my garden a total loss

9/9/2011, 1:39 am Read at your own risk! I am still editing this thing!

My garden was a total loss this year. Nothing survived the heat and lack of water. I lost my drake and a chicken hen to the heat and another hen to predation (stray dog as usual). So I'm down to 4 chicken hens, 2 duck hens, 2 dogs, and a cat.

So know I am playing the "What's on sell this week? -N- Where is the biggest bang for my buck?" I picked up 20 lbs. of russet potatoes the other day and ran 10 lbs. through the dehydrator as mashed potatoes out of curiosity. Ten lbs. of potatoes were reduced to a little over 3 pints of flakes or buds. I cooked the potatoes, then mashed them with a little potato water. I then took about a cup and a half of mashed potatoes and put them on a Teflon sheet and rolled the potatoes out like a pie crust with piece of parchment paper on top and then dehydrated them at 120 degrees until each of my nine trays were crisp. Then I loaded up my food processor with broken up sheets of potato and whizzed them around until they were potato flake size.

I did sort of same thing with all my leftover sweet potatoes from last fall. After all the hard work to get those potatoes in last fall I didn't want to loose them to sprouting. While I was out on the web fooling around I came across a web-site with some you-tube videos on dehydrating. They had one where she boiled the sweet potatoes whole with skins on until just done. Then you peeled the potatoes, cut off a big slice, and smashed it between two pieces of parchment paper with a rolling pen and dehydrated the rounds. So I thought, why not just mash your sweet potatoes with a potato masher and spread out the pulp, as I had a lot of little potatoes that I need to do something with. So I took a cup of sweet potato pulp and plopped it on a Teflon leather sheet and used a piece of parchment paper and rolled it out to the size of my Teflon sheet and dehydrating 1 cup of pulp per sheet with a total load of 9 cups. I reduced the sweet potatoes down to about 4 quart-fruit jars. I will most likely add a hand full of sweet potato flakes to soup and stews, as I am the only one who likes to eat sweet potatoes as is, this way the sweet potatoes will get eaten up, maybe.

We have been participating in Banana-Thursday at the local grocery store. On Thursdays the bananas are the loss-leader at 18 cents a pound, limit five pounds. Hubby doesn't like raw bananas but loves banana-nut bread so we get the five pounds of bananas and bring them home then what Sister Suzy and I don't eat I have been dehydrating them into chips to make banana-nut bread later. Then we discovered on Friday mornings any bananas leftover from Banana-Thursday are still on sale and no limit! I have enough banana chips to make a dozen loaves of banana-nut bread so now my shekels are going to be spent on other fruits and vegetables to preserve.

I'm eyeing the bell peppers and jalapenos now because all the pepper plants were part of the shriveled up and dead. Ten bell peppers dehydrates down to a pint! I cook with a lot of bell peppers so I hope I find some good sales on them!

Cabbage was on sale this week so I am going to can up a couple of batches of Amish Cole Slaw. I found a recipe on Jackie Clay's blog in Backwoods Home Magazine's web site. I have made one batch and we tried one jar. Hubby and I thought it was very tasty. Sister Suzy choked down one bite, however she doesn't like anything pickled. I know, strange! It has a lovely sweet and sour taste.

Have a good evening!

Judy

P.S. Oh My God! I can't think and type at the same time! I hope I have all the grammatical and spelling errors fixed! I think I have edited this thing about a million times after I hit the publish button and Microsoft Word said it was good! Judy