Xray Day

 Today, we got little done, but they were important things. For the first time in months, we picked up food. We shared it with someone and gave away lots of food from our house, things we purchased. We got lucky. Among other things we got two dozen eggs and about six packages of skinless chicken thighs and bscb. Tommy wanted to give a package of chicken instead of keeping it all. 

We then went to big box to purchase a laptop. There was no one who knew anything about laptops. We left. I did get a new wireless mouse. I cannot get into other stores, so online I go. Charlie is going to have to be more helpful with his knowledge. 

Tommy has never owned a laptop, so he is no help. He has not used a computer since I have been here and before. I try to get him to buy a laptop, but he always refuses. Finally, I demanded to know why. He said if he bought a laptop (or a computer) he would be on it all night and day. He would cease to be productive. So, he refuses to be tempted. So, now I know why he has been so adamant and refusing to buy a laptop. 

Next, we came home, used bathroom and went to an urgent care where I waited for almost two hours for an xray. The xray tech said it looked like a fracture, new or old, but the dr would have to examine the xray. Of course, I must wait for it to be read. 

I don't recall ever hurting my hip before. Of course, maybe it is not a fracture. We will see.

By this time, we were both exhausted and hungry.  So, since BK was closest and it was fully dark, we decided on BK. That was delicious and relaxing. Cokes were at home. We will have vegetables later. Of course, I will have lots of fruit.

Tomorrow's plans were formulated around the threat of rain. Maybe we will gather the three ads. I will shop online for a laptop and then go to store to get it another day.. Most importantly, we will decided what to move so I can set up my dehydrator in the kitchen. I have three choices--dining room table, counter between sink and microwave, on Tommy's tiny kitchen table.

The first thing I will dehydrate is cranberries. I have about five bags in the freezer. I hate the ones from the store because of additives. These ones I dehydrate are great in Stove Top or regular homemade dressing. I use them in salads, too. The Vidalias need to be dehydrated, too. 

The dining room table is too far away for me to precariously walk with trays of food to be dehydrated. On the counter would be good, but Tommy might decide to sit things on the dehydrator. The table  would be close, but like the counter, I need to clean it off. This stuff is not junk, but stored kitchen utensils that won't have a place to store them. So, we have lots to consider. 

I did purchase a wireless mouse, a pretty pink. Edit: and I got to the local branch of my bank. Something is wrong with my accounts. So, a frantic night and call to my branch.

How was your Tuesday?

All Dried Out

sweet potato, green beans, carrots, corn=8 lbs

The best part of dehydrating frozen vegetables is that the blanching is done by someone else. Blanching is not difficult, but it just more energy that I don't have. Seven of nine shelves are full. One shelf with onions is not showing, and I don't know why.

The other shelf is for some of the two heads of celery I bought for $.88/each. I was pooped and did not get to it today.

There are still cranberries to dehydrate. I want to see if they are good without added sugar. Craisins are great, but have added sugar. If I cannot snack on my dried cranberries, maybe I can add them to dressing, just like Stove Top Stuffing does.  I love that boxed dressing! However, I do make my own dressing from scratch at Thanksgiving.

Here are the results. Each two-pound bag of these vegetables was at least a half gallon.
The sweet potato medallions were too thick, so I sliced then in half. Two-pounds of frozen corn= two dehydrated cups. Two-pounds of frozen green beans=a dehydrated pint. Two pounds of frozen carrots=1 dehydrated cup.

The sweet potato medallions never did dry, so those will be cooked soon, but stored in the refrigerator. 

Okay, this was 1/3 of an onion that I put in there. It is stored in a 2-ounce pimiento jar. I imagine I will use this within the next week.





A snack; better than chips
Of course, as usual, I had to try everything. The sweet potatoes will take your permanent teeth out. I have another method of dehydrating next time. The corn is too crunchy and tiny. The carrots will break strong teeth. These are of jawbreaker hardness. Aaaaah, the green beans...sigh. They are a scrumptious crunchy snack, healthful and delicious with no seasonings. I suppose seasonings would improve these for people who need seasoning.

You have to understand:
I have never met a green bean I did not like.
These little babies were very crispy.
Yum! And nutritious.



High-end groceries sell clam shells of dehydrated vegetables, slice very thin with seasonings, oil, and preservatives added. Even after dehydrating, seasoning can be added to these vegetables.  The clamshells of dehydrated vegetables sell for an exorbitant price. Home-prepared vegetable snacks are cheaper and don't contain preservatives.

Your turn
Have you ever dehydrated frozen food? Do you think you would like dehydrated vegetables for a snack? How do you prepare dehydrated vegetable snacks?

Box of Plenty

8 lbs ready to dehydrate

For a long time I had thought of dehydrating frozen vegetables and wondered "why not?" I am always thinking of dehydrating. Angela's blog put the thought to the forefront of my consciousness. Why not? Well, I could not think of any reason why I would. She is an entertaining Mormon prepper with great ideas. Drop by her place some time.

I am just not going to have enough good reasons to take my frozen food and dehydrate it until I have the gamma lids and oxygen absorbers.  Angela wrote her blog post as a preparedness tip. My blog post about dehydrating nine lbs of half-frozen, quickly-thawing vegetables has its genesis in desperation and sheer panic.

Today, the need to dehydrate frozen food hit me like a ton of bricks or nine pounds of frozen vegetables. Let me digress.

I went to a food bank that was giving a food "basket" for Thanksgiving. Yes, it was a box. All the food will not fit into my already-full freezer over the refrigerator, even after all my bread dove right onto my foot. And, it was too dark when I got home and too spooky to go where the full-size freezer is located, way off in my sewing room that I cannot access for use, either.

Here is what I got at the food bank today:

12 lb frozen turkey (what a beauty it is, many meals)

8 lb frozen, boneless ham, not the mashed up kind of ham
1 lb cranberries
12 frozen biscuits
2 lbs frozen green beans
2 lbs frozen corn
2 lbs frozen sweet potato slices
2 lbs frozen sliced carrots
cheesecake, about 8 in across

All above is/was frozen.

2 brown gravy mixes
2 Idahoan mashed potato mixes
2 dressing/stuffing  boxes

I managed to get the turkey in the freezer. All my bread fell out on my feet, gravely wounding my toes. Mark loves bagels, so he can have the blueberry bagels. Is it wrong to feed bagels to your weight loss rival/partner?

 The boneless ham was thawing and lives in the refrigerator now. I will eat it and give a hunk to exbf when he comes.

The cheesecake is half-eaten.

(My freezer and refrigerator are so stuffed that I fear they will open as they often do if something shifts. So, I have Guerrilla brand duct tape, holding both shut.)
That leaves carrots, green beans, corn, and sweet potatoes to dehydrate. I may mix the corn, green beans, and carrots into soup-sized containers. I will freeze the dehydrated vegetables. Oxygen absorbers would relieve my mind about spoilage, but so will freezing. Now, where are the pint jars? I think a pint of dehydrated mixture of vegetables would be just about right for a pot of soup. Maybe a cupful/half-pint?

Tonight, celery was on sale for $0.88 per head. I bought two heads and now am going to dehydrate those. They are probably full of pesticides. But, until I see organic celery or can grow some, this will do.

I just won't inhale. 

Your turn
Have you ever dehydrated frozen vegetables for any reason? What were the results?

In praise of my dehydrator and 50 FREE pounds of bananas

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18 bananas=2 full quarts dehydrated

Both quarts were very full until I took some out for a snack to take to MRI and some to give to Charlie. Plus, I spilled a few which became chicken food. I have no idea why all this text is centered since I know how to change alignment! Somehow, I lost all the pictures of the heaps of bananas. So, this is what I took on other days. 

3 bananas fill one tray

I filled six of nine trays. My frugal self does not want one of the fifty pounds of bananas to go to waste. So, I started dehydrating them. I ate one. I gave some that had split to the hens. I am still working on them! UGH!

                                                     (pictures of funny, grayish bananas would have gone here)

The pictures I took would have shown funny, grayish, yellowish, greenish bananas. If bananas  look funny with a grey tint, they were allowed to become too cold. If you find a banana that does or does not look grayish, you can take your thumbnail and lift the tiniest bit of the skin. The produce manager taught me that. I had complained because I got bananas that looked okay and were horrible and turned grayish. If the skin is grey, the banana will never ripen. Some of these were that way. After letting them sit around, I dehydrated them, and they are perfectly fine now, very sweet.

As I sad, three bananas can fit on one Excalibur Dehydrator rack. I used six racks. So, I dehydrated 18 bananas, three of the bags I received. That made about 15 lbs dehydrated. Some of the bananas spoiled, split wide open and were attacked by hoards of fruit flies, so the hens got those. Some will be frozen if I don't get them on the racks tomorrow. I made one recipe of banana bread. I dehydrated one of the lemons I received free last week.

It took me forever to get the bananas cut and on the rack because I could only stand to fill one rack. That's right. I cut three bananas in slices and had to retreat to sit. I put some in water with lemon juice and will never do that again. I could tell absolutely no difference in color between treated bananas and untreated bananas. I should not have used the water. I know!

It has been ages since I made banana bread, so I did.

Four banana bread muffins

Then, I decided I would make several cupcakes./muffins for exbf to take to work. The pan is probably as old as I--estate sale find.  I only made four in the muffin tin. I decided to sample one since they bake faster than a loaf of bread. Then, they were all gone! I just won't tell him about the muffins.  Nest day: Want a slice of banana bread? Just a taste? Worried about your diabetes? No, no, and no. I forgot he cannot stand bananas.

Dehydrating banana tips
For these bananas, when I sliced them this thin--(), that is width from side to side, they turned out paper thin, so translucent.  I could practically read though them. They were not bad, just not what I wanted. When I sliced them this thin-- (    ), they still turned out thin, but what I wanted. I have a feeling that the ripeness of the banana has something to do with how thin they become after drying. But, I have no idea what the correlation could be...lol. I add nothing to these, nor do I pretreat them with lemon, at least not after the several bananas.

I had a round Walmart dehydrator that I used and thought was miraculous, even though bananas dried at different rates from inside to outside of each round tray. Then, I broke all but one rack. So, I bought a bunch of dehydrator trays at a yard sale, praying that they fit. They did. I sold that "new" dehydrator. The Excalibur, the model I have, is wonderful. You can even make yogurt and use it for dough rising. My yogurt maker was a freecycle deal, so no cost.

Your turn
Do you like bananas and banana chips as much as I do? Do you ever dehydrate bananas? Are you also  turned off by the additives in store-bought banana chips?

Onion Orgy Over

Yes, I cried. Then, I abhorred the stench of onions for the 36 hours it took to dry the onions. After the dehydration in the dehydrator, I spread all the onions on a plate in the oven with the light on. The oven light finished the drying process. And, the odor renewed itself. Lastly, I put the onions in a pint jar and set that in the oven with the light still on. After the pieces of onion seemed properly crunchy, I lay the lid on the jar, slightly crooked to allow the last of moisture and heat to escape.

I know you have seen this first picture, but I wanted the saga pictures all in one post. Here is how it all began. Yes, the details are fascinating...lol.

5 pounds of free onions



chopped--8 cups and a piece to use now

Onions took four dehydrator shelves

Yield--one pint dried onions

Further advice:

*Don't do this when the humidity is 100%

*Chopping onions finer would speed the process.

*Don't cry; it goes faster if you can see.

*Re jar this into four half-cups for easier handling during cooking.
  DONE, but without pictures of the four 4-ounce jars.

I am thoroughly pleased with the dehydrator except for one thing. I cannot see the controls. This is a tall dehydrator, placed on a counter and is under the upper cabinets. I have to use the book to work the controls and a flashlight to see the control marks for temperature and time.

But, I have dehydrated onions...all free to me except for a bit of electricity.

Drying, drying, drying, keep those fruits a drying....

Okay, so it is not here yet. But, a friend is giving me one for a gift. Yessirree! It is an Excalibur. It has a thermostat and a 26 hour timer.

It should be soooo much easier to preserve fruits and vegetables this way. Of course, freezing and canning won't be eliminated entirely.

At Publix, a store here in the South, there is a very expensive dried vegetable snack in the deli that I want to try to duplicate. I cannot afford to buy it, but I have tasted the dried mixture. Everything is all crispy. Mine may not be the same mix of vegetables or the same flavor, but it will be delicious, I know. I want to put some of the dehydrated fruit in a mix that will work for soup, all the things I like and use in my soup.

Even if I freeze some dehydrated fruit, I can use less freezer real estate for dried fruit. I am not entirely comfortable with the fact that it will not mold.

The cheap, $39 Walmart dehydrator that I owned actually scorched some things on the same tray with other items that were still soft and moist. Having a thermostat and timer should solve this problem. Plus, they are sending a book on dehydrating. It did dry zucchini slices to potato-chip-crispiness. Lots of my time was spent rotating trays and rotating food on the trays.

Free fruit or vegetables can be saved and preserved more easily. One year, I picked 250 lbs of pears. Free. I really despise pears! Maybe dried pears will be more palatable. Last year, the hens ate  most of the pears. One year, I made pear preserves and pear sauce. (Like applesauce) Pear sauce is good; pear preserves is delicious.

Dehydrating eggs is one of my goals. People keep warning me that the eggs need to be pasteurized. My thoughts are that if I handle the dried eggs like I do fresh or frozen eggs (like raw chicken), that I will be safe.

Options like sun-drying or drying in the car are there, I know.

The free instructional videos are great and inspiring. Drying sweet potatoes? Well, I have some of the 120 pounds left!

Your turn
Does anyone have any experience with the Excalibur dehydrator? Has anyone dried eggs? Do you have any positive or negative experiences to share?