Thursday, February 12, 2015

Dehydrating, a kitchen tip, and a little more...

The dehydrated is running most days and/or nights! 

This last weekend I did onions - yes one could tell from the odor! But using frozen onions purchased at the grocery was MUCH better than slicing my own. Thanks Marlene for the tip. 

When they were done, I did hash brown potatoes. I also did frozen green beans and frozen peas. That was so simple - just open the bags and pour onto a dehydrator tray. No blanching or anything.
All of these Mason Jars have dehydrated food! In the front, the smaller jars are two deep.
At the beginning of the week I tried frozen cauliflower. It worked fine but I did have to cut some of the florets to be smaller. 

I did another package of hash brown potatoes I'm trying to clear out my freezer

Then I tried grapes - these were blanched on the stem and then picked off and dried. They took over 24 hours and are fantastic! They are like a raisin but 100 times better! 

I have lots of zucchini in my freezer so I decided to try that. I thawed the sliced zucchini just enough to separate the pieces and I've already tried some of the dehydrated pieces in a Slow Cooker recipe. I'll be drying lots more soon! The shredded zucchini took longer to dry and looks fine. I need to reconstitute some and see how it works in baked goods. I'm sure it will be fine in soups and stews.

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This morning I boiled some chicken breasts with a few veggies so I'd have chicken broth. Then I needed to shred the chicken - do you know the fast way to shred it? I just read on the Internet and we all know whatever you read on the computer is right that you can use your KitchenAid mixer. I decided to try it. So I threw 6 cooked half breasts in the mixer bowl, put on the paddle, put on the guard to stop anything from flying out and making a mess, and turned it on. In about 1 minute, it was shredded! Wow!  Then I made chicken soup in no time flat - broth, shredded chicken, some dehydrated veggies, some spices, and a few noodles - voila!


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Today the house is QUIET. No workmen - the hardwood floors are done! The carpet guys come next week. I've been doing lots of fun things - taxes, laundry,... 


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This afternoon, our oldest granddaughter who lives in North Carolina was in a big Spelling Bee with the winner going to Washington, DC. Grace won her school's contest which meant beating the other classroom winners including her brother. She did great in the first round 9 of the 32 went down in the first round. We just found out that Grace went down in the 2nd round. I'm not sure how it works, but there is spelling and vocabulary. She is definitely a winner in our book! We are very proud of her!

3 comments:

  1. Sounds like you have been working that dehydrator day and night! Congrats to your granddaughter.

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  2. Yay for Grace ... even making it to the 2nd round is something to be proud of.

    It's amazing at all that you can dehydrate. That's interesting about shredding the chicken ... who knew?

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  3. I dehydrated onions today too - they were on sale at Krogers this week so I bought ten bags, put one in the freezer and dehydrated the other nine. I may do it again because I use tons of onions. I haven't tried grapes but I definitely will! blessings, marlene

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