Dehydrating Foods for Convenience and to Prepare for Emergencies
Dear Readers,
In today's newsletter, we share some thoughts and tips about dehydrating foods. Dehydrating is an easy and useful way to preserve food that can then be eaten as-is, used to make easy meals or saved for emergencies.
We've got lots of new updates on the blog, so head on over and check it out!
Have a good week!
-Tawra
www.LivingOnADime.com
Permissions:
If you would like to reprint any of the articles, tips or recipes from our newsletters for your newsletter (print or on-line), website or blog you may as long as you credit and link back to www.LivingOnADime.com .
Dehydrating Foods
Years ago, I started dehydrating foods. I loved it. I dehydrated flowers, herbs and foods. I tried many different ways of dehydrating. Tawra and I even sold tons of potpourri (we have a few of those recipes in Dining On a Dime ) and made fruit leather and beef jerky, too! Then the grandkids started coming one after another and I didn't have as much time, so I spent less time dehydrating.
Way back before I tried dehydrating, I tried other methods of preserving food. I tried canning for a while, but it cost me more for sugar, spices and other supplies than I could afford at that time and it was a lot of hard work.
At one point, I had a large freezer, but I have never been a big fan of freezing things. Maybe I have "sensitive" : ) : ) taste buds or something, but I can almost always tell when something comes from the freezer. It has a certain taste to it. Most people don't realize that, even though food doesn't spoil in the freezer, it does get freezer burned over time. It also absorbs the flavors of the other food in the freezer very easily and, often, within just a few months. This can make some food taste bad even though it's not really spoiled.
I have often had the electricity go out for one reason or another and, if it's out too long, all that hard work and money can go right down the drain. I'm not saying I don't ever freeze food. I keep a few things in the freezer, but I don't do marathon freezing.
After trying canning and freezing, I decided to try dehydrating. As I mentioned earlier, I loved doing it and it worked well for me for quite some time, but in recent years, I hadn't been doing as much of it.
Check out the Dining On A Dime Cookbook and Save!
At almost 500 pages, Dining On A Dime includes over 1200 recipes and tips like these to help you keep more of your money.
The recipes are easy to cook and can be made with ingredients you can actually find at your local grocery store!
Try Dining on a Dime and start saving today! Learn more here.
Recently, I came across a web site on dehydrating, www.dehydrate2Store.com , and became inspired again. Tammy, the site host shows how to dehydrate many different foods, which you can use for long term (If done right, it can last up to 30 years) or short term storage. Here are some of the things I found on this site:
- How you can make packets of meals that include everything for a meal in one packet. Then you can just pour it into a crock pot to slow cook. I was excited because I thought these packets would help Tawra on the days when she is too sick to cook.
- It also explained things like how to dry sweet potatoes. Then, when you want some, all you have to do is add a little water, butter and salt and you are good to go. Sweet potatoes are delicious by themselves, but you can also use them in casseroles or to make sweet potato pie.
- Instead of keeping bags and bags of frozen hash browns in the freezer, which take up a lot of space, you can dehydrate those same hash browns and they will take up only a quarter of the space. This also applies to peas or green beans and, when rehydrated, you can't tell the difference.
- You can grind most dried fruits into a powder to use to make flavored teas. You can also add water or formula to it to make baby food.
- You can dry carrots, peppers, onions, garlic, broccoli and many other veggies. I especially like the dehydrator because, when I have a bunch of carrots I'm not using quickly enough, I can throw them on the dehydrator. When dried, they will keep for years, but I usually use them for my next batch of stew or soup.
- Tammy even shows how to make pickled beets and pickles from dried beets and cucumbers.
I was very surprised after checking out this web site how many different things you can easily make with dehydrated foods besides the usual dried fruits and trail mixes. Tammy uses a lot of tools like slicers, grinders and other specialty equipment, but I don't have any of those things. All you really need to get started is a dehydrator.
For years I just used a domed type dehydrator, but I recently discovered the Excalibur. The company was kind enough to let us try one of their dehydrators and it is soooo nice. I don't get a commission or anything, but when I find a good product that is worthy of praise, I like to let you know!
This dehydrator has a fan, which helps dry the food more quickly and evenly. The fan is at the back of the unit, so all the trays get the same amount of air. I used to spend lots of time switching the trays from top to bottom with my old dehydrators, but I don't have to do that with the Excalibur.
The food doesn't stick to the trays like it did with my old dehydrator and I can put much smaller items on the Excalibur. You can also use it to make your own homemade yogurt and re-crisp crackers and chips. It really is a nice unit. If you decide to do a lot of dehydrating, it is definitely worth the investment to get one.
If you are signed up with Swagbucks, you can use Swagbucks to buy Amazon gift cards and save yourself some money. (If you aren't signed up with Swagbucks, you can learn more about it here ).
If you're interested in dehydrating, check out Tammy's dehydrating web site at www.dehydrate2Store.com . Her site is all about dehydrating and her directions are easy to understand.
Over the past few years we have become more aware of the importance of being prepared for emergencies and having a nice supply of dehydrated foods is one of the ways you can be prepared. Canned goods have a much shorter shelf life than dried foods and you can't count on frozen foods for emergency use because, in most real emergencies, the electricity is the first thing to go. Additionally, dried foods are lightweight, so they are easy to carry if you have to evacuate.
You can't count on being able to get groceries in an emergency, because stores often have no supplies and even when they do, a lack of electricity often means that ATM machines and banks are closed and, without power, the stores can't sell their inventory.
I fully trust that even in (especially in) an emergency, God will be there with me to help me, but He also expects us to do some things ourselves when He has given us the knowledge and ability to do them. One of those things is to prepare for emergencies or for hard times.
The Bible points to the ant who stores up and prepares for winter, telling us to "consider her ways and be wise". There's also the story in Genesis about Joseph saving grain for seven years to prepare for the seven years of famine and the parable in the New Testament about the 12 virgins, where half were prepared and the other half were not.
I'm not saying build a bunch of warehouses to store your food and other supplies. I am saying don't wait for an emergency to come to figure out how to deal with things and expect to fly by the seat of your pants. If you don't have the time or ability to prepare for an emergency now, what makes you think you will be able to do it in the middle of a crisis.
Proverbs 31 talks about the virtuous woman and it says her family isn't afraid when the winter comes. Why? Because she has prepared, like the ant. Over the years I have had to use wood to heat my home. I didn't wait until December in a snow storm to go find and cut wood to heat my house. All summer and fall, when the weather was good, I worked stockpiling wood. In the same way, it is wise to prepare in advance for an emergency and dried food is really a good thing to have.
As with other things, don't go to extremes and cause yourself to worry, but use some common sense and keep some emergency supplies. It's better to have them and not need them than to need them and wish you had them.
-Jill
Labels: beef jerky, canning, dehydrating food, dehydrator, Excalibur, freezing, fruit leather, potpourri, preparing for emergencies, preserving food
posted by Michael Kellam at 10:00 AM
1 comments
