The Joy of Dehydrating

As my garden has been showering me with produce, I've turned my eyes toward winter preservation. Rather than freezing or canning as I've done in the past, this season has been about dehydrating. Dehydrating is easy, quick, and simple. It doesn't require a lot of equipment, prep time, or mess, which is what I need considering the limited time I have available with 2 small children wanting my attention. And the same will be true when it comes time to prepare them in winter-- cooking will be as simple as tossing a handful of dried veggies into the pot.

Some of my latest dehydrating projects have included:

• Zucchini and squash. I'll have loads of zucchini chips to toss into soups, casseroles, sauces, etc.
  
• Peppers. For easy and fast flavor.
• Celery, onions, and carrots. This trio being the famous base for every meal, I'd like to package these together.
• Beans. Well, I would dry them if I had any to spare (not a big harvest this year).
• Tomatoes. Soon they will be ready to dry.
• Corn. I haven't done this yet, but I've read you can blanch ears of corn and slice the kernels onto the dehydrator tray. Then it will be simple to toss them into soups.
• Fruit. I made some apricot leather (made of apricots pureed with stevia and spread in a thin layer on the dehydrator tray) that is a huge hit around here. There are a million combinations of fruit that can be made into leather. Last year I mixed ricotta cheese with the fruit along with vanilla and sweetener, and it turned out tasting just like cheesecake.

For more information check out How To Dry Fruits and Vegetables. I know there is so much more that can be done with the dehydrator, like jerky, herbs, and cookies. Have you been dehydrating? Will you share your ideas and successes?


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Beet Recipes for Every Meal
How To Make Lacto-Fermented Pickles
In The Kitchen

Beet Recipes for Every Meal

Did you know that beets are incredibly nutritious? For a little motivation to eat those beets, here are a few facts about their nutritional value. Beets contain phosphorus, sodium, magnesium, calcium, iron, and potassium, as well as fiber, vitamins A and C, niacin, and biotin. They also contain folic acid, which is recommended for pregnant women because it may lower the risk of spina bifida and other neural tube defects in newborn infants. Beets (and beet juice) detoxify the blood, and beet juice contains betaine, which stimulates the function of liver cells and protects the liver and bile ducts. Beets also help protect against heart disease, birth defects and certain cancers, especially colon cancer. Plus, my picky non-vegetable-eating three year old actually LIKES to eat them, especially the beet greens.

My garden is full of beets, but most of the time I don't have a clue about what to do with them. So they eventually end up in the compost pile, which is a shame considering their health benefits (although the up side is that they do add lots of mineral value to the compost, and in turn to next year's garden produce). But after a little research I now have a variety of interesting beet meal ideas to share. Read on!

Beet Recipes For Every Meal
Menu

Breakfast:
beet pancakes
beets with maple syrup

Lunch:
roasted beet soup or cold beet soup
beet salad
side of beet fries or beet chips

Snack:
beet and carrot bread with butter
quick beet and apple salad

Dinner:

beets and red cabbage
roasted beets with sauteed beet greens
beet borscht
side of vinegar-pickled or fermented beets

Drink:
beet kvass

Dessert:
beet chocolate cake and beet ice cream

Nightcap:
beet wine

I hope you don't think I would actually put myself or my family through a day of beets, but it's fun to learn about all the creative things you can do with a single vegetable. Do you have any recipes to add to the menu?

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Step-by-Step Dandelion Wine

Ready to try making wine? I just bottled and tasted my dandelion wine (started in June), and it is very enjoyable. I know it isn't dandelion season anymore, but you can keep this recipe for next year, or just learn about the process of home wine making and try it with a different flower or fruit (a quick google search will lead you to a recipe for any type of wine you might be interested in). My next wine will be choke cherry.

Equipment:
* cloth or bag for straining
* 2 one-gallon carboys (glass jugs)
* funnel for pouring wine into carboy
* bung and airlock (buy an airlock here and a bung here)
* plastic siphon tube
* wine bottles and corks

Ingredients:
* 2 qts dandelion petals
* 3 lbs granulated sugar
* 4 oranges
* 1 gallon water
* yeast and nutrient (I got these at my local wine supply store)

Process:
1. Pull dandelion petals off flower heads, leaving as little green matter as possible. I have a feeling, though, that the wine would be fine if using the whole heads. Next time I might skip this step.

2. Pour one gallon boiling water over the dandelion petals, cover with a cloth, and leave to steep for two days. Do not exceed two days.

3. Pour the mixture back into a pot and bring to a boil. Add the peelings from the four oranges (peel very thinly, leaving as little white pith as possible) and boil for ten minutes.

4. Strain through a muslin cloth or bag into a crock or food-grade-plastic bucket containing the sugar, stirring to dissolve. When cool, add the juice of the oranges, the yeast and yeast nutrient.

5. Pour into a gallon carboy (it helps to use a big funnel), fit with bung and airlock, and allow to ferment completely. You will know it is fermenting because you will see bubbles coming up through the airlock (the airlock I use has water in it, so I can see the water bubbling when my wine is actively fermenting).

6. When the wine isn't bubbling anymore (anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months) rack the wine into another gallon jug (racking wine is the process of separating wine from its sediment, or lees, and transferring the wine into another container using a siphon), being careful not to disturb the sediment on the bottom of the jug (throw out the sediment), fit with airlock, and let it sit for another few weeks or so.

(All the websites and books say the fermentation process takes months and months, but my wine always seems done bubbling and ready to be bottled after only a few weeks. I do let it sit longer just in case-- for maybe 2 months altogether. Keep it in a dark place, preferably at a temperature of 70 degrees F.)

7. Rack the wine again (siphon it into the other carboy). While racking it, taste the wine. If you want it sweeter, add 1/2 cup sugar dissolved in one cup wine (keep adding more sugar dissolved in wine until it tastes good to you). Stir, put the airlock back on, and let it sit again for another 2-3 weeks or until it stops bubbling.

8. Siphon the wine into bottles when it clears, or doesn't have much sediment at the bottom (if it still has lots of sediment on the bottom, rack it and let it sit one more time before bottling). As far as corks go, I need to get a wine corker, but I don't have one yet. My grandpa uses bottles with twist-on caps, and his wines have always been just fine. I've always gotten small corks that I can soak in boiling water for a few minutes and then push into the bottle with my thumb, but my corks will only last for a year. To store wines longer and better, the best choice would be to use adequate corks with a wine corker, and to keep the bottles somewhere cool. Let them sit upright for a few days before storing them on their sides (store them upright if using screw-on caps).

9. They say to allow wine to age six months in the bottle before tasting (ha! yeah right...), but a year will improve it vastly (just make more next year!).

That's the basic recipe for any wine, although there will be minor differences depending on the fruit you're using. This dandelion wine has a unique flavor: it tastes... orangey and flowery. We like it.

Recipe is from The Winemaking Home Page


Have you made wine? What has been your favorite flavor? If you haven't tried it, do these instructions make it seem more do-able? More complicated??


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Finding Joy Through Self-Love

Photo by Yasmin

This summer (and all of my life) has been filled with lessons. As of right now, the biggest lesson I've learned is the importance of loving myself. No matter what battle I've got going on inside myself, it always ends up with me realizing I've not been loving (nurturing, valuing, honoring, accepting) myself.

When I work on loving myself, I get to...

Fight my spiritual battles. I've been using More To Life processes to get clear about what's stopping me from being who I want to be and what I can do to move forward. There is one process that is particularly effective which involves forcefully disavowing core beliefs (I'm not good enough, I'm worthless, I'm a failure) and then avowing new ones (I am enough, I am creative, I am loveable).

Trust that I know enough. I don't need to compare myself with others or constantly tell myself I should be doing with other people (friends, books, and blogs) are doing. In loving myself I'm choosing to reduce the number of blogs and books I read, and instead make choices from my own intuition.

Ask for help. In loving myself I did this-- I asked my Mother-In-Law to watch my kids one morning a week so I could have space, and she said YES. I am so excited and relieved.

Forgive people and accept them as they are, without demands or expectations. In loving myself, I've been forgiving myself and in turn opening up to others.

Meet new people and create friendships. I've been realizing I've not been social for quite awhile. I've even lost several friends lately. In loving myself I'm making a choice to be courageous in approaching people I find interesting and introducing myself, and to find opportunities to be engaged in my community more.

Say no to what doesn't work for me. In loving myself I'm being more intentional about what works and doesn't work in my life. I declined on a blog project, I'm limiting books and blogs, I'm allowing myself not to push myself to clean and garden every day, and I'm reflecting and writing about what it is I truly WANT to do.

Do what works for me. Loving myself means I can pursue my interests and passions during the time I've freed up by trusting myself, asking for help, and letting go of what isn't working. This is the step I'm currently on in this process of learning to love myself. There is so much I want that I haven't let myself do, or conversely that I've been forcing myself to do (which makes me not enjoy it). It's a different experience to choose something just because I feel like it.

Enjoy life more, finding fulfillment and joy in life as it is.


I'm interested in knowing what it is for all of you to fight for yourself. What does it feel like for you when you are not loving yourself versus when you are? How do you get back to a place of self-love, and what benefits do you gain from being in that place?


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This Week's Favorites- August 7, 2008

I love reading about all the interesting things Ann Marie cooks up at Cheese Slave.

Simple Mom posted her month-long menu plan, including recipes.

The Artful Parent shares homemade natural products recipes. And there's an easy insect repellent recipe at Havin' Fun Yet?.

What can you do with your extra newspaper? Check out some cool ideas at Women Not Dabbling in Normal.

PreSchool Mama has 8 Instant Tent Ideas for PreSchoolers.

Useful Books for the Gardening Library

My huge pile of library books is slowly going down, and I've learned my lesson about putting lots of books on hold at the library-- they all come in at the same time. So from now on I'm going to stick with reading a small number of books (1-3) concurrently, and when I'm finished with them I will borrow/purchase more. But I am happy to have found some excellent books during my library rampage. Here are my favorites of the gardening books I checked out:

Perennial Vegetables: From Artichokes to Zuiki Taro, A Gardener's Guide to Over 100 Delicious and Easy to Grow Edibles. Did you know you can grow vegetables as perennials (meaning you never have to re-plant them; they just keep growing and giving you food year after year)? Perennials vegetables are low maintenance, extend the harvest season, look nice, and attract beneficial insects, all while providing food? Edible landscaping is definitely an area I want to explore, and this book has an index of hundreds of vegetables, how to grow them, where to grow them (in the US and Canada), and how to harvest, store, and cook them. Super cool!

Great Garden Companions: A Companion-Planting System for a Beautiful, Chemical-Free Vegetable Garden. I like this book because it's about how to design, plant, and care for a companion-planted garden. Planting my vegetables with herbs and flowers is something I want to do more of next year, and Great Garden Companions is a simple and beautiful teacher.

Seed Sowing and Saving: Step-by-Step Techniques for Collecting and Growing More Than 100 Vegetables, Flowers, and Herbs. An absolute must-buy. Basically, it shows how to harvest, store, and sow seeds for each of a variety of vegetables, herbs, perennial vegetables, and annual and perennial flowers. It is so simple, well-illustrated, and easy to use. We visualize our kids using this book for homeschool future projects.

Worms Eat My Garbage: How to Set Up and Maintain a Worm Composting System. This book goes through the why's, how's, and what-if's of worm bin composting. I've been having questions about my own worm bin, and now I have a better understanding of the simplicity and usefulness of worm bins.


Salad Leaves for All Seasons: Organic Growing from Pot to Plot. I've been wondering about how to grow and use different kinds of greens. This book describes a variety of different kinds of greens, how they taste, and how to plant and harvest them during each of the seasons. To get the best flavor and production, each green needs to be planted and harvested at its peak time in its peak season. The only downside is that the author only discusses greens for mild winters rather than for sub-zero Montana-style winters.

What do you think? Have you read any of these? Which is your favorite? Please share your own review in the comments.


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How To Make Lacto-Fermented Pickles

Ingredients (for 1 gallon/4 liters):
3 to 4 pounds (1.5 to 2 kilograms) pickling cucumbers
6 Tablespoons (90 mililiters) sea salt
3 or 4 heads flowering dill, or 3-4 tablespoons (45-60 mililiters) of any form of dill
2-3 cloves garlic, peeled
1 handful fresh grape, cherry, oak, horseradish, or bay leaves
1 pinch black peppercorns
filtered water

Process:

1. Rinse cucumbers. If using cucumbers not fresh off the vine, soak them for a couple of hours in cold water with ice.
2. Dissolve sea salt in 1/2 gallon (2 liters) water to create a brine solution. Stir until salt is dissolved.
3. Put dill, garlic, leaves, and peppercorns in the bottom of a crock or jar.
4. Place cucumbers in crock/jar.
5. Pour brine over cucumbers. If using a crock, put a plate on top of the cucumbers and weight it down with a jug of water or a rock. If using a jar, use a clean rock, glass of sand or water, or other creative weight on top of cucumbers, or just put the lid on the jar and don't worry about a weight. Make sure the brine is covering the cucumbers; if not add more brine (just under 1 tablespoon salt to each one cup water). Cover with a cloth or lid.
6. Check every day, skimming mold from the surface (if there is mold, rinse the plate and the weight).
7. After 1-4 weeks (depending on the temperature), the pickles will be ready. You will know if they are ready by tasting them. If you like the taste, they are ready! Refrigerate and enjoy.

Recipe adapted from Wild Fermentation.


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Living a Simple, Balanced Life

I'm back to working on balancing my time in ways that make sense for me. Part of balancing, I've learned, is to say no to things that don't work for me. So I've decided not to participate in the Women Not Dabbling in Normal blog project. A little sad, but also a good thing for me.

I've learned that living a simple, balanced life requires me to be mindful about how I use my time. In short, I'm asked to:

1. Keep my focus on the most important parts of my life.
2. Limit my commitments so they are realistic, and say no to what doesn't fit.
3. Maintain a schedule, while being flexible and open to change.
4. Ask for help.
5. Continue to check in with myself on how my choices are working for me.
6. Take care of myself.
   

How do you create balance in your life?


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Garden Progress- July 2008

Another month of summer is done, and it really hasn't gotten very hot here... yet. Hopefully August will bring a few more swimming trips to the lake before fall comes round. This month the garden has been giving us broccoli, beets, peas (done now), carrots and kale. Just this week we've been starting to harvest zucchini, and cabbage is almost ready. I put down too much newspaper when I layered my beds lasagna style, causing my onions, carrots and corn to be stunted and seeds to have trouble germinating due to a very dry upper layer of earth. But, truth be told, there are veggies growing and providing food for us.

Squash starting to vine up trellis (right); corn and beans (back-left); zucchini (back-right); eggplant, basil, peppers and okra (middle); cabbage, cauliflower and dill (left); kale and beets (front).

Cukes and squash (back left); celery, cauliflower, dill, broccoli, and cabbage (middle); onions and carrots (front right). Cold frame in the back will soon have more beets, greens, and maybe cabbage and broccoli.

Tomatoes are coming!

I've been learning more and more about growing flowers and herbs planted with veggies to entice and provide shelter for beneficial insects. Next year is wide open for experimentation, but I think I'll go for more flowers, and maybe more of a wild, less structured look.

We've worked hard on Project No-Lawn, and it's still a major work-in-progress. So far the back portion of the lawn, as well as the sides, have transformed from lawn into woodchips and flowers, along with rocks and a living teepee. The vining plants that should be covering the teepee are just starting to climb, so hopefully this month the teepee will be clothed. The back in front of the fence has sunflowers slowly growing, but sadly not yet flowering. I'm feeling excited to continue replacing lawn with wood and plants, and soon to start on the front yard.

I also took down the fence separating the garden from the yard, so now my kids can feel more free to enjoy picking carrots, peas, tomatoes, etc., and feed veggies to the rabbits, as much as they want.

We lost one rabbit to the heat, which was so sad for me to see. I guess I'll know more about losing rabbits soon, once we get rabbit babies turning into meat for my family. We may be getting babies in the next month.

That's the garden progress for July. More in another month.

How's your garden growing?


Related posts:
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