal. Therefore, it is really pleasant to have all of the ingredients for soup right at my fingertips, dried and ready to reconstitute for any quick, hot meal. In this fourth and final in my series on dehydrating, I’ve got a recipe for broccoli cheese soup that will leave you craving more. Let’s go!

Broccoli Cheese Soup



1 Tbsp Olive Oil
1 Tbsp dried celery (1 stalk fresh chopped)
1 tsp dried bell pepper (tbsp fresh)
1 Tbsp dried onion (2 Tbsp diced fresh onion)
1/4 tsp dried garlic (1 tsp fresh, chopped garlic)
1/3 cup dried potatoes (1 cup cubed fresh potatoes)
1/2 cup dried broccoli (1 1/2 cup chopped fresh broccoli)
4 chicken bouillon cubes
4 1/2 cups water
1 can milk or 3/4 cups half and half
1/4 lb Velveeta Cheese + or –
1 Tbsp corn starch + 2 Tbsp water


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Put 1 tbsp Olive Oil in a 3 qt sauce pan and add onion and dried garlic. Sauté. If using dried onions, just stir around a little to get the flavors going. That was the only thing I was out of. Gotta dry some more!



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Add dried celery and dried bell pepper. For the purposes of less typing, I’ve included fresh equivilents in the recipe above but not in the directions, but you CAN make this with all fresh veggies



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Add dried potatoes and continue stirring in the oil



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Add dried broccoli



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Add three cups of water and stir.



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Add 4 chicken bouillon cubes. Bring to a boil and turn heat down to medium for a slow boil and cook for 30 minutes uncovered.



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Add 1 1/2 cups additional water



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Add one can of milk. The canned 2% and Fat Free is fine too. If you want a richer soup, you can use half and half



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I canned Velveeta Cheese that was on sale (I’ll blog about that at a later date) and put it into 8 oz jars. Here, I have heated the jar to soften the cheese and am using 1/2 jar or not quite a 1/4 of a pound of Velveeta. You can add more or less according to your taste.



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Mix one tablespoon cornstarch with 2 tablespoons COLD water until cornstarch is totally dissolved



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As soup is boiling slightly, stir in cornstarch mixture and continue stirring to avoid lumps



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You can make some corn muffins with my cornbread recipe and make everybody happy! I used my cast iron muffin pan. I love cast iron!



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And there you have it. Soup that, if you dehydrate and can everything, can be made with no need for refrigeration and would be easy to make over a fire if the electricity goes out! In this state, that is no unusual circumstance!!



Happy Cooking!


MB
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Dehydrating Series Pt III Peppers

Wednesday, January 19th, 2011

Part I
Part II


Dehydrating Part III

OR

The Incredibly Shrinking

Pepper




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Another vegetable that is fast and easy to dry is the bell pepper. All peppers can be dried, including jalopenos, but that is one pepper you will want to process in the garage or outside. Your eyes and nose won’t be able to stand the fumes while drying!! Here’s a fast rundown on drying peppers.


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Wash peppers. I will be using green, red and yellow bell peppers



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Slice peppers



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Chop peppers and spread onto racks of your dehydrator



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I have trays of green peppers on the bottom, then yellow and then red because I like to have a few of the red and yellow fall through to the greens for a pretty mix and then have a mixture of yellow and red as well.



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Dry overnight or for 12-15 hours and the peppers pieces will be shrunken and hard



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Dried peppers make a pretty gift for the cooks in the family. They can be used in any recipe that calls for peppers! You can either reconstitute by letting them soak in warm water or just put them into a recipe to reconstitute as it cooks.

Happy Cooking!

MB



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Dehydrating Series Pt I – Celery

Monday, January 10th, 2011





Part II

Dehydrating Series Part I

Or

How To Pack 8 Bags of Celery Into

A One Quart Jar



Here in Oklahoma, most of us are tough old birds. We’ve learned the only thing predictable is that there is nothing much predictable in this state. One minute you can bake a chicken in your car and the next minute you’re trying to figure out how to get that car out of a snow drift. Of course, the car can get cooked in one of our prairie fires as well. Ice storms can paralyze daily life for a week and tornadoes can change lives forever. And then of course, there are the hail storms.


So, we Okies have pretty much figured out that you don’t need a government commission on emergency preparedness to tell us to be prepared. We’ve been prepared since the days of the Land Run when barrels of beans, flour and sugar and a crock of sourdough starter meant protection from starvation when the WalMart shelves were empty. Unfortunately, there ARE some city dwellers here who have either forgotten these facts or who moved here from some foreign country, like Los Angeles, who get caught with their rations down. But for the most part, we’re a pretty prepared and flexible lot. I got tickled the other day when a 30 minute program was aired to remind us that we have the likes of tornadoes and such here in Oklahoma. Ya think? A body would have to be living in a cave 24/7 to miss that little bit of reality. Anyway, the Oklahoma preparedness program has been called “Red Dirt Ready” and the name symbolizes the fact the Okies immediately jump in to help after a disaster, getting all covered in Oklahoma’s famous red dirt. That’s true. We do. It’s what makes this state great.


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Imagine this on the power lines. That tree totally disentegrated. So do our electric lines!!



Electricity can be a problem around here. It is not unusual for us to be without for a couple of days and in many areas that can run into a number of weeks. That wreaks havoc on one’s frozen vittles if one hasn’t a generator and so it is nice to have plenty of stock that requires no refrigeration. That would seem impossible for such things as fruits and veggies, but not so! The age old art of dehydrating comes in really handy to offer up a pantry full of wonderful and healthy treats that will last a looooong time.


Having a garden each year, I dehydrate stuff yearly, but lately, I’ve been a dehydrating fool. I have been challenging myself to see what I can dry next and how best to use it. I’ve decided to do a series on using a dehydrator with recipes. Today I’m demonstrating celery and broccoli drying. I was inspired to do the celery because our local store, Firelake Grocery, had celery on sale, 3 large bags for $1. The broccoli was on sale as well – two good sized heads for $1. I use a lot of both.


Now, I need to sidetrack here for a sec because I realize that these are not organic items coming from a local grocer. However, with food prices soaring, many people can’t afford the more expensive organic foods and I want to let them know that it’s ok. This is where my faith comes into play. I see 3 large bags of celery for $1 as a blessing and I see God as my provider of blessings. Therefore, I just trust that all I can do is the best that I can and trust God to take care of me. In other words, I eat as healthily as I can and leave the rest up to the Lord. Shoot, I used to break thermometers when I was young and chase the little balls of mercury around on the table for hours with my friends! I promise, I don’t glow in the dark – although I do have very white hair. Do you suppose – – – ?


Back to the celery and broccoli. The long and the short of it is that I bought 16 bags of celery and a lot of broccoli. Neither of these items is anything you can keep for any amount of time unless you dry them or freeze them. I like to freeze celery by chopping it, leaves and all, and spreading it onto a cookie sheet, freezing it hard and then taking it off of the sheet to place it into freezer bags. That way the pieces stay separate and don’t clump up. Frozen celery is a quick addition for sautéing and putting into chicken salad. However, as I said, frozen is useless when there is no electricity. Plus, I don’t have that much freezer space! I froze one bag of this celery and all of the rest I dried.


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I used electricity on those suckers with a food processor! Beat having to cut them all up by hand. But I could have done it – Really.



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I use an American Harvest dehydrator that I have had for years. Got it at Walmart. They still carry them as far as I know, in season, but they are offered elsewhere as well. I also ordered extra racks from the company. Sprinkle the celery evenly on the dehydrator racks. It doesn’t matter if the celery is several layers thick. Continue adding celery to racks and layer one rack on top of the other. Dry overnight for 12 – 13 hours.



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The celery should be totally dry and crisp in thin areas.



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To make it easier to put the celery into jars with less mess, I have a very large bowl into which I shake the pieces. Then, using a canning funnel, I scoop the dried celery into jars. I like to use jars because I can vacuum seal them on my FoodSaver sealer. That takes out all air for good preservation. The nice thing is that you can unseal and reseal these jars with the vacuum sealer.



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15 bags of celery!! 1 tbsp = 1 stalk of celery



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The same can be done with broccoli. You have a choice – if the brocolli is fresh from the garden and tender, I just cut it right up. If it is older or from the grocery store, I blanch in boiling water for 2 minutes, dump into ice water and then dry before cutting it up.



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Dried Broccoli



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You can dry sliced carrots too



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They look pretty in the jar. The one thing about carrots is that they need to be soaked with FruitFresh because they will lose their color over time, if kept for long.



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The dried veggies are wonderful for cooking. Add dried celery to browning hamburger for homemade spaghetti sauce or to the tomatoes for meatless sauce.



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It reconstitutes beautifully! Or, for chicken salad or other times you want crispy celery, place dried celery into a bowl and cover with cold water to an inch over the top of the dried celery. Place in the frig overnight. Drain the next day and you have celery like fresh!!



So there you have it. That will keep you busy for a couple of days and by Thursday, you’ll be ready for a recipe. I’ve made a New Year’s Resolution – I’m going to do my dead level best to post twice a week, hopefully Mondays and Thursdays. Just remember what happens to New Year’s Resolutions – they’re kinda all dried up too.


Happy Cooking!


MB
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Sweet Taste of Success

Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010




Sweet Taste of Success!



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A dear friend surprised me with a freezer bag stuffed with clippings covered with the prettiest green leaves. She informed me that the clippings were from her Stevia plant and that she hoped I could use them.


I like Stevia. My dear hubby doesn’t care much for it but I have decided that just as God creates us with different eye colors and different finger lengths, He also gives us different taste bud lengths. If you have short taste buds, then you’ll eat anything since the food doesn’t really touch much taste bud surface at all. There isn’t enough total taste taken in to determine, “Yuck. I don’t like that” before the item is whisked to your tummy. I also think that this is the reason why people who have ulcers still eat hot and spicy foods. Their taste buds are too short to tell them, “Whoa there, Bucko! That’s gonna kill your stomach.”


People with the longest taste buds are the pickiest eaters – kinda like my friend – the one with the stevia plant – who insists that “Cheetos are the other yellow vegetable.” She won’t eat cooked squash (yellow) or sauerkraut (sorta yellow), but she will eat corn (mostly yellow) which is the main ingredient of Cheetos minus the artificial colors (including Yellow #6) and therefore a larger cousin of the Cheeto family. I’m not sure which genus.


I am pretty sure the height of my taste buds is medium to low because I will eat almost anything except meat of any type that has the potential to move if it hasn’t been cooked, or canned peas. My taste buds are tall enough to tell me that canned peas consist of those legumes which didn’t make the cut, so were pressure canned to hide the fact. But MY tastebuds know the truth!


So what was I saying? Oh yes. I like Stevia. You have to be careful about this sweetener because a little goes a REALLY long way. The processed type can be found in just about any grocery these days, as well as local health food stores. There is even a mixture of sugar and Stevia that is pretty good, however my hubby’s long taste buds can pick the Stevia out everytime.


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So I took the clippings, given to me by my dear friend, and tied them in little bunches. I put a paper clip through the rubber bands holding them together.


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I hung the bunches in the garage to let them dry. As you notice, my dear hubby not only has long tastebuds, but also collects Coca Cola memorabelia.


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After drying the clippings for about 5 weeks, I took them down the other day. They were brittle.


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I picked all of the leaves off of the stems which really wasn’t very hard. They broke off easily.


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I figured that the next best thing to an herb grinder was the trusty old blender and so I pulverized those leaves until they were dust.


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I stored it in a plastic bag for fresh keeping.


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And so, today, I decided to brew some Oklahoma Prairie Blend tea. I put the Stevia powder in a small tea infuser in hopes of keeping the powder out of the tea since I knew it wouldn’t dissolve. No luck. It was still in there and it was still green, but green never killed anybody. It really tasted good and it was kinda cool drinking tea with a no calorie, no side effects sweetener that I had ground myself. Another new thing tried! Check!


Fresh Stevia leaves make a wonderful edition to a salad, adding just a hint of sweetness. It is healthy and, evidently, really easy to raise. I will be putting a plant here in the Spring. I understand that it is important to check packages of commercial Stevia for location of processing. In the US it is processed using water filtration but Stevia is also imported from China where dangerous chemicals are used to filter it. I’ll bet you people with long taste buds can tell the difference!!! 🙂



Happy Experimenting!


MB


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