Here is Ohio State University's fact sheet on drying fruits and vegetables. This is an informative several-page document to download in .pdf format.

Please note that it says drying outdoors is not recommended in Ohio. I would not recommend it much of anywhere these days. However, if you do it anyway, please read what the fact sheet says about freezing or heating the foods to kill insect eggs. (See? You don't really want to do it outdoors, do you?) I recommend a small electric dryer or the oven set on a low temperature. I use 150 for green onions, with the door propped slightly open, for example.

Some foods are steamed before they are dried. Read directions carefully on the chart provided, and read all the preliminary instructions. Please, do not think this is a step to skip. Directions are included for how to make fruit leathers, and some vegetables can be done in a similar way. Even if you don't have a dehydrator, you can still do many foods in your oven with the help of tips from this fact sheet.

If you are going to do fruit leathers, it does say to line cookie sheets with plastic wrap, not wax paper or foil. I would suggest buying a pack of the 14 x 14 teflon coated sheets made for the Excaliber or other square food dehydrators. However, your cookie sheet will be a different size, and this may require some trimming to use. These sheets are made specifically for food dehydration.

Helpful Links

I'm teaching a food storage mini-class in May at the Anderson Country Prep Fair here in Tennessee. As I'm going over the things I want to bring out in such a quick class, I realized there are a lot of links I want to share, and they don't link from a piece of paper! So, here is a post of helpful links for everyone.

Chef Tess: Meals in a Jar

Chef Tess is often featured on the Honeyville Farms blog, and that's where I first found her. Her latest post Kid Friendly Meals in a Jar is a perfect example of the kinds of things she plans. Here are several other links to her jar ideas.

1. Four Concenience Meals in a Jar
2. Meals in a Jar posts with this label
3. 6 Amazing Casseroles fro one recipe!

That will get you started and you can continue to browse and click on her sites at leisure.

Thrive Life

Probably my favorite storage foods, especially the freeze-dried.

Three Suggestions From Me:

1. Freeze-dried Corn - eat it right out of the can!
2. Taco TVP - tastes great in tacos or Mexican casseroles, as is, or add your favorite ingredients, such as that corn I mentioned! Or eat it on a hamburger bun, yum! Do NOT mix it with a sauce like Manwich. Just sayin'.
3. Amaranth a very flexible grain and healthy

Honeyville Grain aka Honeyville Farms. This is my second favorite company.

Three Suggestions From Me:

1. Almond Flour I know it's a little expensive, but it's gluten free and makes it possible for those who need gluten free to have many things they couldn't otherwise have. This link has a video of Chef Tess making cookies with it.
2. #10 can stove This uses an empty #10 can and the quickstove fuel to turn it into a lightweight emergency cooking source. Great to fold up in your 72-hour kit, and all it takes in addition is a #10 can - which you may stuff with first aid supplies for that 72-hour kit!
3. Chocolate Soy Milk for those who are lactose intolerant, this makes a great substitute in smoothies or even in a cup of hot cocoa.

Emergency Essentials

This one always throws me because the address is beprepared, not Emergency Essentials. The brand on the can is Provident Pantry, so that's three names to keep straight! In addition, they don't show both sizes of a product on the same page, as Thrive Life does, so I sometimes have to go hunting. They DO have a paper catalog you can have sent to your home, though. If you can get together with friends and do group orders, they have group specials each month and you can save with quantity buying.

Three Suggestions from me:

1. Freeze-dried Green Onions I keep a large can of these open in my pantry and toss in a handful to almost everything I'm cooking. Unless it's scrambled eggs or something that I'm cooking without liquid, I don't even rehydrate, just toss them in.
2. Lentils
are wonderful, especially in soup, but thrown into other things, you don't even notice they are there while they are providing wonderful nutrition.
3. Soybeans are a great source of protein and calcium. These can be cooked or ground into flour.

Auguson Farms

This is a favorite of a friend of mine, and they have some things which are wonderful.

Three suggestions from me:

1. Bakery Kit: Pancake mix, Biscuit Mix, and Bread & Roll Mix, a #10 can of each. There is no leavening in the bread mix, so you would have to provide that.
2. Basic Starter Kit: #10 cans of Hard White Wheat, Long Grain White Rice, Regular Rolled Oats; For $25, you can start your food storage with these three basics!
3. Chocolate Chip Cookies Everyone needs a little treat now and then, so store some for long term! After all that wheat chili and emergency food, you're going to need something familiar and sweet.

LDS Welfare Centers

I've saved the best for last. The link takes you to a map where you can look for the little wheat sign to find out where the closest cannery is to you. #10 cans are available at those locations.

This link goes to a page where you can download the order form and see what is available, and how much it costs. ALWAYS call your local center to find out what days and hours they operated, AND how they handle purchasing of products. You do not have to be LDS in order to go to a cannery and buy products.

For things on this list, I would always buy them here and save a lot of money. This is non-profit. I can highly recommend the hot cocoa, the refried beans, the oats, both regular and quick, the potato pearls (though not for long-term storage) ... well, pretty much everything on there is in my long-term food storage, and I use the oatmeal all the time.

These come ONLY in #10 cans (with the exception of items on the bottom of the form, such as potato pearls), so be sure you keep them closed tightly except for long enough to dip out what you want. An oxygen absorber DOES become saturated and then doesn't work. Don't for instance, leave a can open while you bake your cookies! The beans and wheat don't have or need oxygen absorbers, but once open, they do need to be stored carefully and used within a couple of years.

That's it for today!

Disaster Preparation

I think, with the coming of Tropical Storm/Hurricane Sandy, many people have seen the plus and the minus of disaster preparedness. We can prepare all we want, but if we are in the direct path of such a storm, and our house is lifted from its foundation and moved down the block, it may do us no good. However, if we are prepared and because of such a storm, we are without electricity for a few days to a couple of weeks, the preparedness will save our families from more discomfort and disaster than there must be in such a situation.

In addition, if you and I both prepare, and your house is destroyed, but mine isn't, then I can share with you, and vice versa. We've seen examples of forest fires skipping over several houses and then burning others. Tornadoes do the same. In the case of a storm like Sandy, there were still houses that stood, maybe a little higher and above the flood, or maybe the wind didn't hit the house just right.

Even though I wasn't in the path of Sandy, it caused me to pause and reflect on my stored supplies. I decided I definitely have to have more small propane bottles. I also decided a sterno stove and some cans of fuel are a must. I had been thinking in terms of using my grill and solar cooking, but both of those might be impossible, so a third alternative needs to be available. If it's chilly, and I'm without power for several days, I might need more than the propane I have stored for my heater and lanterns. It doesn't do any good to have 10 cans of oatmeal if I have no way to cook it! I am adding a new recipe today. This one doesn't depend on the shelf-safe long term storage. It's a good meal for any time, but would work well in a Dutch oven over charcoal, too. Note to self: Buy more charcoal and don't store it in the bags.

The Harvest Fruits

Okay, so not my own harvest - the tomatoes and peppers are gone now. Still, the grapes and apples I bought from Bulk Natural Foods were someone's harvest, so it counts. I hadn't planned to purchase grapes and apples in the same order. In fact, I specifically chose NOT to purchase the apples. However, when someone else backed out of buying them, I wound up doing so.

First, let me talk about Concord grapes. Oh, my gosh! I never knew what a difference it makes what kind of grapes you use for jelly. I've done all kinds in the past, and even made it with my first graders from frozen grape juice. It all tasted fine to me! But let me tell you, there is a huge difference and now I know it. The Concord grapes I bought were not that great for eating. They were okay, tasty enough, but just not what I would consider normal eating grapes. The skins have an interesting flavor. That flavor is what makes them so perfect for jelly, or jam, I suppose.

The skins on the grapes split easily, and, faced with an entire box of them, I decided to simply pick out the dessicated ones (very few) and the one dead bee, rinse them and get rid of any tiny spider webs, and call it good. I filled the pot with about half the grapes, stems and all, squished them by pressing down on them with a pint jar, and let those boil down. I added about a cup of water to keep them from burning before enough juice could come out. Then I poured the juice that came off easily into a gallon glass jar, put the rest of the pot of now-smashed and drained grapes into the collander over a bowl, and waited for that to drain out. Then I did it all over again.

In the end, I had about 6.5-7 quarts of beautiful dark purple grape juice. I froze one of the gallon containers, shared some of the second one with my good friend, drank a couple of glasses (and was it ever good!) and now it's jelly making tomorrow.

Today, I went through the whole process with the apples. That corer/peeler/slicer I bought was used on these apples. It's magic! Sort of. I intended to simply toss out the peelings and the cores, but after doing that about 4-5 times, I could hear my grandmother's voice screaming in my head that it was a terrible waste, so after that, I tossed them in a couple of huge bowls instead.

When I'd made two batches of applesauce and a batch of apple slices, I took the skins and cores, and random odd pieces that had broken or had seed bits, and put them in the big pot to boil, just like I had done the grapes. The apples didn't yield as much juice - about half a gallon, but considering it came from throw-away food scraps (no, no, I don't mean I dug the ones out of the trash!), that's not so bad, is it?

So, tomorrow is jelly day. I'll get pictures and post them.

It's Fall!

Okay, not exactly officially yet, but that means harvest time! Though the berries are gone, the tomato plants dried up, the peaches finished, still there are things coming my way that will provide canning opportunities.

I will soon be ordering grapes and apples from Bulk Foods. I had a "warning" of what's coming yesterday, so now I'm waiting on pins and needles to see exactly what will be offered. LOL

I see grape jelly, applesauce, apple butter, apple cobbler, dehydrated apple rings, and many other good things in my future in October! Maybe pumpkin pie later in the month!

My apple corer is all set to go.

I've ordered one that is more massive-amounts friendly, and peels and slices the apple, too. This cast iron one which clamps onto the counter:

I think I can clamp it on the counter at the edge of the sink and drop all the sliced apples into a bowl in the sink. I'll keep you posted!

What Good Luck, What Bad Luck!

This week, I was at Girls Camp with 125 girls, 12-18, from my stake. As a friend put it, they were "between the ages of 'pain in the neck' and 'trouble'." The week was great, of course! There were many spiritual moments, there is nothing like hearing this song sung by 125 young women's sweet voices.

It was a wrench to come home from those special moments to real life again! At home, I found my good friend had brought my box of peaches and left them on the kitchen counter. What Good Luck!




However, before I found the peaches, they were discovered by Sugar Ants. What Bad Luck!

An ant massacre ensued, in which every ant warrior was killed. What Good Luck! For me, anyway. Not so much, for them.

Half the box was already bruised and getting soft. What Bad Luck!

I was able to save enough from that half to make 3 batches of peach jam. What Good Luck!

Sadly, I had only enough of the pectin I like that uses only small amounts of sugar for two batches. What Bad Luck!

I made a double batch, and froze the rest of the peach smash. I can get more pectin at the berry farm. What Good Luck!

Today, I canned the other half of the peaches, and there were about half a dozen left (after the one I cut up on my cereal for breakfast - yum!) so I froze those for another batch of jam, too. What Good Luck!

I didn't want to smash them too much, so they are floating in the syrup.

You might wonder why I can in pints instead of quarts. I'm only canning for one - me. Each jar holds about 2 very large peaches. If I had cut the pieces smaller or smashed them, I could have gotten more in, but I wanted them bigger.

Jam info: The only thing I did differently from the directions in the Pomona Pectin was that instead of 1/2 c. of lime juice, I added 1/2 c. of Real Lime juice. That's the concentrate. I could have watered it down to lime juice, but it adds just a little tang of lime to the peach jam that is yummy.

Syrup for peaches: I made ultra light syrup. I used about 2.5 cups I had left from the raspberries, and added another 3 cups of water and 1/3 c. of sugar plus 5 teaspoons of preservative to keep the color from going dark. I boiled that while I heated jars and sliced the peaches. Then it was stuff the jar full, pour in syrup, get bubbles out and cap with a hot lid and ring before plunking into the water bath. Can 25 minutes at boiling for pints and 30 minutes for quarts.

By Noon on Thursday

It wasn't a deadline. It was a surprise. By noon, I had these two projects complete!

Jam:

Cobbler berries:

I wanted to get a view of the beautiful jewel color of the jam, so I took it outside and set it on the deck railing. I don't think it really comes through, even with the sun shining, but my eyes can see it when I look through the jar. However, this is a great example of good bokeh, without even trying! Bokeh has been defined as "the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light". In other words, it's the blur behind the focus. This is a good one. Sometimes that kind of thing is awful, but not this time. Still, I wish you could see the sparkly, clear color the camera couldn't catch, at least not with me behind the lens!

The berries were picked in the first cool of the morning on Tuesday, after rain the night before. It was the first cool morning around here in a while. I wish I could say I went to the forest and the berries were free, but I have no clue where such things might exist around here. The best berry picking I ever did was with Paul, my husband of many years, in Jenny Jump forest in New Jersey. We picked black raspberries glutinously! It was my first time picking. That bounty was turned into so many jars of jam, mostly over a wood fire, adding a smokey flavor. My first jam making experience, too, and it was so much I didn't mind giving some away. We had so much fun in our week's vacation!

Over the years, Paul and I made many, many batches of strawberry jam, working as a team to get it in the jars, wiped down, lids on and into the water bath. It's a little trickier for me to do it alone, but it worked and now I have jam and the makings of small cobblers for one.

Take advantage of the summer's bounty, whether by picking your own (that was about $8 cost for berries, and I only used a scant 1-1/4 cup of sugar in it) or buying at great prices at the grocery store.

The pectin I used came from the farm. It's called Pomona's Universal Pectin and you can find it at their website or farm stands and co-ops. I love it! It worked like a charm, and allows you to use as little or as much sugar, honey or artificial sweetner as you like.

One box is $6, but it is for 2-4 batches, depending on whether you make single or double or even triple batches. The recipe I used (included in the box, and others on the site) used 2 teaspoons, and there shoul be enough for 3 more batches in the box. Economical. The pectin is not activated by sugar, as with Sure-Jell and Certo. Instead, it's activated with calcium (included in the packet with directions for use) from orange peelings. It was so super easy, and I know it jelled nicely - I scraped the pot after it cooled! Those scrapings were yummy, and I could have used less sugar still, even though my berries were definitely on the tart side! Next time, I'll know.

The recipe for raw packing the rest of the blackberries came from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving, and I used the ultra light syrup listed.