Dehydrating weekend

 This weekend I dehydrated onions and carrots. I was going to go to Market on the Move again today but didn't sleep well last night so I changed my mind. These are onions and carrots from the last 2 rounds that I did go. I didn't want them to go to waste. Only one onion had to get tossed from going bad. 

For both the onions and carrots I blanched them (probably longer than necessary). Blanching helps them dehydrate better. I heard one lady say that onions have a thick layer in their skins that that opens up during blanching allowing them to dehydrate faster than if you tried with them raw. 

The carrots heated up the fastest. Some of the onions are still going and it's been 14hrs in the dehydrator. Some finished but some are still drying out. I may not have cut them all evenly. 

The photo accidently deleted of the onions diced. That bowl was full  of onions by the time I was done. 

Dehydrating really shrinks them up. Above is 3lbs of carrots and below are them all dried up in the jar. 

I didnt put the onions and carrots together. There were only 4 of those mesh guards that i used for the onion sheets but the carrots fell through when I was trying to take them off the trays lol

These will be good in cooking and baking. The carrots can go in cakes or breads and the onions can go into soups or whatever. Some people blend up the dehydrated veggies into powders to also add to baked goods or as thickeners for dishes. 

I'm debating cutting and blanching up potatoes the rest of the day but not sure if they will be done in enough time before i have to leave for the work in the morning so those may need to wait until next weekend. 

Then yesterday I was doing laundry and found this heart rock calling out to me. So I snagged it. 

All the zucchiniiiii

 

So the last round of Market on the Move we got a bunch of zucchini. 3 I had throw away because they were from the last round and they were forgotten about and went bad. I had plan so of doing this last weekend but I just ran out of time and during the week I don't have spare time to do much in the kitchen besides a quick dinner. 

So today I cleaned and shredded all the zucchini for putting into Zucchini bread. In the end I got about 9 cups of shredded zucchini. The recipe I use makes 2 loaves and calls for 2 cups. I don't have freezer space for bread so I decided to only make one round of breads and freeze the rest of zucchini flat for future batches. 

This is the recipe I use: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/6698/moms-zucchini-bread/

Some of the zucchini was getting close to it's end. But I was able to shred it all.

9 cups of shredded zucchini

The zucchini was very moist because it was very ripe but it helped add moisture to the dough

They turned out yummy. My son has already eaten almost half of one. I was afraid 2 loaves were going to be to much for us. He said he favors zucchini bread over banana bread so I may need to keep ripe banana's to just banana pancakes. 

I didn't attend the MoM this weekend. I don't have anymore space for more food. I still have to dice up and freeze the rest of the onions before they begin to ripen to much. 

I've been browsing way's to cook up potatos and came across this website. https://www.tasteofhome.com/collection/russet-potato-recipes/

Lots of tasty ideas/recipes in there. I plan to try some soon. Hash browns, french fries, and the latkis.   

The next thing on my list is to try making bread in the dutch oven. https://tasty.co/recipe/homemade-dutch-oven-bread

Really I just want to learn to make a basic loaf of bread in general. I was gifted some yeast so I may have to try it out the next weekend i'm free. 

Another day of produce

 I went again today to the food salvage drive. I had enough space again for another round of stuff. 

These two boxes contain the same things in each. Everyone got 2 of these boxes and then the box below. The can below is mystery beans haha. 

The bag of espresso is massive. Espresso is usually really strong for me so I may have to just use a very a low bean to high water ratio for my coffee on that. We got more onions, a cantaloupe, a few beans, a bag of bread and a pack of blueberries. Then lots of zucchini, broccoli, potatoes, corn, apples, lettuce and red onions. We got double of everything listed from the big boxes. 

I gave away one cantaloupe, a bag of potatoes (we're still getting through our first bag), and a bag of red onions to a neighbor as I don't cook with red onions much so one bag will last a long time. I usually just cook with white or yellow.

With all the broccoli I decided it best to just blanch and freeze the florets. I hate eating the stems so I usually cut them off but i've always cringed at tossing a perfectly good part of the plant just because I never knew what to do with it. The stem as has just as much nutrients as the florets. As a child I despised the bags of frozen veggies my mom would make because she bought the value one's that added the stems as fillers and I fucking hated the consistency of them. 

So I saved the stems this time and decided to look up ways I could use them. I originally came across this post: http://tastingnotesnyc.com/2012/04/18/dont-toss-the-stems-broccoli-stem-puree/

I almost made that tonight for dinner but then it hit me; we have so many potatoes and I bet I could dice up the stems and add them to the potatoes and make a potato/broccoli mash.

 It turned out pretty good. I used the immersion blender to puree but the broccoli didn't really break up. My son enjoyed them and was thrilled there were veggies in the mix because he's been begging to go vegetarian (we eat mostly vegetarian anyways). I will certainly be using the stems for things in the future. I bet the stems would be great in a broccoli cheese soup. 

There will be more blanching and freezing going on today. I also have so much zucchini that I will make zucchini bread but I may need to shred and freeze some of it for later bread usage. 

The way that my schedule is going these days fresh produce isn't getting used as quickly in our house. It's quicker to just throw a pot on the stove and toss in frozen veggies and go from there. Typically I favor roasted vegetables for dinner but I don't have enough time in the evenings for that except for weekends. To ensure the food actually gets eaten and used frozen produce is just the best for our situation right now. Fresh is always best but life... lol

Tomorrow i'm going to chop up and freeze the onions and slice the lettuce and put in a bag with some shredded carrot for a quick diner salad. My sons been diggin' having iceberg salads. We usually eat spinach based salads. 

Till the next Market On the Move....

Take Care,
Krista