Dehydrating Potatoes

My friend Melinda and her husband gave us a boatload of potatoes recently, and I've been slowly working them up.  Some will be chitted and planted in our garden, some canned, and some dehydrated, and of course some eaten fresh.

This week I've been dehydrating.  The process takes a little time, but isn't difficult.  I learned the basics from this post at Hickery Holler.

First I scrubbed and peeled about five pounds of potatoes.  I sliced them into a bath of about three quarts cold water and 3/4 teaspoon of citric acid.  This will help keep them from turning brown or grey from oxidation.  I am pretty fast with a knife, so that's how I cut mine, but you could use a food processor or mandolin.

As I was slicing them, I was also heating a large pot of water to a full boil.  In batches, I blanched the sliced potatoes in the boiling water for four minutes.

Using a slotted spoon, I removed the slices from the boiling water and returned them to the cool water and citric acid bath.  I made a new bath each time, using 1/4 teaspoon citric acid to each quart of cold water, because the water needs to be cold to stop the blanching process.

I then drained the slices and placed them in a single layer on the trays of our dehydrator.

I would like to one day have an Excalibur dehydrator, but for now we have a basic Ronco with ten round trays.  The five pounds of potatoes filled all ten trays perfectly.

I set the dehydrator on high (in this case, that means heat AND fan), and rotated the bottom tray to the top each hour.  Rotation isn't strictly necessary, but I feel it speeds up and evens the drying.  All of the slices were dry after eight hours.  Had they been sliced uniformly thin, they may have dried mopre quickly.

Five pounds of dehydrated potato slices fit perfectly into two quart canning jars.  I have ordered some oxygen absorbing packets and will put a couple in each jar to seal them.  Properly stored, these potatoes could be kept safely for years.

The next, I decided to make dehydrated hash browns.  I used the same basic process as above:  Wash, peel, shred with food processor, soak in citric acid bath for a few minutes, blanch for four minutes, shock in another citric acid bath.  I added a couple of steps by rinsing the shreds with cold water to remove some of the starch and wringing them in a clean cloth napkin to squeeze out most of the water.  Then I spread them on the dehydrator trays. 

Some of the shreds fell through the mesh of the trays, but that was really no worry, as the heating element is enclosed and doesn't get hot enough to burn food anyway. There are small-mesh mats available for the trays that would keep this from happening, and would also make clean-up easier for other (stickier) foods, so I may end up getting those in the future.

With shreds, five pounds filled up seven trays, which tells me I probably could've made the layers thinner in each tray so they would dry more quickly.  In the end, they filled two quart jars after six hours of drying time.

Overall, this was an easy way to preserve our potato bounty, and one that's a space-saver, too.  I'm looking forward to trying recipes made with these potatoes, and I'll be sure to post them when I do.

TGIF...G?

TGIFG! Thank Goodness It's Free Glasses! 

If you (or anyone in your family) wear glasses, my friend Jill at Blessings of a Stay At Home Mom has a deal for you and a great review.  I'm not going to pass this one up, and I don't think you'll want to, either.  So click on over now! 

Pee Ess:  Have a Wonderful Weekend!

I'm a Winner!

I just wanted to take time out of my busy day of doing stuff to thank Alea at Premeditated Leftovers for the wonderful cookbook called $5 Dinner Mom One-Dish Dinners Cookbook by Erin Chase.

I was so happy to win this book in a giveaway she hosted earlier this month.  I haven't had a chance to make any of the recipes, but I've had a great time looking through the book and planning what to make soon.

Please take a little time to visit Premeditated Leftovers, and while you're at it, check out $5 Dinners, too!

Apples In Jars

Two bags of apples go a long way.

Last weekend, we were fortunate enough to pick some free apples.  I'm not sure of the quantity; we didn't weight them and we gave some away, but by the time I started working them up, there were still enough to fill most of a large insulated frozen food bag and about half of a typical reusable shopping bag:

Two kinds of apple - Granny Smith and perhaps Gala?

I started by washing the apples in water with a splash of vinegar, then giving them a quick rinse in plain water.  I bought and used one of those table mounted gadgets that peel, core and slice them all in one go.  That worked for a while, but I began having trouble with the coring part of the gadget, so I just peeled the rest and cored and sliced them by hand.

I wanted to can pie filling, but without Clear Jel starch (and no quick way to get any since it's not sold in typical stores), I decided instead to can apple slices in a spiced light syrup.  I ended up with 13 quarts, which I'll just thicken whenever I want to make a pie.

Sliced and spiced.

The mound of apple peelings and cores was huge and I hated to see it all go to waste, so I decided to use about half of it to make apple jelly, and compost the rest.  I took the portion I saved and put them in my largest stockpot and added just enough water to cover them.  I also added a half a bag of frozen cranberries, a few cinnamon sticks and some whole cloves for color and additional flavor.  I simmered it all for about half an hour in the evening, then turned off the heat, covered the pan and let it all sit overnight.

The next morning, I strained off 10 cups of juice and made cran-apple jelly, ending up with 16 half-pint jars of pretty pink jelly. 

Blush pink cran-apple jelly.

Although I hadn't really planned on making anything other than jelly, I  decided to pressed all of the cooked peels and cores through a food mill.  In the end, I measured 9-10 cups of what was essentially unsweetened applesauce.  We already have a large supply of applesauce on hand, so I decided to make apple butter instead.  The pulp was already very thick, so all I needed to do was add sugar and spices and heat it all to a boil.  The final yield was 14 half-pint jars of cran-apple butter.

Not as dark as commercial apple butter, but it tastes better.

I'm glad that I only kept half of the peelings to make spreads, because we'd be up to our ears in the stuff if I'd cooked them all down.  As it is, the jelly and apple butter will last us a very long time.

Besides, I'm out of half-pint jars now.

Monday Miscellanea

We headed north on Saturday morning, dropping Kat off at her mom's and then checking out the Basswood Resort near Platte City, MO, to see if we might like to spend a weekend camping there. 

Platte City was also holding city wide garage sales, where we scored some good cheap and free stuff.  I found lots of tops for myself for 25¢ and 50¢ each.  When you're as messy as I am in the kitchen, you don't want to spend much on tops that will inevitable get grease spots on them.

Someone had an EdenPURE heater in the free pile with a note that says it "works, but heats slowly".  We grabbed that right up.  It may be just that they didn't understand how an infrared heater works, or it may need new elements.  If we have to replace elements, at $80-$100 it's still a bargain for this kind of heater. 

We drove by one home where several people were picking apples from their trees.  We pulled over and asked if they were selling their apples.  They told us they'd already picked and canned all they wanted and that we were welcome to pick as many as we wanted for free!  We picked about a bushel, but could have picked many, many, many more if we could have reached them.  They are very nice apples, both Granny Smith and a blush type, perhaps Gala.  We gave some away, we'll eat some out of hand, and I'll can the rest as pie filling.  I might make cider vinegar with the peels, too.

We didn't come close to seeing all the garage sales, but we had a late lunch date with Kat, my daughter T. and my son-in-law M.  My daughter's birthday was on Labor Day, so this was a celebration of sorts.  T and M follow a vegan diet, so they chose Cafe Gratitude.  (They have a really neat concept; click through to read about it.)  Cafe Gratitude serves a vegan and mostly gluten-free menu that focuses on local and organic foods.  They make the most amazing homemade ginger ale and a wonderful coconut milk, almond butter and vanilla smoothie.  The food was very good -- and filling -- the atmosphere was fun, and place was busy but not overcrowded at that time of day.  We all had a great time.

M, T, and Kat.

Shane and me.  Our table was in what used to be a storefront display window.

My hand-rolled veggie tamale with black beans and Mexican coleslaw.

M's "nachos" made with cashew "cheese and sprouted grain crackers.

We also saw this from the restaurant window.  I have no explanation. I don't even have a logical guess.

Saturday afternoon my dad visited and spent the night.  It wasn't really a planned visit; he was in town for other reasons and needed a place to sleep, and left fairly early on Sunday morning to do his own thing. 

We stayed home on Sunday and did this and that around the house:  laundry, a fall planting of lettuce and radishes, housework, etc.  We had no real plan, we just looked around and did things that needed to be done.

This week promises to be busy.  I still have those peaches in the freezer to work up, and now apples.  Kat gets out of school early on Thursday, and we have a fun weekend with my sister next weekend to get ready for. 

How was your weekend?  And what do you have lined up for this week?

Free Compostable Seed Starter Cups from Citrus

We all know about compost, and how letting food scraps break down can help feed our gardens.  Well, here's another way food can help grow more food.

My friend Sharon passed this on to me via Pinterest several weeks ago.  Isn't it great? 

We ate several oranges and grapefruits in January, carefully cutting them in half across their "equator" and scooping the fruit out.  We let the rinds dry, since we knew we'd not be using them for a little while, then stored them in a glass jar with the lid kept off.

When it's time to use them, just fill the dried cups with potting mix and sow away.  When you water the cups, the rinds rehydrate and smell really good.

Alternately, you could rehydrate them first by soaking them in water for half an hour or so.  They'll be more flexible for handling while filling them.  Whichever way you choose is fine.

When you're ready to plant out, you can try planting the entire thing, rind an all right into the soil.  However, because we've had trouble with commercial peat pots breaking down quickly enough when we've planted them, and because not all plants need acidic food, we suggest removing your seedlings and surrounding soil from the citrus cup.   Plant the seedling and toss the cup in the compost bin.|


This post is being shared at the Hearth and Soul Hop with Premeditated Leftovers.

Gardening Has Begun

We noticed the tree trimmers were working in our neighborhood yesterday, so Shane stopped and talked to one of the workers on his way home.  The guy just happened to be a crew lead and just the man Shane needed to see.  He arranged to have a load of wood chips delivered bright and early this morning.  They showed up around 7:30.

The load of mulch was free, because it saves the company the money and time they would have spent hauling it back to wherever it is they haul it back to.

We'll be using our mulch in flower beds, tree rings, etc.  The finer stuff might go into some of are veggie beds to help keep the soil loose.

If trimmers are working in your area, stop and ask them for some chips for mulch.  The worst that can happen is that they say no, or charge you a small fee.  Who knows, though?  You might just get it for free.

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Yesterday Shane also picked up a truckload of horse manure.  It has aged enough that it can go straight into our raised beds and flower beds.

His crew is waiting on materials and are at a stand-still on the job site, so he has an unexpected day off.  He's getting ready to till in that manure as I type this.

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We're in Planting Zone 6, but we've had a very mild winter; the ground hasn't even frozen this season.  We're thinking of going ahead and planting peas this weekend or next.  After scouring the Internet, I've found adages such as "peas in by Valentine's Day" and "peas in by President's Day".

In the past, our peas haven't done well.  I think we've been planting them too late.  If we plant them this weekend, we'll be 2 to 3 weeks early, but I think we're going to take the chance.  The seeds are from last year (but still good), so we won't be out anything but our time if they don't grow.

We are also thinking about planting them in succession, some each weekend, so that we'll have "insurance" if the earliest ones fail.

Anyone else, especially Zone 6 readers, planting anything yet?