Powdered Dried Vegetables

Run out of people to give your zucchini to? Don't forget to freeze some and dry some. I tried putting some zucchini in the blender and then drying it - don't do it. It didn't work so well as it was hard to get off the plastic sheets on the dehydrator trays.

 

 It did powder up finer than the sliced zucchini but not worth the waste.

 

Slice instead and then put it through the blender to chop it up. I stored my zucchini last year sliced in ziplock bags but this time I'm powdering it and putting it in canning jars. It takes up less space that way. 

If you have a mandolin, the job is super quick. I love mine and use it almost every day during this time of year.

 

 

Some of you will recall that I like to dry vegetables, turn them to powder, and then add them to noodles, breads, and taco shells to boost the flavor and increase the nutrition level. I've done sweet potatoes, pumpkin, beets, spinach, and zucchini. I have LOVED my powdered hot pepper mix also that I don't use in noodles or taco shell but I love it in chili and Mexican dishes. No, dried hot peppers aren't in my noodles. I have yet to try them in taco shells but I should. It should be replaced this year but I've not hot peppers to do it with so I guess it will hopefully be next year. 

 

This year I'm doing some bell peppers dried. Just ones that I had in my bountiful basket but weren't getting used fresh. We have been on the road wa....y too much but hopefully that will come to an end soon. That has meant I don't get cooking done like I'd like and more food goes to waste, something that really bugs me. Sti...ll I'm doing my best and one can't do more than that. I'm to the point where I've thrown out most of my goals and started over. Not that the goals aren't still there, they just got shoved into next year. That includes doing a great deal of canning and freezing.  

 

 I am going to do quite a bit of drying of food. It is much quicker than canning. Beets are going today into the dehydrator. What a sorry crop I've had but it is okay, I've still some canned so I'll make it another year with cutting back on how much we eat of them.

 If I've learned one thing it is you should can for more than a year's use. Last year we had hail that wiped out the garden. That meant we ate the left overs jars from the year before. This year the old garden has such a bad PH problem that I planted peas three times and each time they died. That is the garden with the beets. I can see it will take a few years to get things set up like I'd like.   

 

This year my food storage will be pulled down to the bare bones as I use up what I have and give the old canned food to the chickens. I have a ton of green beans in bottles with a bountiful crop coming on this year. Chickens will love me this winter and in a way I will be eating those green beans through the eggs.  

When the beets are finished drying I will do scallions from the garden. Oh how I love onions dried. I've learned that despite having fresh onions in a dish, a dash of dried onion also adds a nice punch of flavor. In chicken noodle soup it is a must for a full rich broth.  I've dried a little spinach this year and I emphasize little since it was in the old garden. I'll just have to dry lots of zucchini to make up for the lack of spinach. Hoping next year will be better. I had planned on saving seed but have given up on the idea. Things aren't going smoothly in our lives and that is one of the goals that got thrown out the window for this year.

 

I do hope I get a decent crop of carrots. I put them in really late and it is already getting cool. We've had sixties and low 40's at night this last week. A cool September is in the forecast and I don't doubt it will be as it has already snowed in the mountains. This photo is from before it snowed. The snow has never left the high elevations. I'm guessing if I went where the snow capped peaks are I'd see the snow is pink or green - not white. Have you ever seen pink or green snow? I have a few times in the Beartooth Mountains. It is a growth of some kind that creeps across it. You find it in snow banks where the snow has set for a long time and the temperatures are high but not so high it all melts like now when it is the end of summer but snow is still on the tallest peaks of the mountains.

 

I've been telling the rain clouds that rain is welcome but do not turn to snow. Our acreage was covered in a thick layer of snow all winter and the soil stayed cold even after the temperatures finally started to rise. It was a very late spring. That meant my garden is really slow. The corn wasn't put in the ground until the third week in June. Usually I get beans the end of July but this year it was the middle of August. My corn is the prettiest thing, tall and lushly thick. BUT it just started to tassel and grow cobs. I'm thinking I may have to try another kind of seed. I've been traveling a great deal lately and every garden I peer at through the window has tasseled corn. The corn is skinny, rather bare with very few leaves, but it is tasseled with ears. Will mine make it before the snow flies? I'm strongly questioning it. It is beautiful but 'pretty is and pretty does'. This might end up being goat feed.

 

 People ask if I planted early corn? I did. The earliest I could find and it was meant for Alaska. I fertilized it twice but not more than twice, so why so... tall? The neighbors tell me I have the longest growing time up here on the hill of the whole valley but how much longer is the question? I can breathe a little easier since we have lots of frozen corn our daughter brought us from Colorado last year.

 

My do I keep getting off topic. As for dried vegetables, I want to use some dried bell pepper along with dried onions in tomato sauce dishes and soups. Think what it would do to chili, YUM! Yes, some fresh as well would go in but adding dried would enrich the flavor. Dried vegetables take up so little room and since my storage room is in bad need of a overhaul in the way of building cupboards, food storage needing less space is quite appealing right now.

 

Now that we are back on the subject, don't forget to dry as well as freeze and can. It is a great way to use those not so perfect crops. I know I'm going to be doing more potatoes that way this fall. Remember I have quite a few potatoes in the old garden that haven't faired so well. I'm thinking potato flour big time. I emphasize thinking as I really don't know what is below those shrimpy plants. I'm hoping to explore potato flour in noodles and not just bread.   Well it is nighty night and a muscle relaxer for me. I've been in bed most of the day with spasms. Life just stays wa...y to exciting for me.

Hypothermia Chicken

 Kirk hollered, " Come quick, one of the chickens is in trouble, bring towels!" Still in my pajamas, I ran outside with towels and Kirk led me to a soppin wet chicken huddled by the goat watering tank. Myrna, the Aracauna , was indeed in trouble. Kirk found her straddled in the tank and rushed to remove her but the soaking wet heap couldn't walk for the racking shivers that jerked her body back and forth. She had severe hypothermia. I called for our oldest grand daughter to go and get the blow dryer and I scooped the chicken up in the towels and headed for the electric outlet on the front porch.

Hypothermia is an old enemy. I often suffer from a mild case of it and once a severe level after a surgery. I've treated many species of animals in various stages. Only once before have I dealt with this level and it was a sheep that was run into a frozen pond by a dog in the winter time. Myrna was in BAD shape.

Forming a tunnel in the towels, I blew warm air inside. Then when she wasn't shivering quite so badly, I was able to gently lift each wing and blow dry underneath, fluffing her feathers as if I were creating a puffy hair style. Then last of all I lifted her up and blew dry her belly. When the painful jerking had ceased and she was just lightly shivering, our oldest grand daughter swore she could almost hear a purr. We fluffed and dried for minutes or more and then when we stopped a soft shiver would run through her now and then. We opted to keep her wrapped up in the towels and put her in the nest in the chicken coop, doors closed. She remained huddled inside the towels.

 

After a while Kirk went out and checked on her fearful that the trauma still might have been too much for her but there she was pecking on the plexi-glass door windows asking to be let out. No green egg today but can you blame her? I wouldn't be surprised if she doesn't lay much the rest of the week. I'm just glad our little miss bug catcher is fine once more.     

 

Goat/Sheep Wedding Bell?

 I had things all planned out. It was going to work out great. Lilly Pad was going to live with Jubull. I didn't want the new little buck to be all alone. In a short few weeks he will be weaned. Then for a short period he will be with the other little goats, then he will have to be separated when he is in danger of breeding the does before we wanted him to. The best part of this idea is they like each other. Not in a best friends kind of way but he is polite. When he can be put in with the girls, she will occupy our freezer. How can I do it? You might recall I don't like Columbia wool to spin. It is spungy and I just don't like the feel of it against my skin. I've a beautiful sweater I made from a lambs wool and though I like it, I don't want another. I have no other use for her except as a companion for a brief period of time. Besides, if I added shearing to our list of things to do my husband would shoot me. Maybe not literally but definitely figuratively.


The plan seemed perfect. That is until my friend, the one that gave Lilly to me, sweetly informed me that she had just learned that sheep and goats can cross. WHAT? Goats have 60 chromosomes and sheep have 54. How could this be possible? She informed me on Facebook. You know how reliable Facebook is. I had to look it up. Sure enough, around the world a few were born this past spring. Strange looking creatures.

Does this mean wedding bell? Oh I hope not. Here I thought putting a sheep and a goat together would be ideal. Oh dear, Lilly Pad has been trying to nurse off of Rachel, Abagail's daughter who isn't even two months old. Does this mean she thinks she is a goat? Or does this means she just misses her momma? It is quite a strange sight as Lilly is bigger than Rachel. Why Lilly Pad keeps it up is beyond me. There is nothing there yet. Oh no, what have I got myself into?

This is what I found out on the Internet:
"Technically speaking, a ‘Sheep-Goat-Chimera’ is the name when the sheep and goat embryos are combined in a lab. Interestingly, in the mature animal, the ‘sheep’ parts were woolly and the ‘goat’ parts were hairy. There is another mechanism by which a geep or shoat can be produced, however. It usually involves a goat learning how to put on a Barry White record and the sheep shearing her wool into the shape of a negligee… While this also results in geep/shoat production, the offspring is, technically, a ‘hybrid’ rather than the lab-produced ‘chimera’. The main difference here, however, is that hybrid geep/shoat cannot reproduce – but the chimera geep/shoat can – but it can only pass on either sheep or goat genes."

This is really rare right? That should mean were safe - maybe.

Thoughts of Survival

Sunrise

It is late. I'm waiting on the oven to heat up to temp and the bread to bake. Summer means not turning it on until it has cooled off in the evening. Cooled off is a relative term I know depending on where you live. Here, we are in the fifties at night or low, low sixties at the highest - heavenly.  When it begins to cool, we throw our windows and doors wide open and let the cool air circulate throughout the house, air conditioning being reserved for only the hottest of days. In this manner we wake to  68 degrees most mornings in the house, my favorite temperature.

 

Heat and I are enemies. It clashes with my Addison's disease and lays me low. Cold may not be pleasant but at least I can put on more clothes. Sweatshirt weather is my favorite.

 

Maybe that is one more reason the Lord put us here in the boondocks where we are nestled against the mountains. It is definitely cooler than where our son lives 25 miles away. Definitely cooler than where we use to live about 140 miles away. And that definitely means a change in gardening. At our son's and back at the old house they have had a fair number of 90's and at our old house quite a few 100's.We have had only a couple or so 90's and it can stay that way.

 

Right now I'm listening to it rain and sitting on the back deck under the large overhand that protects it. The clouded heavens make darkness complete but it is a cozy darkness. A darkness that envelopes you and makes the world seem intimate. The porch lights creates a room all my own.

 

As I type away, the leaky sky ebbs and the torrent of water that gushed down the down spouts slows to a plinking rhythm. It creates an accompaniment to the creek's whispers as the noises of the heavens still. From the corner of my eye I see brown and look up from my computer screen to see a doe walk along the edges of the light's reach. I can hear the tearing of the grass as she feeds unconcerned by my presence. Soon another doe joins her. They slowly wonder off around the corner of the house as the oven beeps, informing me it is up to temp.

 

Have I told you lately, I LOVE this place!!! At the old house yes, I also cooked late at night with the windows flung open but there was no serenading of a creek or companionship of nature, just sounds of traffic, televisions blaring, and music playing. As I enjoy the moment, my body screams SLEEP, SLEEP but that will come soon, bread is baking, the last of the chores before bedtime. I spent most of last week chasing the dotted lines down highways in both directions. So this evening I had to culture yogurt, start sauerkraut, make two desserts, bake bread and a yummy new casserole, as casseroly as I get. It a a new cabbage dish, a winner and I'll be sharing it with you. 

 

One of the things I've been contemplating lately is when we have to live off of a garden what would we plant? I can see that a survival garden isn't the same as a supplemental garden. Too many enjoy nows and things to can or freeze. There is only so much space and so much energy and so it has to really count. I question if we will always have electricity or will the interruption of it become common place? We are getting a taste of that as brown outs happen fairly often and power outages for a few minutes to hours happens about twice a month. I'm told we live in the forgotten valley of the county. It can be rather nice sometimes. My thoughts never still they wander off to will we need to rig something up like they do with donkeys that go around and around to pump water up from a well only we will probably be using goats? Should look into that just in case. Good food for thought anyway.

 

Warfare in the future is to be increasingly a cyber one. Knock out the banking and electricity and a nation comes to a stand still. Our daughter has friends in the military who specialize in just that, defensively and offensively. That is why my thoughts turn to what did the pioneers grow and do? There is so much history concentrated on the wars and treks but not so much on the daily sustaining things of life.

 

Potatoes and cabbage are two of the things I've come to conclusion were a staple. But it is late and for tonight I going to give thanks for the things I've learned to date, one of which is to mark my milk, and yogurt jars with the date they were put in the refrigerator with a dry erase pen. A refrigerator, another one of those conveniences we've come to depend upon. I've looked into natural refrigeration. Something I've yet to share with you. But for now, I'm going to sleep for tomorrow will come all too soon.