Dehydrated Food Archives - Simply Preparing

Dehydrating Frozen Vegetables

February 13, 2017 By ParkerMama 4 Comments

Find a great sale on frozen vegetables, but there’s no room in the freezer? No worries! Dehydrating frozen vegetables is a simple prep skill to master.

Why You Should Dehydrate Frozen Vegetables

- Unless you have a really big garden, dehydrating frozen vegetables is much cheaper than buying fresh, and you can dehydrate frozen vegetables year round.
- Dehydrating frozen vegetables requires no washing, peeling, slicing, chopping, or blanching, saving you a lot of time.
- Needs less room (much less!) for storage!

*this post contains affiliate links

Which Dehydrator Should You Choose?

I use *this post contains affiliate links an Excalibur Dehydrator, and love it. I also own a Nesco dehydrator, which is much cheaper and works well for dehydrating frozen vegetables. You can quickly and easily recoup the cost of both of these dehydrators in just a few months of dehydrating your own fruits and veggies.

How To Dehydrate Frozen Vegetables

Simply spread out the mixed veggies on the dehydrator trays. I didn’t worry that the pieces were touching, I knew they would shrink as they dried and it wouldn’t be an issue. As a matter of fact, my one POUND bag of veggies shrunk down to 3/4 of a cup!

I dehydrated these @125 degrees and they took about 10 hours. Please look at your dehydrator model to see what temperature is correct for your machine. The time to dehydrate will always depend on the humidity in the room where you are dehydrating.

Pro Tip: Want to learn more about dehydrating foods? Hands down, the best book on the market is Tammy Gangloff’s The Ultimate Dehydrator Cookbook. In this book, Tammy covers it all from how to dehydrate foods, to recipes that only need water added!

How To Store Dehydrated Frozen Vegetables

Now that you have a batch of inexpensive dehydrated frozen vegetables, you’ll need to store them properly. Here’s where a Food Saver comes in so handy!

My favorite way to store my dehydrated vegetables is to pour them into a wide mouth canning jar, and using the mason jar sealer accessory, vacuum seal the jar. You won’t need a ring for this, the vacuum sealing will securely keep the lid on.

How To Use Dehydrated Frozen Vegetables

- Add a handful or two to soups or stews. Perfect for crockpot cooks!
- Add some to a blender and turn them into a veggie powder. This powder can then be added
- to all sorts of things you’d like to up the nutritional value of.
- Smoothies!
- Use for camping and hiking trips.

No Time For Dehydrating Frozen Vegetables? No Problem!

LOVE the idea of having veggies and fruits in your long term food storage as a hedge against inflation and emergencies? But don’t have time to dehydrate your own? Thrive carries a wide variety of sfreeze dried food for this very reason! Check them out!

So, which frozen vegetable will you be dehydrating first?

Preserve blackberries for long term storage

September 27, 2016 By ParkerMama 5 Comments

I love to preserve blackberries. It’s so easy to insure the great taste of summer in your food preps with just a small amount of work. Rich in bioflavonoids, vitamin C and antioxidants, blackberries are nutritional power houses perfect for long term food storage pantries. Here are my favorite ways to preserve blackberries.

How To Freeze Blackberries

One way to preserve blackberries is to simply wash them using a 4:1 solution of water to vinegar, allowing them to air dry and then ‘flash freezing’ them.

To flash freeze, simply lay out the now dry berries on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Pop the tray into the freezer until the berries are frozen, then package them in a freezer safe container.

By ‘flash freezing’ the berries first, you’ll be able to simply pour out the amount of frozen berries you need.

Preserve blackberries without the seeds.

I prefer my blackberries in a seedless form, especially in smoothies, or my son’s blenderized diet.

First, rinse the blackberries with the 4:1 water to vinegar solution and puree them in a blender.

Then, with the back of a spoon, push the blackberry puree through a sieve into a clean container. Easy!

Fill ice cube trays or the BPA FREE trays used to freeze baby food with the blackberry puree, and freeze. Frozen blackberry ice cubes are a fun way to preserve blackberries. The result is a whole bunch of frozen blackberry puree ice cubes that can be added to smoothies, thawed to flavor yogurt, or as base for popsicles .

How To Dehydrate Blackberries

Dehydrated blackberries last for years when stored properly. Rinse berries in a 4:1 solution of vinegar water and allow to air dry in a dehydrator set to Cool, or no heat. Dehydrating wet blackberries makes them flatten out.

Once the blackberries are dry, set the temperature of the dehydrator to 125F and allow them to dehydrate for 18-20 hours. Blackberries are done when you can easily crush a berry into powder with just your fingers.

PRO TIP: Interested in learning more about dehydrating foods? I love The Ultimate Dehydrator Cookbook by Tammy Gangloff. Tammy also has a new book, Quick and Easy Dehydrated Meals in a Bag. Check it out!

Make Blackberry Powder

Fill a sieve with dehydrated blackberries and crush them with the back of a spoon, catching the powder in a bowl. You’ll be left with just dehydrated blackberry seeds in the sieve which you can throw in your compost pile.

Sprinkle blackberry powder in teas and juices, or into your daily water intake.

You could make DIY Blackberry Lip Balm with the powder!

Spoon blackberry powder over your morning oatmeal or yogurt and into your smoothie for a ‘grit-less’ drink.

Rehydrate your blackberry powder and use it in your favorite blackberry jam recipe. Bonus! No seeds!

Use dehydrated blackberries in place of fresh blackberries to make a blackberry flavored simple syrup to use to flavor cocktails and sodas.

Too busy to preserve blackberries yourself?

Just not up to dehydrating or freezing your own blackberries. I totally understand! I store cans of freeze dried blackberries in my long term food storage too! A quick trip to Thrive Life and you could do the same!

Suburban Homesteading

July 20, 2016 By ParkerMama 1 Comment

While talking with a group of friends, each of whom expressing a wish to buy land to homestead on. I couldn’t figure out why my friends felt the need to wait until they had a bigger plot of land to begin their journey to self sufficiency. Why not start homesteading in your own backyard? Right now!

Suburban Homesteading. It really is a ‘thing’!

Let’s face it. Not all of us are going to be able to move from suburbia into the wilds of Nowhere, USA. Postponing self sufficiency until all conditions are deemed perfect, could result in being unprepared in an emergency situation.

I’m of the mindset where you do the best you can with what you have now, while following a well thought out plan of where you want to be. My in between is suburban homesteading.

What Does Suburban Homesteading Look Like?

We live on your average 1/3 of an acre in your average suburban neighborhood. There is a stream that runs through my back yard from April to October that provides irrigation to the farmers living further out. It used to run heavy and deep, but we’re in a dry cycle right now and it’s been much more shallow the last several years.

My neighborhood consists of about 60 homes and we are surrounded on one side by a private golf course and on another by a fairly busy road. Luckily we are tucked deeply enough into our neighborhood that we don’t see or hear the traffic.

Most of my neighbors garden for summer salad and October pumpkin kind of reasons. I often think of several neighbors getting together to plan out who will grow what, and then sharing. This makes even small space gardening more profitable.

My Spring garden includes, kale, mustard greens, swiss chard, broccoli, beets and peas. The Summer garden boasts tomatoes, cucumbers, summer squash, beans, pumpkins, winter squash and peppers.

I was thrilled to recently plant both an apple an a cherry tree. Neighbors have several of both so I know we’ll be fine pollination wise.

You can find raspberry bushes in diverse places and a large section for blackberries in our back yard. I love having a freezer full of berries to last the year. Half a whiskey barrel is home to a thriving black currant bush.

Along one side of my lot I have my herb garden. It’s also home to a few cabbage plants, lettuce, arugula and dikon radishes.

Herb wise I grow Sage, Thyme, Oregano, Parsley, Basil, Chives, Rosemary, Peppermint, Spearmint, Anise, Heal All, Horseradish, Horehound, Comfrey, Vervain, and Chamomile.

This is my first year to really grow medicinal herbs, and I’m excited for how things will turn out. Rosemary Gladstar’s books have been inspirational as I grow my family’s self sufficiency and as we grow our homestead.

I’m thinking of an Elderberry Bush too, as I make our own Elderberry Syrup to help ward off colds and flu.

There is a big stack of homesteading books just waiting in my Amazon cart that I can’t wait to dive into. Dreaming is a big part of the fun of having a suburban homestead. Using the experiences of others, I’ll create a suburban homestead that reflects the unique needs a capabilities of my family.

Can I grow all the food my family eats on my Suburban Homestead?

Growing everything my family would need here on our suburban homestead simply isn’t possible, at least not yet. But like all homesteaders I am pretty creative and resourceful.

To help us become more self reliant as we grow our backyard homestead, we implemented a few new ideas.

*Trading bumper crops for things I can’t grow in my back yard.

*Paying close attention to the FB yard sale posts and watch for those inviting people to come and glean from their trees and gardens.

*Planting early Spring seeds and plants.

*Growing a Fall garden for fresh greens through the colder months.

*Storing long term food items such as beans, rice, sugar, and flour. Daisy Luther’s The Pantry Primer is a great source of information on getting a year’s supply as cheaply as possible.

*Purchasing long term freeze dried food at the best possible prices using the plans offered by Thrive’s Montly Q Program. Having freeze dried food on my shelf in case of an emergency offers great peace in these turbulent times.

It’s a win-win. More time in the garden. More fresh, organic food and I don’t have to worry if there is a recall with it’s name on it down the road.

Self sufficiency. Homesteading. Food security. Part of the fun is in the journey that gets you to where you are going.

What goals have you set to become self sufficient? Is suburban homesteading something you might try?

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Egg Prices are Going Up. Way Up.

February 2, 2015 By ParkerMama Leave a Comment

Egg prices are going up. An announcement was made at the beginning of January alerting consumers to a price hike in eggs as California starts requiring hens be raised in spaces big enough to move around in.

States selling eggs to California must also meet these standards in order to continue doing business in the Golden State.

*this post contains affiliate links

Less Chickens = Less Eggs = Prices Going Up

So much for thinking chickens would suddenly be living out their days in luxury digs with prices staying the same. With the new standards, chicken farmers are sending their flocks to their Heavenly Rewards rather than building new, larger buildings to house the hens in.

Less chickens mean less eggs, which drives up prices. It’s the whole cost vs. demand thing.

How Thrive Makes Storing Eggs EASY!

I’m thinking it’s a good time to make sure my preps include some shelf stable eggs. Thrive makes this easy with their great tasting scrambled egg mix! .

One way to combat rising food prices is to purchase on sale and in bulk. This allows you to ‘lock in’ the price of a food. Purchasing enough to last a year will give you amble opportunity to begin looking for a good sale price before you run out. Doing this allow you to avoid being victim of high prices.

How To Use Thrive Powdered Eggs

Pro Tip: : How do you rehydrate powered/dehydrated eggs? It’s easy. In any recipe calling for eggs use 2T. dry egg powder + 3 T. water per fresh egg. Mix well.

Other Brands Of Shelf Stable Eggs for Long Term Storage

OvaEasy are actually freeze dried egg crystals. The shelf life per unopened bag is 2 1/2 years.

Made from only chia seeds and garbanzo beans, Neat Egg is an excellent egg replacement for those who choose not to eat animal products.

Are egg prices going up where you live? Do you store eggs? Do you use powered eggs in place of fresh ones?

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