Dehydrating Kale and Making Veggie Broth Powder

I must be in nesting mode - winter nesting NOT baby nesting just to be clear!!  Last week did not go as planned - we had a few issues with our water system.  One day it was an overflowing water softener and a few days later someone-who-shall-remain-nameless left a hose running in the barn...OH BOY!  The water coming out of the taps after that episode looked like coffee-with-no-cream.  The bright side to all of this is my burgeoning education in how all that junk in the basement (that we depend on daily) works.  I'm getting there but I am beginning to think what we really need is a plumber to come and have a look at everything.

But one thing leading to another led me to want to clean up the basement and get organized once and for all.  I am perhaps delusional on that last bit because things have a way of UN-organizing themselves somehow when I'm not looking.

I was running out of room for my canning jars - filled and empty - so I purchased and installed some new shelving.  It all fits so much better than my ragtag assortment of tables and plastic shelves.

I also was able to get rid of lots of cardboard boxes that were holding all those canning jars.  One of the boxes looks like it's from more-than-a-few years back.  The top of the box says Rolph How Limited O/A Rolph Dom Howe Main Street Orono L0B 1M0 - there's still a Hardware Store in Orono with that name. Cool. (The purrpot insisted on having it's picture taken!)

All this cleaning got me in the mood to clean out the freezers and do some dehydrating too.  You can dehydrate almost any fruit or vegetable but some turn out nicer than others. 

One of the things I love dehydrated is kale.  My mom and dad grow lots of kale - good thing because mine didn't do so well and they were willing to share as always.  Mom washes it, strips it off the stocks and puts in the freezer.  After it's frozen you can just crush the bag with your hands and it falls apart into little pieces.  The handy part about all of this is when you're swamped with work outside you can throw it in the freezer and dehydrate it later..

I did three loads this week in my Excalibur 10-tray dehydrator that lives year round on top of my fridge.  If you don't have a dehydrator you can also use your oven set on low or warmed up and then turned off with the light left on.  It's a messy job - there were bits of kale everywhere but three loads filled a large ceramic container with the clip lock that will do us for most of the year. (About 9 large freezer bags)  I just crunched it up frozen right out of the bag and filled the trays about a 1/2 inch deep and set the temperature for about 105 degrees - this allows it to dehydrate while keeping the nutrition intact.  If the heat is higher it destroys the enzymes that make food alive.  It  took about 3 hours a load.  It needs to be completely dried or any remaining moisture will cause the whole container to mould.  After dehydrating I pulsed everything in a food processor.  

I like the convenience of dumping a few tablespoons into lasagne or soup or pretty much in anything.  It's so good for you!  Kale Nutritional Info.  You just have to remember that a tablespoon is a cup or more when not dehydrated.

I got to thinking about how convenient this was and decided to finally get around to making a vegetable broth powder to replace the expensive organic bouillon  cubes I've bought in the past.  I found a simple recipe and I adapted to what I had.

The original recipe called for:

2 cups Nutritional Yeast

1/2 cup sea salt

2 Tablespoons onion powder

1 Tablespoon turmeric

2 teaspoons dried dill weed

2 teaspoons marjoram(optional)

2 teaspoons dried powdered lemon peel (optional)

1 teaspoon celery seed

1 teaspoon basil

1 teaspoon powdered thyme

1 Tablespoon dried parsley

Anita's Home Made Vegetable Broth Powder 

4 cups nutritional yeast

1/2 cup sea salt

2 tbsp. Onion salt (or powder but I was out)

2 tbsp. turmeric

2 tbsp. basil

1/2 cup parsley

1/2 cup dried veggie mix (carrots, peppers, celery or anything else you have)

This recipe is very forgiving - add whatever sounds good to you. I always figure more green stuff is good for you (it's a bit of a change from 1 tablespoon parsley to 1/2 a cup)  I threw it all into a food processor for about 40 seconds until everything was well blended and for much less than the cost of a box or two of cubes I have enough to last me a year.  It will keep for at least a year or two if it's in an airtight container.

Winter soups and casseroles anyone??

All about ducks... quack quack.

This is poor Sir Winston (or Sir Winnie for short) the Muscovy drake.  Doesn't he have an interesting face (maybe interesting is just being kind)! Sir Winnie is the King of the Chickens and Ducks.  He's a huge duck  and he likes being the boss.  My son has had a few run ins with him when he challenged him "just for fun".  I've never had a problem with him and he often comes to sit near the back door hoping to score some leftover cat food or just sit basking in the sun.

All summer he and his girls would find a shady spot to sit during the hottest parts of the day to emerge ready to join us at the fire pit for supper.  Between the chickens and the ducks there are never any leftovers.

We have three Rouen ducks - they look similar to mallards to the untrained duck-eye.  Two of them hang around with the Crested White Duck below and they are the best of friends.  They are always together wandering the property, drinking out of puddles after a rainstorm or waddling off to find some adventure in the paddock.  So far their farm value has been mostly the entertainment factor with a few eggs thrown in.

Our Crested Duck sat on a clutch of eggs early this spring and hatched out a bunch of ducklings but I don't think any of them where really hers - note the colors of the ducklings - she didn't seem to mind.   One of those hatched drake ducklings grew up to hang out with a misfit Muscovy hen and they've been in love ever since.

Yesterday we welcomed three new black Muscovy hens to the farm. Sir Winnie lost both his girlfriends in the last two weeks.  They had been roaming off without him and we think they may have been a coyotes lunch.  Sad.  They were really sweet ducks who put up with lots of our attention and on occasion being carried back to the barn when they moved too slow for our liking.  The new girls are locked up in a pen getting to know Sir Winnie and I'm not sure they are too happy about it but I can hardly blame them.  They came from a beautiful farm near Balieboro where they had the run of the farm and a huge pond.  Farmer Sue and Farmer Rick helped us catch the girls who were roosting far above our heads in the barn - it was quite the run about!  After several attempts with a huge net we finally captured them but they most certainly didn't want to get into that cage.   All of our Muscovy's up till this point have been almost pure white.  These new girls are mostly black with a little white on their throats - very pretty!  No pictures yet because the barn is too dark for a good shot.

There is another duck sitting on a nest at Farmer Rick and Farmer Sue's and if all goes well we agreed to take them so we may have some baby ducklings in a week or two.  The momma's on their farm come and go from the barn at will and spend most of their time on the pond.  The last batch this particular momma hatched out waddled across the yard and down the steep slope into the pond and learned to swim at THREE DAYS OLD!   Rick and Sue were a little concerned that the water temperature and the predators would probably wipe out the babies this late in the season so we're doing an intervention!  Yeah - duckies!!  We've kept other ducklings in the house under a heat lamp in the past but we also need them to get used to the colder temperatures outside so it may be a heat lamp in the barn for them.  We can gradually raise the lamp to adjust the heat.  The best solution would be for another duck to adopt them but  that hasn't always gone so well.  I guess we'll wait and see.

I had a chat with my farming friend - farmgal - the other day - you can read her blog here.  We were discussing how prolific her ducks were (hatching out 25-30 ducklings a year EACH) while I lamented that mine were laying fine but not hatching much of anything out.  Well - no wonder!  We were doing a few things wrong and once corrected I hope we have better success.  Their nesting area was shavings on top of concrete and this is not optimal for ducks because the nests actually need a fair bit of moisture to hatch.  The shavings and the concrete were working against us.  Farmgal suggested dumping dirt (in my clean pen!!) to a depth of 6-8 inches and then laying straw over the top.  The mommas also need to be able to leave the pen every day to have a bath,get something to eat and do their business.  In trying to keep the chickens out of their nests we didn't always let them out.  There's a solution to everything and it usually involves in talking to an expert!

Now we need to wait till spring to see if the changes will make a difference...is winter over yet?  

One Year Food Storage Organization System

One of the things I struggled with in the area of food storage was keeping track of everything and making sure I was storing enough.  That gets complicated when you are wanting to store enough food for ONE WHOLE YEAR for a large group of people. 

I've talked lots about WHY I am crazy enough to even want to attempt this so I'll just carry on from there.

 I've tried several food storage calculators and messed around with my own versions but was never satisfied until recently.  I was looking for a simple way to keep track so I came up with a system that's easy to read and see at a glance.  It can be used for any length of food storage and include any of your favourite foods. It can also be expanded to include non-food items that you want to store but for simplicity sake I keep that information separately.

For some interesting facts about canned SPAM click here.

I used various sources for my calculations.  I started with the basics come from the most recent LDS manual that you can download for free here.  I expanded my lists by considering foods that store well and that we eat regularly.  I also made allowances for food sensitivities in our family - less white rice and no white flour for us and more variety in whole grains and gluten free grains.  These lists have come out of a few years of practice and note-taking as to what we eat regularly.  I have also made a concerted effort to include some of the items we do not eat regularly but store really well and make them a part of our monthly menus.  We still have a long way to go but all of this is a process!

Most sources say 400lbs of grain per year per person is a minimal goal.  The first question you may ask is - how many buckets is that??  Here's a handy chart from www.foodstoragemadeeasy.net

Food Item	#10 Can	5 Gallon Bucket
Wheat	5 pounds	37 pounds
White Flour	4.5 pounds	33 pounds
Cornmeal	4.3 pounds	33 pounds
Popcorn	5 pounds	37 pounds
Rolled Oats	2.5 pounds	20 pounds
White Rice	5.3 pounds	36 pounds
Spaghetti	N/A	30 pounds
Macaroni	3.1 pounds	21 pounds
Dried Beans	5.6 pounds	35 pounds
Lima Beans	5.4 pounds	35 pounds
Soy Beans	5 pounds	33 pounds
Split Peas	5 pounds	33 pounds
Lentils	5.5 pounds	35 pounds
White Sugar	5.7 pounds	35 pounds
Brown Sugar	4.42 pounds	33 pounds
Powdered Milk	3 pounds	29 pounds
Powdered Eggs	2.6 pounds	20 pounds

If anything I erred on the side of abundance with the suggested amounts from these sources.  I've copied an sample below to show you how it works.  I used an average of 33lb or 15kg per bucket for the grains which means I need about 12 pails in total to make up the 400lbs per person recommended.  Then I listed the grains I wanted to store and decided how I was going to divide up the storage.  As you can see below I am actually aiming for 15.5 - 5 gallon buckets per person per year.  I like variety.

I've done the same with all the categories - Grains, Beans/Meat, Cooking oils, Salt, Milk/Dairy, Fruit, Vegetables and Other Necessities.

Since this is MY list is really will only serve as a jumping off point for others.  Our family doesn't need to store eggs - we have chickens.  We eat much of our vegetables in the summer from the garden and hope to improve our productivity over the next few years so I have only included the vegetables that we actually store long term by canning, freezing or root cellaring.  I also don't store a lot of store bought dehydrated or freeze dried foods - just my personal choice.

The chart below is fairly self- explanatory.  There's room on this chart for 5 people but it can of course be expanded.  The "X's" represent the number of pails I have already stored.  I use the highlighter function to remind me that I have bought the product but still need to properly package it for long term storage.  So in the example below I have 2 pails of large flake oatmeal in storage and enough for one more pail that will be packed in a pail with mylar and an O2 absorber as soon as I have a few more buckets to do at one time.

Farther down the list I have some canned goods and instead of using "X's" I just write the number in the space provided.  eg. for tomato sauce I write "20" or if I am working up to that 12 or 15 or whatever I have so I will be able to add my new purchases and carry on to the next "person" (per) on the chart.

I debated whether or not to include the details of WHAT I store because I believe that everyone's food storage needs to be personalized to their own needs.  HOWEVER we all need to start with something and I like seeing charts like this myself so I am sharing it anyway!

The amounts listed for each item are based on how much of them we already eat.  It's sometimes hard to imagine how much food it takes for a whole year simply because we are disconnected to it by not having to prepare much of it ourselves.  Imagine having to bake every loaf of bread, grind wheat to make every muffin and cookie you eat - that's a lot of food!

Here's a link to a food storage calculator.  It will allow you to input your families ages and be given a basic list - consider the one below Anita's expanded list!

GRAINS 400 lb min	12pails	1 per	2 per	3 per	4 per	5per
Wheat kernels soft	2	XX	XX
Wheat kernels hard	3	XXX	X
Steel cut oats	1	X	X
Large flake oatmeal	1	X	X	X
Brown rice	1	X	X
Pasta	2	XX	XX
Parboiled rice	2	XX
Millet	.5	X	X
Quinoa	.5
Spelt	1	X	X
Buckwheat	.5
Quick Oatmeal	1
BEANS/MEAT 60lb min	5 pails	1 per	2 per	3 per	4 per	5per
Dried beans kidney	1
Dried beans chickpea	1
Lentils/red or brown	1
Yellow/green peas/split peas	1
Dried beans black	1
Canned chicken/turkey	50
Canned salmon	50
Canned sardines	20
Home canned meat	25
Falafel mix	5
COOKING OIL 10quarts	20lb	1 per	2 per	3per	4 per	5 per
Butter Powder	1
Olive oil	2
Coconut oil	4
Mayo	2
Peanut butter	2
Vegetable oil	3-5L
Nutella	2
SALT 8lb min	8	1 per	2 per	3 per	4 per	5 per
Pounds of salt	8
MILK/DAIRY 75lb min	75lb	1 per	2 per	3 per	4 per	5 per
Milk powder	40lb
Canned evaporated milk	12
Almond milk	24
Powdered cheese	2
Coconut milk	10

FRUIT 170 quarts		1 per	2 per	3 per	4 per	5 per
Applesauce	25 quarts
Dried apricots	10 pkg.
Coconut	.25 pail
Mandarin oranges	20 cans
Pears	20 quart
Peaches	20 quart
Pineapple	25 cans
Raisins	1lb
Dates	4 pkg.
Figs	10 pkg.
Jam	20 pint
Apple butter	2 pint
VEGETABLES 200 quarts	200 qu	1 per	2 per	3 per	4 per	5 per
Beans	50
Beets/plain/pickled	25  pints
Carrots	10
Onions	10lb
Peppers frozen	2 bags
Pickles	10
Canned Potatoes	10 quarts
Rhubarb	5 froz
Sauerkraut	5 quarts
Spinach/kale	10 froz
Tomato sauce	50	50
Home canned soups	20
Diced tomatoes	20
Salsa	2
Boxed potatoes	1
Canned corn	5
Sweet potatoes	10 quarts
Chili sauce	1
BBQ sauce	1
Sprouting Seeds	1 quart

OTHER NECESSITIES		1 per	2 per	3 per	4 per	5 per
Baking powder	2
Baking soda	10
Sugar	1 pail
Brown sugar	.5 pail
Apple juice	12 cans
Hot chocolate mix	2 can
Instant yeast	2 brick
Garlic powder	1 quart
Cinnamon	1 quart
Carob chips	.25 pail
Cocoa powder	1 can
Ginger	1 quart
Ketchup	2 bottle
Mustard	2 bottle
Relish	1 bottle
Lemon juice	1 bottle
Black pepper	1 quart
Maple syrup	4L
Honey	5lb
Stevia	2 bottles
Crackers	5 box
Cold cereal	5 box
Walnuts	2lb
Almonds	2lb
Hemp seeds	2lb
Flax seeds	5lb
Dehy.Veggie flakes	1 pail
Vinegar	10 bottle
Apple cider vinegar	2 bottle
Mrs. Dash	1 jar
Pickling spice	.5 quart
Herbal tea	5 boxes
Caf-lib	1 jar
Tea bags	50
Coffee	1
Parmesan cheese	2 can
Bouillon	12 cubes

I've expanded this list over the years.  I started with the most basic things and added more items as I thought of them.  Some of these things I could do without but they are nice to have. Some items like hot sauce I currently have in the fridge but we are not huge hot-sauce-kind-of-people so I don't actually have it on the list - I think the last bottle of hot sauce lasted two years.

There are other items I could have added and may add in the future but for now this is what I am working on.

I watch for sales to add to my stores.  For example this week pasta was on sale so I purchased enough to fill several buckets.  It was on sale for .77 for 900gr.  900 gr. is approx 2 pounds. It takes 21lbs of macaroni to fill a bucket so that's 11 packages. 11 x .77c = $8.47 per bucket. O2 absorbors and mylar liner take the cost up to approx. $10.00 in total if you can get a free bucket. Not a bad deal.

I am also careful to keep things balanced - no sense having pasta for 10 people for a year and no sauce.

One of the eureka moments I've had over the past years with food storage and organization is to divide it into five different components.  

1. Long term storage - it's packed in Mylar and rotated out in 15-30 years.
2. Long term shelf stable food - our personal grocery store - wet pack foods, boxed foods we rotate within 5 years.
3. Freezer items - we rotate out in 1 year and replenish
4. Upstairs pantry - our every day eating - not counted in food storage and probably enough for several weeks
5. Fridge items - on a weekly/bi-weekly rotation

I keep track of long term storage but I don't count everything in fridge and freezer - I just consider it extra food.  By eating primarily from the fridge, freezer and cold cellar we continue to rotate the most perishable foods first without having to add and subtract from the food storage lists.  We store vegetables and fruit for 6 months over the winter in our basement which we eventually hope to extend further with a proper root cellar.  Then we eat fresh from the garden as much as possible in the warmer months.  Season extenders such as cold frames and a greenhouse  are on the list for the future.

If you are feeling discouraged at the length of the list and the planning involved - know this:  you have to start somewhere. "What is not started will never get finished." —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 

Start with a three day supply of shelf stable food.  Expand it to a week, then three weeks, then three months.  Remember to store foods you like to eat.  Who cares if SPAM is on sale if no one likes it! YUCK!  

There are lots of plans out there and ANY plan is better than NO plan.  Keep working towards your food storage goals - step by step.  Whether it's for three months or one year I hope seeing my One Year Food Storage Organizational System will help you to make sense of your own.