Dehydrating Tomatoes Into Fake Figs

Okay!  When my tomatoes come in, I'm going to have to try this:  Dehydrating tomatoes into tomato figs. This is a video from youtube.com by imstillworkin. It is a recipe she found in an old cookbook, and it is a way to mimic figs. However, she commented that to her the taste was more like dates than figs. Whichever they taste like, I love them both. That makes this look like a win/win.

Dehydrating Celery

Since celery was at such a good price during Thanksgiving, I took the opportunity to stock up on it for my dried foods storage. There are as many different ways to dehydrate celery on the internet as there are to cook chili.

While doing this batch, I saw quite a few websites that talked about grinding the celery and mixing with salt to make celery salt. That's something I'd like to try in the future. I need to get a new grinder for spices before I can, though.


Edited 12/18/11 to add permalink to celery salt post:
http://jolagayle.blogspot.com/2011/12/celery-salt.html

After trying a few different methods, this is the one I've settled on as liking the best. It gives the best color, although it takes a longer amount of time.

1. Wash celery well.
2. Cut off leaves and wide root ends
3. Slice celery into 1/4" slices (crosswise)*
4. Put slices into bowl of cold water if processing a lot.**
5. Just before loading dehydrator, soak celery in 6 cups of water with 1 tablespoon of baking soda for 5 minutes.***
6. Drain and load dehydrator trays.
7. Dry at 110°F  until celery breaks easily, 16-18 hours. 

*This is the size with which I like to cook. I've seen directions for 1" slices and have considered doing that for putting under roasting meats; however, I've not done it so far.

**How much you process depends on the size of the celery, your stamina and dehydrator. It took 3 bunches of medium celery to fill 6 trays for my Nesco dehydrator.

***Do this in batches if you don't have a huge bowl.

Gummy Candy - Homemade

I saw this video on a recipe for gummy candy posted on youtube.com by imstillworkin, and immediately thought of all you that have kids. So I thought I'd put a link of it up here. This is especially good for you who have gardens or friends who do and who have an abundance of zucchini. Who doesn't have an abundance of zucchini if you put it in your garden?

Dehydrator Tray Screens - Plastic Mesh

Yesterday while I was in Paducah I finally scored the plastic mesh I've been looking for to make screens for the dehydrator trays. The screens are to keep small pieces from falling through the trays. The screens sold by the manufacturer cost $3 each, are flimsy, don't fit to the edge of the tray (wasting space), have divots in the side (I think to "help" you remove them) (wasting more space), and I just don't like them.

I've been looking for alternatives. I shopped online and never did find mesh that said it was food grade. I finally decided that in the grand scheme of things it wasn't that much of an issue for us. If you're one of those who has forsworn all plastic touching your food, then ignore this post. You'll have to find your own solution.

After hitting multiple stores in Paducah and Memphis - Michael's, Hancock Fabrics, Joann's, Bed Bath and Beyond, Home Depot - I finally found what I was looking for in Hobby Lobby. They are plastic mesh pieces that, as of 06/19/2011, cost $0.49 apiece.  It takes two pieces for one tray making the total cost per tray be $1.00.

What you do is cut the screens to fit your dehydrator trays. It took me two screens because I've not been able to find the mesh in pieces large enough to cover a whole tray. Therefore, I cut each piece to be one half of a tray, including a bit of overlap for coverage, and use two pieces.

Potatoes and Chicken

I've been dehydrating potatoes lately.  The last batch was for potatoes to turn into mashed taters. After peeling, I sliced the potatoes at about 1/4". Then I used the amazing Vidalia Chop Wizard, and turned them into little squares. Turned out perfectly.







Just to show how off the chicken, here's a picture of the pints of chicken that I canned. These four jars contain one whole chicken without bones.

After this first batch, I think I'm going to can the chicken in half pints.  Neither Max nor I like having more than 2 meals of the same thing. Both of us are trying to cut back on the amount of meat we eat, and I eat far less than he does.  The full pints are just too much for most dishes the chicken will be used in, for example - stir fries and casseroles.  I intend to do half-pints for those uses from now on. I think about the only thing the full pints could be used for are chicken salad and chicken and dumplings.

Dehydrated Eggs

This is to document my experimenting with dehydrating eggs. In making sure we have enough food on hand to get us through an emergency - say a tornado not killing us but wiping out a lot, or flood, or whatever - I've been working on getting some food stored up.  This post is about working on having eggs on hand.

The conclusion of the experiment is that:
1. It's not complete - I still have to try these in a something like a cake recipe.
2. If I didn't have food, these would be better than going without.

I tried rescrambling the dehydrated eggs.  The taste was A-okay; nothing at all wrong with the taste. Texture was a big fail. Talk about grainy. I have not yet tried these in a recipe such as a cake calling for eggs. I will try to remember to post back about this after I have done it.

Shelf-life of commercial powdered eggs is supposed to be 15 years. So good for long-term storage, good for nutrition, and good for long-term survival if TSHTF. I used this method to try to circumvent the cost of buying commercial powdered eggs.

The process is that you mix eggs in a bowl, then you scramble them. You take the cooked, scrambled eggs and dry them in your dehydrator until they're nice and crispy. Then you powder them and store the resulting powder.  When you want to use them, you rehydrate at a ratio of 1 tblsp dried egg to 2 tblsp of water, or 1:2.

Egg powder in blender after removing
from dehydrator

8 scrambled eggs dehydrated

1 tablespoon egg powder to 2 tablespoons water.
This is immediately after  mixing.

This is after letting it sit for 2 hours to see if it mixed
any better. It didn't.

These are the scrambled eggs made from the dehydrated
scrambled eggs. This shows what was left in the bowl and
gives an indication of the graininess to which I referred.

Dehydrating Lesson Learned 1

Today's lesson is: Don't put the small stuff on top of the large stuff and get some screens. I dried diced carrots on top of cabbage. Oops. Don't do that. The carrots fall through the tray as they decrease in size. Believe me, it's no fun picking a half package of carrots out of a head of cabbage!

The last time I dried foods it was apples and fruit leathers when Josh was a kid. The problem with both was that they barely lasted past getting them off the dehydrator! With the apples, it was worse as the peeled and sliced apples barely made it to the dehydrator. He and his buddies, Melissa and Vanessa, just hung around waiting for the servant, me, to feed them peeled, seeded and sliced fruit.

I swear those 3 went through 2 fresh apples, each, every time I dehydrated apples. Then they went through the same amount the next day when I took the apples out of the dehydrator. I barely had the energy to get apples stored up at all.

It's been absolutely ages since I've a dehydrated anything, but I found some things I wanted to try. Since my original dehydrator is in storage, I got myself a Nesco Snackmaster and have been having a go at it. I think I got the Snackmaster. I'm not sure, though. The price was right, but after I got it home, I realized neither the box nor the dehydrator have the word "Snackmaster" on it.

Nonetheless, I'm very happy with it. It has different temperatures that range from 95° to 160°F. It came with four trays and the ability to hold 12; the other 8 have to be purchased separately. This model dries from the top down as opposed to my other one in storage which dries from the bottom up. The advantages of this that I've seen so far are that:

• The bottom can actually be submersed and washed. 
• The weight of the lid with the dryer in it seems to help hold the trays together and not losing air.

Now you may ask, "What's got you all hot and bothered to dehydrate?" I went on a little web surfing binge into preserving food because the recent tornadoes and flooding have me thinking a bit that a supply of food on hand wouldn't be a bad thing. 

Are you aware that if there was a natural disaster in your area that closed off roads, say due to an ice storm, flooding, a bridge gone out or downed trees, that the local grocery stores only have enough food to last three, yes, 3, days as of May 5, 2011?