Celery

As long as the dehydrator was out, and the price for celery wasn't too bad, I picked up three batches of celery to dry (we've been out for a looong time). I cleaned and trimmed the celery, kept out the hearts for some ants-on-a-log, and weighed the remainder. I had 3 pounds. Then I used the food processor with the slicer blade and did 6 stalks of celeery at a time. What quick work that made! I put the celery on the dryer trays 1 layer deep and dehydrated for about 16 hours at 110 degrees. My final yield was 2 ounces of finished product, or 1.5 pounds per ounce.

Cabbage!

Since the summer kitchen isn't ready to go yet, I took the advice from my friends at the Canning2 group and decided to dry most of the cabbage. I kept one head out to make fresh cole slaw, leaving 14.5 pounds to work with. We have an Oster Meat/Food Slicer which I used to shred the cabbage. Then I filled 25 trays on the dehydrator and ran it for about 14 hours at 110 degrees. Once everything was dry I removed the cabbage and weighed it on the kitchen scale, parceling it into 15 plastic zip lock bags of 2 ounce each, or just over the equivalent of 1 pound of product per 2 ounce bag. To finish, I put all 15 bags in a larger sealed container that will go into our canning pantry.

Onions and Cabbage

We got some produce from Second Harvest of Wisconsin today, including 12 heads of cabbage (about 16 pounds) and 19 pounds of onions. I will spend tomorrow processing them. The Canning 2 group on Yahoo has an excellent recipe for canned coleslaw that I will try. If it works well, I will post the recipe. There is also a recipe for carmelized onions. I plan to dehydrate most of the onions, but I will reserve some for canning.

Back 2 Basics Challenge

Spent lots of time learning about seed saving, freedom gardens, the 100 foot diet and lots more from the people at The Path to Freedom. Please check out their site and join me in taking their harvest keepers challenge.

New Equipment for the Summer Kitchen

We were driving around town last Friday and drove past a garage sale where we saw a gas grill. It has a large grill area where two canners can sit, and a side burner where we can keep a small pan with the lids in it. For only $50 we bought it. It will be the start of our summer kitchen. Now we need a screen tent and sink that we can connect the hose to.

The Garden

We're waiting...
Waiting for decent weather - not rain.
Waiting for life's little emergencies to give it a rest.
Waiting for Godot...

While we wait, here's what we have gotten done so far:

Upcoming Training

I am planning to attend Master Food Preserver training on June 17 through June 19 at the Dodgeville high school. There is still time to sign up if anyone else is interested. It is open to anyone who has a background in food preservation and is interested in learning more, and is also willing to provide 10 hours of volunteer services per year. The registration deadline is May 16. Contact one of these specialists at Iowa County UW Extension:
Donna Peterson, Nutrition Educator, Donna.peterson@ces.uwex.edu
Sarah Weier, Family Living Educator, Sarah.Weier@ces.uwex.edu
Ruth Schriefer, Family Living Agent, Ruth.Schriefer@ces.uwex.edu

The instructor is Barbara Ingham, Food Science Specialist, UW-Extension, UW-Madison. She is a food scientist with a PhD from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. She has worked in the area of food preservation and food safety for six years and enjoys answering questions on food topics. She is an avid gardener and is looking forward to sharing information on high-quality ways to preserve the bounty of the summer.

Class Agenda:

Day 1 - Tuesday, June 17

• 8:30 Registration
• 9:00 Introductions, overview of class, and resources to share; overview of food preservation; overview of food safety; summertime food safety; lunch break; freezing and drying; group exercises in freezing and drying
• 4:00 Adjourn

Day 2 - Wednesday, June 18

• 9:00 Evaluation of dried products; overview of canning; group exercise in canning vegetables; lunch break; pickling; group exercise in pickles, relishes and apple pie filling
• 4:00 Adjourn

Day 3 - Wednesday, June 19

• 9:00 Evaluation of pickles and pie filling; overview of canning tomato products/jams and jellies; group exercise in canning fruits, salsa and jam; lunch break; review of in class assignment; final questions; and Jeopardy!!
• 3:30 Adjourn

Onions! "...the rest of the story..."

Uhh, just a few teeny-weeny comments about Wendy's rendition of onion drying....
First off the dehydrator, while a terrific bargain, is noisy..it HUMMMMMS
at about 110 dB...so i have asked her to run it mostly at night. I awoke at 2:30 a.m. to nearly visible onion fumes...by breakfast all of us sat hunched over our granola with watering eyes. At ten Wendy declared the onions about "half done" and i declared war on the chanting machine and its offending cargo. Out to the porch it went. By noon the squirrels who have been tormenting my flats of garden plants trying to harden on the porch retreated to the trees, kept putting little fur paws to eyes as if they had tears. Amazingly the plants did not wilt!
At the end of the episode the following conclusions can be drawn:
1) Garden onions are nowhere as stinky as store onions. Grow your own for dehydrating.
2) Onion smell can linger in clothing, upholstery, and peopleskin for up to three days after the onions themselves have been removed from the area
3) A good quality dehydrator, run on the porch for a full day, can cause the neighbors two houses away to get teary. Best offset for this is to offer them some of the finished product.
4) Dehydrating onions on the porch can be a fine squirrel deterrent...and does a fair number on encyclopedia salesmen, the Schwanns man, and Jehovah's Witnesses as well.

Onions!

Our first serious foray into dehydrating last year was onions. We had gathered all we could from our garden, but we certainly couldnt eat them all, and they didn't have enough top that we could braid them. Mom had given us some onion choppers, so I cleaned, and chopped, then dried them in the dehydrator. It took about 12 hours. Then we put them into seasoning jars and closed them up tightly. We really like to use dried chopped onions in alot of our food. What wonderful taste! But before long, we had used them all up.

This year on April 24th, I bought about 5 really BIG onions from JAMS, and later that day, we were gifted with two bags of onions for a total of about 13 pounds. Again, there were no tops to braid. I may not be one to mince words, but I needed to mince these onions quickly. I trotted out the food processor (no, we didn't get a book when we bought it) and tried every single blade until I discovered that the chopping blade that sits down inside the container would work the best.

I cleaned the onions, cut them into eighths, and piled them in until the container was full, then pulsed the blade until the pieces were the size that we like for in our food. I had to reapeat this about 10 times to get all the onion chopped.

I put the mesh screens in the trays and spread the onions on the screen about 1/4 inch deep. I filled 26 trays total. One of the great things about this dehydrator is that you do not need to rotate trays, so once you start, you can walk away until they are done.

We started the drying in the mid afternoon, so we used a lower temperature, about 110, and ran the dryer all night. In the morning, once the boys were off to school and VARC, I unloaded the trays. Then I got the food processor out again and broke the onions into large sections and put them in the container. I used the plastic blending blade and pulsed it to break the pieces apart. This worked really well and was quick. It took about two hours to finish this and pour the pieces into containers

The negatives of the project were:

• The house smelled of onions for two solid days (even after we were done)


• The dehydrator occupies a fair amount of counter space


• I cried A LOT

The benefits of the project were:

• Our total yield was about 20 ounces. I priced chopped onions at the local store, and 2 ounces of the store brand was $4.00. So our first PFB project this year saved us $40.00!


• We have plenty of chopped onion of the size we like, and don't have to be so conservative in using it

We plan to repeat this when our own onions are ready to harvest.

Equipment

Over time we have become increasingly convinced that food we grow ourselves is healthier for our family. And if we don't/can't grow it ourselves, then buying from local producers is the next best option. So, in 2006 we did our first canning. Tomatoes and apples. And in order to get started we had to buy some equipment. We read every garage sale add, and went to every sale that had any mention of equipment that we needed. In the end, most of what we have for equipment was purchased second-hand, and only a few items were bought new. Here is our list of equipment:

• Pressure cooker/canner - we actually have four, 3 are Mirro-Matic (8, 10 and 16 quart) and one is a National (now Presto) 18 quart canner, but you only really need one large one. Please note that the size of the canner does not equal the number of quarts you can process at the same time. We can only do 7 quarts in our 18 quart canner. If you get your canner from a garage sale, you may need to replace parts. Make sure that you can still get parts for that model before you buy it. It took us about 18 months to finally find a gasket for our National canner. Our National canner was a gift from a friend. One of the small Mirro canners was my mother's, and the other two cost $25 at a garage sale.
• Steam canner/water bath canner - we have a 7 quart steam canner, Back to Basics brand. It uses less water, and takes less time to process each batch because there is less water to bring to a boil. As a bonus, we can prep our jars by putting them upside down in the canner while we bring the water to a boil. We bought this new at Farm and Fleet for $29.95.
• Dryer - we found a Harvest Maid Preserver at an estate sale. It is now called the FD-1010 Garden Master Pro by Nesco. It's awesome. It can handle 30 trays (we have 31 trays, 25 mesh screens and 5 leather sheets). We actually bought the whole set for $100. If you buy this new, it is $149.95 for the base unit, 4 trays, 1 screen and 1 leather sheet. Additional parts cost $24.95 for 2 trays, $7.95 for two screens and $9.95 for two leather sheets. Wow! Our set up would have cost $590.20 new.
• Roma food strainer - great for apples and tomatoes. You can also buy additional screens for salsa, berries and pumpkin. $49.95 new at Farm and Fleet.
• Apple peeler - ours was a gift. You can buy one new for around $20.
• Apple slicer/corer - we've had ours forever. New for about $8.
• Canning accessories - We bought a Back to Basics home canning kit which includes a canning funnel, a magnetic lid lifter, a cushioned coated jar lifter, a sure grip wrench, and tongs. $8.99 at Farm and Fleet.
• Jars, lids and rings - Buy new lids! Old lids may look OK, but if the seal isn't perfect, your food will spoil. We buy jars at garage sales, and get all that we can find.
• Food processor - another garage sale find. We have a Sunbeam heavy duty food processor.

Reality Check

This is the year that we are going to take "putting food by" seriously. While the democratic candidates are arguing about a summer break for the gas tax, we are rooted in the reality of gas that costs $3.60/gallon, eggs that cost $1.69/doz, canned veggies for 80 cents/can, and the list goes on. We will not be able to continue feeding our family healthy food unless we grow our own food, and turn to local food sources when necessary.