Preparedness 9.0 / Dehydrating Frozen Foods, Autumn Decor!

 

Preparedness 9.0/ Dehydrating Frozen Foods -

I wanted to start doing more of a variety of food preparedness so I decided to bring out my food dehydrator! I bought it probably 15 to 20 years ago and didn't use it that often, but it works great. I have the Nesco/American Harvest brand.  I started reading articles about how some people bought frozen foods (already chopped, etc.). Once thawed you can then just put them on the food dehydrator. I started off with some chopped spinach which work great! I wanted something to add to soups, scrambled eggs, etc. Fresh spinach is very perishable so I thought drying some would be a good option. The first batch of spinach came out great! I did two medium sized bags of spinach which converted to one medium sized jar, see above.

I also bought a bag of blueberries and will also be working on some cubed carrots and peas. One nice thing about food dehydrators is you can turn it on and walk away. One of my rules however is I never run it over night while I'm sleeping. To me it's just not worth the fire hazard. I dried one bag of blueberries, definitely took a lot longer since there was more liquid in them. Those converted to a smaller jar. I'll probably do a few more bags of blueberries since those are really great in cookies, muffins, oatmeal, etc. 

blueberries

Off to the pantry! 

I did realize after the fact I should have sprayed a little Pam or oil on the food dehydrator trays as the berries were pretty sticky. You could also use parchment paper. So if you want to do some food dehydrating just buy some frozen veggies already prepped and throw them on the tray! Needless to say you can also do your own or store-bought fresh vegetables and do the prep yourself. We getting more tomatoes so I think I'm a dry some, slice them really thin and dry 'em up! You can dry in your oven on low heat too, just use a cookie sheet. I may try some jerky too.

What I bought this week- 

Some canned foods from the Dollar Store. Goya red beans, some Halloween candy (hoping for trick or treaters), two totes of shelf stable 2% milk, two bags of lentils, Himalayan salt, two tins of Mackerel in tomato sauce, barbeque sauce, two cans of coconut milk to make some curry or smoothies. They had lots of canned meats, but some are way too salty for me. I bought a small amount of some mylar bags and oxygen absorbers to package up smaller amounts. I don't want to preserve huge bags of grains, etc for just two people. Easier to do smaller bags, open as you need them. Got a few fun Halloween things for my home office, not going back to the office any time soon.  And a fun Autumn sign for the deck herb box-

speaking of autumn....

Autumn Decor!

I never liked putting up Autumn decor when it's hot. Now that it's cooled off I was in the mood for putting up some Autumn goodies! I got out my seasonal items and bought a couple bags of small pumpkins. I put all my generic stuff away, now I'm feeling ready for some ginger cake! My mom always made boxed ginger cake in the fall, I still occasionally make that, but I had a handful or two of raisins or chopped nuts. Quick dessert on a busy weekend, top with whipped cream and that's fall to me. Ironically I'm not much on all of the pumpkin flavored stuff. The only reason I even made pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving let's because everybody else liked it. To me it's just squash! Here's a peak around the house, we'll get cornstalks soon for the front entrance and a few larger pumpkins-

Dining room

Living room

My Etsy faves! Toot and Lil' Toot!

From my library days, Starbucks reading owl