Tuesday I harvested a big bowl of dead nettle from an area where the dogs do not go, then rinsed it well, left it on a towel to dry for a while, then picked the leaves off the stem. I mostly use the dried leaves for making a tea. The leaves can be left to...
read moreI am happy this month has ended. I can a lot but trying to do something every day, and work around the things that would HAVE to be done in a day or two . . it was a lot of work. For things going into the freeze dryer, when they were done I vacuum...
read moreI’ve gotten behind on reporting. IF I do this again next year, I’m going to do weekly reports instead of daily reports. The three things I have not reported: My plans for the last few days of August:
read moreI’m not sure the Every Bit Counts Challenge has real rules but I had hoped not to repeat anything but today is a repeat. I can only do so much so this has to count for today. Yesterday I picked a good bit of basil. I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do...
read moreI had to giggle when I took the cream cheese, okra and tomato peelings out of the freeze dryer today. First, the tomato peelings covered 1-1/2 trays in the freeze dryer. I dumped those in the blender and turned them into powder. It was enough to fill one quarter pint jar. That’s about 24 teaspoons....
read moreToday’s project – This is probably the truest interpretation of the Every Bit Counts Challenge. Today it’s bits and pieces of several things going into the freeze dryer. First is 1-1/2 trays of tomato skins. Once these are dry, I will run them through the blender. One of my favorite ways to use this is...
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read moreToday’s project – salsa! I wish I had hundreds of pounds of tomatoes. There are so many fun tomato products to can. Today’s salsa is a bit spicy but when we’re adding it to other dishes, like tacos or enchiladas or using it as a dressing on a taco salad, the spicy is good. If...
The post Every Bit Counts, Day 2 appeared first on Patchwork Times by Judy Laquidara.
read moreThe Every Day Counts Challenge was started (as far as I know) by Jessica at Three Rivers Homestead. Sarah at Living Traditions Homestead has a great video explaining the challenge. The main point of the challenge is to preserve something every day in August. I’m not guaranteeing that I will be able to preserve/can something...
The post Every Bit Counts Challenge Day 1 appeared first on Patchwork Times by Judy Laquidara.
read moreI’m keeping the freeze dryer busy or . . is the freeze dryer keeping me busy?
read moreLast night, the weirdest thing happened when I was vacuum sealing the jars from the freeze dryer. I had them all in the vacuum pot and as soon as I turned it on, I heard a weird noise. It sounded like I hadn’t put the lid on tight and it settled but I knew that...
The post Freeze Drying From The Garden appeared first on Patchwork Times by Judy Laquidara.
read moreWe had the Peep taste test when they were here this past weekend. One thing about freeze dried foods is that once they’re done and all the moisture is out of them, there’s an intense flavor. For example, apples, strawberries, pineapple, etc. taste like the most amazing, sweet, crunchy fruit ever. My food processor/grater grates...
The post The Freeze Dried Peeps appeared first on Patchwork Times by Judy Laquidara.
read moreRemember I was freeze drying all those avocados? They finished up about 24 hours sooner than I had expected. I ended up with 6 quarts of freeze dried avocado. It isn’t crumbled really fine but it is crumbled. This is what wouldn’t fit into the jars. I didn’t want to go grab a pint and...
The post Guacamole! appeared first on Patchwork Times by Judy Laquidara.
read moreI’m almost always planning ahead and don’t usually screw up as bad as I did this evening. I was so tired from working in the garden at least five hours, cooking, baking bread . . we finished dinner and I told Vince . . “I’ll get the dishwasher loaded and going but I’m honestly too...
The post Poor Planning appeared first on Patchwork Times by Judy Laquidara.
read moreWe love chicken pot pie but I’ve never been 100% happy with the ones I make. Last week I was watching Homesteading Family and came across her pot pie video/blog post. I knew that was the next thing I was going to freeze dry so I had taken two big packages of frozeen boneless, skinless...
The post Chicken Pot Pie appeared first on Patchwork Times by Judy Laquidara.
read moreFirst, let’s talk about the load that just came out of the freeze dryer. Last week we had a casserole of ground beef, rice, mushrooms, green beans and cream of mushroom soup. There may have been other things in there . . that’s all I’m remembering. We had it one night, skipped a few days,...
The post Freeze Drying the Peeps appeared first on Patchwork Times by Judy Laquidara.
read moreWhen we had chickens, several times I freeze dried eggs. In this post, I had freeze dried 96 eggs in several cycles. That was 8 dozen eggs. In this post, it was 14 dozen. I’ve freeze dried probably more than 200 dozen eggs, mostly form when we had chickens. In this post, I wrote about...
The post Freeze Dried Eggs appeared first on Patchwork Times by Judy Laquidara.
read moreSaturday evening after the freeze dryer finished up, I vacuum sealed the items that had been in there while the freeze dryer defrosted. There was a pint of cilantro that got left in the vacuum chamber so it got left out of the photo. Left Row: 1-1/2 quarts of avocadoMiddle Row: 1 pint of jalapeno,...
The post Another Freeze Dryer Load appeared first on Patchwork Times by Judy Laquidara.
read moreOften I will have four trays of the same thing in the freeze dryer, sometimes two trays of this and two trays of that but today, I have five different things on four trays! That’s kinda crazy but it is pretty. Before loading it this afternoon, I took it all apart and cleaned it. It...
The post Another Load in the Freeze Dryer appeared first on Patchwork Times by Judy Laquidara.
read moreVince finished up getting everything ready to take to the CPA yesterday morning so he wanted to go and take it all to her. It’s a little ways from here and there’s a restaurant, Cooky’s, in Golden City, MO that we’ve heard good things about and we wanted to eat there so after he dropped...
The post Monday Happenings appeared first on Patchwork Times by Judy Laquidara.
read moreI know I shouldn’t feel bad but I do feel bad when I hardly blog all day. I also know that life goes on and no one is sitting by the computer patiently waiting for a blog post but blogging has been such a big part of my life for so long . . it’s...
The post Almost Done Canning Potatoes appeared first on Patchwork Times by Judy Laquidara.
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