Tag: Preserving

Dehydrating Kale and Making Green Powder
Prepping · Preserving · Recipes

Dehydrating Kale and Making Green Powder

Sarah

It’s been a bountiful year on the homestead for kale production. Cold wet springs lead to greens growing well, and once the sun showed up mid summer, the heat kicked off the growth. I have 3 varieties this year going on our land on Whidbey Island in Washington State. We face the Salish Sea so we have sunny/windy but dry in summer. It’s called the Olympic Rainshadow for that reason.

Overall, I don’t eat a lot of it fresh. We grow it for our chickens mostly. They love that stuff.

Chickens are just feral pets you didn’t know you needed in your life.

With the rate of growth this summer though….I harvested a ton the other day. I have a setup down in our gardens, where I have a tent set up that I can work in, in the shade. I stripped the kale of the bottom parts, which is rarely tender. That the chickens got in piles. Which they noshed on.

I washed up a very tightly packed kitchen sink worth. We grow regenerative/organic, and don’t use anything on our plants. Mostly just making sure no bugs came in. I let it air dry a bit, spread out in piles on the counter, on towels.

Then I would grab bundles of leaves, and roughly chop it up. All in told, I had 3 very stuffed gallon bags of kale leaves, cut into wide ribbons.

Pro-tip? Have a paper bag on the floor for ugly parts, to toss it into. Also, hungry chickens to feed it to.

I spread the leaves out on the dehydrator trays. My dehydrator has 6 trays, and they were well stuffed. In the end, I came back and did another 3 trays later, for 9 trays worth. Our dehydrator has been with us for a very long time. It is an older L’equip I found in a cooking store at least 17 years ago. It keeps ticking, so I have no complaints for now. As long as it has a fan, and you can adjust the temperature, then it should work fine. Dehydrators can be very affordable (you can pick up a Nesco for $70, and they are made in the US – and work great). They don’t have to be fancy to work well.

Fresh on the trays.

I set the dehydrator to the highest setting, on furnace blast. There is no need to be delicate with leaves like this. The temp is around 155*. I flipped the trays every hour to get even drying, as the motor is on the bottom. Bottom tray goes to the top and keep repeating.

5 hours later they were crispy dry. I let them cool down overnight.

In the morning, in a number of batches, I ran the dry leaves in the dry container of our Vitamix blender, until powdered. Most blenders can at least get it chopped up. A cheap method is have a coffee grinder that is only for grinding dry items like this and herbs.

I transferred each batch to a mason jar, to store until needed. A canning funnel makes that task easy.

Out of all the fresh kale, I got about 16 ounces dry powder, well shaken down. I processed it a second time when it was all done, to have a very smooth powder.

How to use?

  • Add to rice for green rice. A Tablespoon is plenty. Cook the rice in broth or broth powder with a bit of of olive oil, sprinkle on some parmesan cheese at the end.
  • Do you have a smoothie recipe made with dried/freeze-dried fruit? Add in a Tablespoon green powder. You can use this smoothie recipe to add what you want to it for a portable dry mix (recipe is on our sister site).
  • Add to pasta sauces you make, or to mac n’ cheese, for more nutrition.

Add in some vital greens to your diet easily! But do it sparingly, for once it is powdered, it is very concentrated.

~Sarah

Freeze-Dried Salsa: Making and Using It
Freeze Drying · Prepping · Preserving · Recipes

Freeze-Dried Salsa: Making and Using It

Sarah

We love our Harvest Right freeze-dyer and have had it running quite a bit this year. From carrots to pumpkin pie, to noodles and candy, we just love seeing what will freeze-dry in it.

We grow a lot of peppers, onions and tomatoes on our homestead, and yearly I water bath can at least 100 pint jars a summer as salsa. So to say the least, this project was an easy one for me try out freeze-drying. Being we did it in spring, I wanted to start slimming down jars in our pantry, knowing we would be making fresh soon. Making 5 trays worth of instant salsa used up 15 pints quickly. That’s 15 mason jars emptied and ready for this year’s harvest.

To start the process in our Harvest Right freeze-dryer, I cut 5 sheets of parchment paper (Costco rolls of it are affordable, and massive in size) to fit the trays, with paper coming up on all the sides of the metal trays. I save one paper piece and use it as a template for every time I need to do this, to save time. We do own the silicone mat liners that Harvest Right sells, and use them often, but for liquids such as this, it is far easier to have the sides lined as well. Less cleanup.

I then opened up and spread on each tray 3 16-ounce jars of salsa. If you were buying salsa this project would be rather expensive. But for me, since I produce it, it is quite affordable. Having said this – you can make fresh salsa and proceed. You would just need 6 cups salsa per tray. Do not drain it!

I covered each tray with a plastic tray lid cover and stacked them in our freezer till frozen (it took a few hours). (The tray lids are bought separately on Harvest Right’s website, but are WELL worth the additional cost, as it makes prepping so much easier. In fact we own a second set of the metal trays so we can have the next batch freezing while a batch is drying.)

Meanwhile, I prepped the freeze-dryer and got it going to chill down. It can take an hour or two for this to happen.

Once ready, we put all the trays in, closed it up and set it to go. It takes about 24 hours or so to be done.

Once fully freeze-dried, we broke it apart and bagged it up for long-term storage in mylar bags – although I always do at least one mason jar worth of product to test out and to watch for any changes. All bags have oxygen absorbers and desiccant packets added as well. We then seal the mylar bags using our Avid Armor USV32 Chamber Sealer. It pulls the air out for an efficient seal.

Mark dates, and what’s in the bag, and all done! Just store it till it’s time to use it – and salsa has so many uses besides just dipping chips in it.

Now then, lets talk about rehydrating the freeze-dried salsa!

In the picture are 3 bowls: Just out of the jar, rehydrated with boiled water and rehydrated with cool water. Both of the rehydrated bowls sat for 15 minutes, stirred periodically.

We used ¼ cup dry mix and about 6 Tablespoons water. Start with 4 Tablespoons, add as needed to get the thickness you desire.

This part I found interesting because the cold prep was far better than the hot prep.

How so?

The bowl with hot water stayed thinner, even after sitting far longer. It also mushed up a bit I felt.

The cold prep was instantly thick, and the vegetables stayed intact. It tasted exactly as the fresh in the far left bowl did. Same thickness as well.

This is a bonus as cold prep is just that much easier to do.

An easy recipe to try it in?

Here is a favorite backcountry recipe of mine (which I write about on TrailCooking) which the freeze-dried salsa works great in.

Salsa Rice

In a quart freezer or sandwich bag:

Also take:

FBC Method:

Add the freezer bag to an FBC Cozy. Add the oil and 1½ cups of boiled water. Stir well, seal tightly, and let sit for 15 minutes.

One Pot Method:

Add oil and 1½ cups water to a 1.3 to 1.5 liter pot and bring to a boil. Add dry ingredients, stirring well. Cover with a lid and turn off the flame. Let sit for 15 minutes.

In cool temperatures or at altitude, insulate the pot.

Serves 1.

Note:

At the end, I sprinkled on ¼ cup of freeze-dried cheese and stirred it in. It melted quickly.

Test

FTC Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links that give us commissions on products purchased. These items are what we used in the recipes.

~Sarah

Freeze-drying Cheese
Freeze Drying · Prepping · Preserving · Recipes

Freeze-drying Cheese

Sarah

So why freeze-dry cheese shreds? 

  • It’s portable and shelf-stable. You can carry cheese and not worry about it going bad, or going greasy and limp in the heat of summer if you are camping.
  • It melts almost instantly. Just add it to your meals, and let it sit on the hot food, or stir it in, and by the time your food is cool enough to eat, it’s melted.
  • It adds so much to recipes. Cheese hits the spot for me!
  • It’s lightweight. Carrying 1 ounce of fresh cheese and the equivalent freeze-dried cheese saves a lot of weight. Less food weight = less weight for camping and backpacking.

While you can buy commercially made freeze-dried cheese relatively easy now, it is limited in the flavors – but also you don’t know what company made the cheese. (For example, on Amazon) Cheese is similar to meat for pricing, and will be the most expensive things you purchase commercially in cans.

I highly suggest visiting a restaurant/food service store for the best choice/prices with grated cheese. You can source large bags of already grated bags for a fraction of the cost at a grocery store. They also sell large blocks of cheese for grating at home. However…I’m not too fond of Costco’s mozzarella, which is sold with grated cheese and is near the yogurt. It just doesn’t melt well, I find and gets rubbery. We often shop at Chef’s Store (which used to be Cash n’ Carry) on the West Coast.

We do not pre-freeze our cheese shreds (we pre-freeze many items to speed up the process). They freeze fast using the machine and then head into the drying cycle. It took about a day’s worth of time, although most of it was hands-off (loading the machine, checking once or twice during the cycle, and then unloading and packing up were just a short time period). You will want to add a couple of extra hours to the cycle since you are freezing the cheese first.

Cheddar cheese on a tray, waiting to go into the machine.

Freeze-dried cheddar cheese.

You won’t find freeze-dried Swiss cheese commercially. It is sold in smaller bags than the more favored cheeses at restaurant supply stores. We find it in 2-pound bags, which will fill one tray on our large freezer dryer.

Just think….fondue in a power outage? Alternatively, Swiss cheese is often the lowest sodium cheese you can buy!

Freeze-dried mozzarella cheese.

How to store:

When the machine says it is done, take a test out. We look at the food visually, then give it the finger test – does it feel dry, and snappy. Then taste it.

We store most of our freeze-dried product in mylar bags. We use the Wallaby brand bags as they make ones rated for boiling water, and are pleated at the bottom. These they call the “MRE” bags.

We add in 1 pouch each of an oxygen absorber and a silica desiccant one.

Then we seal in an Avid Armor chamber sealer, which pulls all air out. Then we seal the top with the heat sealer that comes with the freeze-dryer unit. Mark the date you made it, and what’s in it and you are done! (As you can see, a chamber sealer pulls the air out, similar to how a Mountain House Pro Pak commercial meal looks like.)

Why do we shoot photos with mason jars but store most of our freeze-dried food in mylar bags? Well, these are my gold standard. Our chamber sealer can seal mason jars (a huge bonus for sure), so we put a portion of everything we freeze-dry into a mason jar and seal it. Then, we can watch the food to make sure it was properly dried. I often keep one on hand to use in recipe development as well. The mylar bags we use for more long-term storage and I prefer to not waste the bags. Mason jars are reusable, over and over, but I don’t keep all the food in them as we live in an earthquake country.

FTC Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links that give us commissions on products purchased. These items are what we used above.

~Sarah

Freeze-Drying Sliced Celery and Rhubarb
Freeze Drying · Prepping · Preserving

Freeze-Drying Sliced Celery and Rhubarb

Sarah

Celery and rhubarb might seem like odd choices to freeze-dry in our Harvest Right Freeze-Dryer. But hear me out here. Both are underrated ingredients to be used. Freeze-dried celery can be crumbled into small dices, and added to many meals for a boost of green. Rhubarb can be made into a tart sauce, to have over pancakes, in just a few minutes.

And let’s be honest…..I grow both really well on our homestead. The cool start to the 2023 growing season had both growing well. I harvested an entire work table of celery in July. I never need a lot of it at any point in the kitchen, even at Thanksgiving. Just here and there I need a stalk or two, in both trail recipes and at home cooking. So why not preserve it? Now I have a year’s worth that I can use as needed, with no waste.

Celery:

Trim the bundles of celery, removing the top part with leaves, setting aside. I cut the bottom off, then put all the stalks of celery in a sink of cold water to wash any soil off. The upper parts I had cut off I pulled the leaves off and then tossed those tiny “stalks” in as well.

Should you like celery leaves, those can be washed, spun dry in a lettuce spinner. They can then be dehydrated in a food dehydrator. It will only take 1-2 hours for that to happen. They are great to add to stuffing come the holidays.

Drain the celery stalks, shop into thin slices.

Lay flat on cookie trays, and put in the freezer till frozen. At that point I transfer to bags, and wait till I have enough frozen to do a run in our Large Harvest Right freeze-dryer.

Rhubarb:

Trim off the leaf, it it has it attached, trim off the bottom end if need be. Wash in a sink full of cold water, to remove any dirt on them.

Drain the stalks, chop into thin wedges.

Lay flat on cookie trays, and put in the freezer till frozen. At that point I transfer to bags, and wait till I have enough frozen to do a run in our Large Harvest Right freeze-dryer.

For Both:

Spread in freeze-dryer trays, filling the trays well. We added an extra 12 hours to the dry time, as I have found items like this need more time. As in produce that has ribs. It hides the moisture well, deep inside. So just start off with extra time to be sure.

Once fully dry, remove and bag up immediately, adding in an oxygen absorber packet in each bag. Seal fully. Mark what is in the bag, and what day you did it on.

Test

~Sarah

Eating Local Matters
Bioengineered Foods · Gardening · Homesteading · Urban Homesteading

Eating Local Matters

Sarah

Sometimes I need a trip to clear my mind. And maybe going on the largest carbon footprint trip of my life really opened my eyes. I traveled somewhere between 18,000 and 19,000 miles by plane and ship to reach the Antarctica Peninsula the past 2 weeks. It was a glorious trip, a life bucket trip. And I enjoyed my time there. Until I started thinking halfway through. About the actual cost of my coming there – of anyone coming there.

I preach a lot about “eating local” and supporting local growers producers (because you will eat in season, eat fresher and keep your local people in business instead of supporting Big Ag) but even I don’t always follow my advice/nagging. Because it isn’t easy to provide/find everything you want (note I said want, not need……). Those Cheetos are not needed. Even when 2 boys look at me with sad eyes at the store. And it’s easy to give in to them.

But I will admit this: I had become burnt out in preaching it. It just didn’t seem to hit home with those I write or talk to in the past year.

I was VERY disappointed before the trip. I didn’t want to work on our farm/homestead. I had held a seed swap in the weeks before I left. I was bitter, even salty over it. The year before, in 2022, the turnout had been huge. This year, same crowd, and almost no one showed up. That hurt deeply. I had more people driving by, who saw the signs, who popped in as random strangers. I run a seed swap that is more a seed giveaway. I WANT people to grow food. I felt it like a slap. To my soul. Who I thought was my people, they didn’t care anymore.

But how I felt? That with the pandemic run out mostly, people are back to their “normal”. They don’t see any reason to grow food anymore. It’s too much work, takes up their time, is messy. And they feel secure in that food is at the stores again (it isn’t, but it isn’t as obvious). They have sucked up to the rampant inflation and just buy what they want again.

It left me not excited about the coming spring. I just wanted to sit inside, in the dark. Where the days slip by.

I went on vacation. On the most over-the-top vacation I have ever gone on. I parked myself on a ship that was only a couple months old, where it was touted as a luxury expedition to Antarctica, where you were pampered. Being South America is still in summer, it did improve my mood to see the sun once again.

Oh you were pampered. That wasn’t a lie. I’ve been on multiple adventure cruises (where the numbers are low, and it’s about the outdoors) and this one was a 5 star hotel floating, where before they were more utilitarian ships. And for those first days, I relaxed in bougie-ville and enjoyed it.

Did I want a frappe made for me 18 hours a day? Well, there it was. Also, be sure to eat donuts, croissants, and gourmet muffins too!

But then I wrecked it for myself. So easily.

For I had brought along with me Peter Zeihan’s latest book “The End Of The World Is Just The Beginning: Mapping The Collapse Of Globalization“. Peter is a Geopolitical Analyst, and to say I am a fangirl is putting it lightly. And as the days stretched on, I read further. And further. And I was reminded about what really matters. And I learned a far deeper history lesson than I had expected.

As I sat trapped on a floating luxe hotel, at the end of the world. And reading further, having far too many deep talks with Kirk. He was listening to it on an audiobook. as the icebergs floated by we talked about the coming food insecurity and so much more.

Maybe bring a romance novel next time? Probably. I was told nastily by a nosy shipmate, upon seeing the title of the book, that “Why would you read such a depressing book!” She glowered at me and then went back to playing cards with her group of friends she had come with.

But then something else happened.

And yes, it relates to food. While the food was delicious and varied, it was nearly all European. Which made sense as the boat was built in Portugal and based out of there.

So much bread. And pastries. All French influenced. Don’t get me wrong, it was very good. But the flour’s foot print was massive. 

Everything was from there it seemed, outside of the imported-in Japanese Waygu burgers you could order whenever, it seemed.

Like this….love the flag font? It’s only a what….6,000 mile haul for this to show up. Between it and the lone bottle of Tabasco sauce offered, it was the only North American options I noted.

Near the end of the trip, the cruise director and the hotel director had a casual talk you could attend.

A question was posed about where did the food come from. It was answered that….most of it was literally shipped across the ocean to Ushaia, Argentina from Portugal. Only the fresh produce was acquired locally due to rules. And the small amount of Argentina beef served. A distance of over 7,000 miles one way, so you could eat fresh baked bread daily.

Gah.

Total buzzkill.

I felt like an awful person at that moment. It was bad enough I had traveled that far, but to know the food I was gorging on mindlessly had come yet another 7,000 miles away?

But then, it was also a jarring feeling that outside of the produce and a bit of beef, the local countries of Argentina and Chile were barely being used, yet they grow amazing food. They have wine production, but the “premium” wine offered came from the United States – stuff I can buy at the local Safeway if I wanted to 7 days a week. Some of it was actually Washington State wines!

It’s easy to not notice where your food comes from. We are a world dependent on globalization. At the grocery store I can pull my head out and actually read – I know who owns what company and such after all. But it was easy to pretend all that food/drinks was magically “locally sourced” while on the ship.

I lost my appetite to be honest after that talk and it dimmed the last day on the ship. As we flew home, on 3 long flights, I thought so much about it all. I came home, caught up on sleep.

And then walked outside, to my land. To my homestead. And had never been so happy to be home. Feeling ready to go.

And realizing how important it all is.

I tried to eat eggs on the ship. They were flavorless. And being a Euro-centric menu, there was no salsa and 1 lonely bottle of Tabasco sauce offered. I gave up eating eggs, because they just had little flavor. They were just sad Big Ag eggs.

As I made breakfast on Friday morning, not functioning well from jet lag, I cracked eggs from our hens. The yolks were firm, and they were so yellow. I could smell them cooking and it had me hungry. I opened up a jar of salsa I canned last summer, and spooned some on.

And I thought to myself, as my mouth was so happy, that this is why eating local matters.

The taste. The smell. The knowing my hard labor mattered. I had a piece of bread I had frozen after baking weeks ago, with strawberry jam I made with our honey, that I canned.

The work IS worth it. For I knew where my food had come from. Who had touched it. Who had preserved it.

Yesterday I worked hard outside in the cold. Work hard enough and you start stripping down. I heard a bird song and realized I had just heard the first Robin calling out for the year. I planted pea starts I had left in the greenhouse before the trips, the garlic I had missed last summer during harvest, and saw shooting up randomly in beds I need to start planting – it’s in a new home now. I weeded beds. Got soil ready for upcoming planting. Visited the chickens and cleaned.

I came inside, and felt it. I had done something that mattered. I was providing for my family. I was in tune with nature once again. And I found my way back to having desire again to do this work.

And knowing that even if others don’t care, I do. And that is all that matters.

Eating local matters. For our health, for the world, for food security. For watching the massive global carbon foot print we can cause. Will it actually help if only a few of us opt out? No, it won’t globally. But it will when the day comes that those ships don’t show up, or the planes don’t touch down. For we need to eat locally for so many reasons. To eat more mindfully, to eat in season. To be connected to the Earth. To be less reliant on other countries.

As Spring arrives embrace the returning sun. Plant your seeds. Weed your beds. Add compost. Watch as the first leaves unfurl in the coming weeks, and the blossoms happen on the fruit trees.

I don’t regret my trip, for it showed me something I needed to see. It doesn’t matter what others do – it’s what I do. I feel alive again!

~Sarah