A Happy Me!

OH! I am SO THANKFUL! I am feeling a little bit like my normal self today! (Tired but not ill)
AJ arrived home last night, and it must have been a tonic. He worked from home today and it is just too wonderful for words to have him within close proximity:-)

Now, to blow all your socks off, I managed to putter away on a couple projects while I was sick. I can't tell you how... I just did. Some combination of whisking into the kitchen in a moment of feeling tolerable, and whisking back out at the first sign of feeling faint. I'm sure the projects would have been completed faster in non-sick time, but I really wanted to accomplish something (ANYTHING) while AJ was out of town.

So... we dehydrated some carrots. Zachary scrubbed down about ten pounds of carrots, and I sliced them, following up with a five minute blanch (this is all new to me). Supposedly blanching some vegetables (the ones with a longer cooking time) stops the enzyme action that causes loss of flavor, and preserves color amongst other things.
We dried ours overnight at 125 degrees Fahrenheit.






































There is quite a lot of scrubbing, slicing, blanching, and placing on trays for ten pounds of carrots.
Do you know what ten pounds dehydrated to?

This:














And this is a gallon Zip Lock bag. I am sure there can't be one pound in here!



















The first lesson I learned:

Dehydrating is one of the most
UN-rewarding looking accomplishments I have tried yet!

Lesson 2:

Those little guys will expand,
so don't go putting a cup of dried carrots in your vegetable soup
- it might equal five or seven pounds of carrots in the end!

Lesson 3:

Buying a pound of dried vegetables doesn't look so expensive anymore.
Seven dollars for 1 lb. of dried carrot
seems pretty darn reasonable to me! (Azure Standard)

After the carrots, it was time to try something else. Jerky.
Pick a lean piece of meat, freeze partially making it easier to slice in uniform size, and marinate in some concoction overnight.
Blot each piece so it is not dripping, place on trays and dry for roughly eight hours at 145 degrees Fahrenheit.

I absolutely can't believe it, but it actually turned out! I cheated on the marinade and bought something non toxic off the store shelf, but next time I'll make my own.
The meat didn't shrink up as much as the vegetables, and AJ says it's the best jerky he's tasted!
So good. Now I need to vacuum pack it before it all disappears!
















So those were the triumphs of Momma bug this weekend even amidst feeling awful.
It is true that we are also sprouting alfalfa seeds which are slowly making their debut.
And it is also true that I tried making bread, and it was a failure. It didn't' rise, that's how I know it was a failure. Some people call their bread similar in weight to a brick, but a brick would have been light compared to the loaf this would have made if I had tried to bake it. Thankfully I was smart enough to dump it before wasting time trying to fix what was irreparable.
I will try again. Really I will! ;-)

For now I am pretty satisfied with my dehydrating education. FYI, I used a book called
"Preserve It Naturally" which was very helpful and informative.
And my Honey is home. So all in all, I couldn't possibly be happier!