Drying fruits, vegetables and herbs for mixes and other uses

When I first started mixing it up, I bought a lot of dried foods at Bulk Barn to make my mixes, which was often expensive. But something about the sun dried tomatoes always smelled funny to me, so I was determined to start making my own. They were a complete success:



I bought a bunch of cheap fresh tomatoes on sale for 88 cents a pound and made a giant batch.

I started experimenting with other foods. Like when mushrooms went on sale.



Or sweet red peppers (can also do the same with green)



I dried a bunch of apple slices when my apples were starting to get a bit shriveled looking in the fridge.



I made banana slices from the girls half eaten and overly brown bananas



I made dried blueberries and strawberries (not photographed) as well.

I also dry a lot of herbs (especially cilantro for salsa mix, because store bought dried cilantro is impossible to come by around here). I always have a surplus of fresh herbs from my garden, or my dads garden, or from bunches bought from the store or received in our farm share.



A lot of people buy food dehydrators to 'save money'. Ovens use a lot of electricity and heat up your house. But 1. I didn't want to spend money on a food dehydrator and 2. I didn't have any more space for ANOTHER small appliance. So...

I went to the dollar store. Bought a package of 100 Watt light bulbs. Put one in my oven. Think 'easy bake oven'. An oven is a small space and light bulbs are hot. This means you can dehydrate any fruits and vegetables you want using just the amount of electricity it takes to use one light bulb. This way you can also leave the oven unattended all day or over night while you dry them, it's just a light bulb.

For most things I just slice and dry them plain- but you can coat things in salt, oil or fruit juice depending on the flavor you want. I toss my tomato slices in sea salt and olive oil before drying.

I learned the hard way that everything sticks to baking sheets, so I use parchment paper or silicone baking mats on them now. Silicone baking mats are amazing, you can dry the thinnest slices of mushroom even without them sticking.

Drying fruits, vegetables and herbs has become such a great way to save money- you can utilize wilted produce, sales, garden surplus or half eaten toddler foods without using up any precious freezer space. Home dried only sit around until you're ready to use them- not in transport and on store shelves too, so they have much more flavor and none of the chemicals (or in some cases allergens).

I plan to try out a lot more this summer- peaches, carrots, apricots... basically anything I want to use up or can buy cheaply. Do you ever dry foods? What do you make and how?

Mix It Update: Housekeeping

My dream kitchen is finished (well except for the flooring and the backsplash, which we are waiting until the new year to put in). We even put an extra row of cupboards and counter on the empty wall that separates our kitchen and dining room and I have declared them off limits to anyone and anything but my mix ingredients and food preparation.

Here is my new kitchen:

Here is one of my two mix ingredient cupboards:

The bottom shelves are reserved for bins of things I need in large amounts (flour, sugar, oats, rice...), as well as baking mixes such as waffle mix. The middle shelf has my spice jars and bags of extra spice. The top shelf is random dry ingredients in medium amounts stored in empty peanut butter jars- popcorn, bread crumbs, salt, corn starch, lentils, ect and smaller mixes ect. The cupboard next to it looks pretty similar.

This blog is coming up on its two year anniversary, and with many new readers and many old recipes it's getting harder for people to find what they want. People are always asking me 'do you have a recipe for...' and since I roughly remember which time of year I made each one I can dig the link up for them. I'm thinking that it might be easier for everyone if I organized old recipes in a better way. I'm thinking of creating tags for different types of recipes- chicken, ground beef, side dish, baking mix, Chinese or Mexican dish, dessert, condiments, ect. Let me know if there are any tags you would like to see.

I've been working on a few new recipes, but I thought today you would prefer to see pictures of my shiny new kitchen instead (and what the inside of a mix it up cupboard looks like). I'll be back later this week with another great mix.

Nest it up: Freezer meals and meals with cooked chicken

I will be full term on Friday (yikes!) and the nesting has shifted from organizing and cleaning to cooking. When my daughter was born with colic we were totally unprepared food wise because we didn't realize that when you have a small human bomb in your house screaming up to 20 hours a day that you can barely find the time to eat let alone cook. There were days when I wouldn't even get breakfast until after 4 pm it was that bad. Those first weeks I lived on pizza pockets and peaches.

This time we're hoping for one of those 'easy' babies but not holding our breath. We're totally expecting a repeat of last time, and this time with a child to feed we need to be prepared. Which is why I'm filling the freezer and mixing it up.

I have a system in place- depending on how hard the day is. Some days I'm going to need something I can microwave and eat right away. Other days I just need a little help to get me going. I know that my big road block when it comes to cooking while tired is dealing with raw meat. So I'm trying to get that obstacle out of the way in advance.

Freezer meals are a great concept, but often not the best reality. Some foods don't freeze well. Other foods don't mesh with the season (who wants a hot comforting meal in a July heat wave?). Some foods are both tasty and appropriate, but not the healthiest (how many times can you eat lasagna and baked pasta casserole really? Do you really need all that starch and cheese?), or just take so long to prepare for freezing that it's just too much work to save yourself a little time along the way.

Meat freezes really well. So do certain vegetables. Starches like pasta, rice, potatoes and root vegetables do not. They tend to get mushy and tasteless. They give freezer meals a bad name. Cheese intended for melting freezes fine, milk based sauces do not. So you need to pick things to make knowing these things.

I have been doing some double and triple batches of meals I know to freeze well rather than spend entire days cooking dishes using similar meats, although that is also an option. Here are some of the things we're using. I like to use large ziploc freezer bags to save space. Each dish is linked to the page that includes the seasoning mix and recipe if you click on it.


Meals that taste just as good once frozen and reheated

Fajjita filling

Lemon chicken

Chili

Spaghetti Sauce

Taco filling

Sloppy joes

Pulled pork

Sweet and sour chicken

Buffalo chicken

General Tso's chicken

Beef Vindaloo

Teriyaki Chicken

Souvlaki

Shawarama filling

Meatloaf

Hunan chicken/beef

Meatballs

Honey garlic spare ribs or wings

Stir fry

Korean BBQ

Pot Roast

Honey mustard chicken

Broccoli beef stir fry

Most of these meals require other things that are very fast to make- buns, pasta, rice, tortillas, ect. You can buy and freeze some of the bread related products along with the ziploc full of meat or buy them fresh. I find it's not too daunting to boil some pasta or steam some rice while the meat portion of the meal is in the microwave. I also either steam or microwave any frozen veggies I want or need to use. On the most hectic of days a bowl of microwaved frozen green beans will round out a meal.

If you don't have time to cook a lot of food in advance, you can also just prechop and marinade the meat in the freezer, then dump it in the wok or slow cooker. This works for meals/links listed above such as fajitas, tacos, sloppy joes, pulled pork, sweet and sour chicken, buffalo chicken, General Tso's chicken, beef vindaloo, teriyaki chicken, stir fry, souvlaki, shawarma, hunan chicken, honey garlic ribs/wings, korean bbq, honey mustard chicken, or broccoli beef (minus the broccoli). As outlined in the post prep it up you can dice or cut the chicken into strips then pour in the marinade with it and freeze it together.

For the days when I know I'll have a bit more time and energy, but still not enough to prepare an entire meal, I've been freezing cooked chicken. I really hate dealing with raw chicken when I'm tired or hungry, but don't mind handling cooked meat at all. I often pick the leftovers off a roasted chicken and then freeze them. What's even less work is to poach a package of chicken breasts or thighs. You just boil them until they are fully cooked and then freeze them whole to chop up or shred later.

Some meals I like to make with pre-cooked chicken:

Gumbo

Fried rice

Chicken and dumplings/chicken stew

Chicken pot pie

Creamy curry casserole

Pad thai

Spanish rice

Creamy chicken fusili

Chicken and rice casserole


With an arsenal of frozen meals and pre-cooked chicken I feel much more prepared. Now if I get an easy baby I can use my free time for what I want- relaxing! And if we get another wild one... well at least we will be fed this time.

Prep it up

I’ve always had trouble cooking dinner… at dinner time. This is because I’ve always been a morning person and am completely useless by 4 pm. I would be up at 6 am singing and baking bread, but when I got home from work I would just want to go straight to bed.

Despite spending my days at home now, having a child has only amplified the problem. She is a morning person too, which means when I’m tired and cranky and trying to cook, she’s tired and cranky and climbing my legs. It doesn’t mix well.

Many times my husband has come home from work to find me in tears at the thought of cooking even a simple meal. We ordered so much Thai in my daughter’s first months that they remembered our names. It was delicious, but at $30-40 a shot in a one income family it was dangerous.

I tried a few solutions. I would have Jason play music for Sera to keep her out of my way, but even the noise made me want to hide. I tried to take a quick rest before cooking, but it just made me want to keep sleeping. I tried making big batches of food and freezing them, but with our tiny fridge top freezer and our mutual dislike of frozen leftovers that idea wasn’t so popular. I wanted a fresh meal EVERY day.

Eventually I found that the easiest way to make dinner was to make it… at breakfast!

Here is how I manage….

Mix it up (obviously). I either make my seasoning mixes in big batches so I can just use them several times, or I pre-measure my spices into a small bowl in the morning.

Use the slow cooker. Chopping your food, dumping it in and turning it on is the easiest way to make dinner in the morning. I love slow cooking. It’s awesome.

But….

Some foods just can’t be slow cooked and taste much better made fresh. This is where you need to prep it up. I have worked dinner prep down to a science these days. If it can be done in advance, I do it.

Set the stage….

For pasta, fill the pasta pot with water and put it on the stove with the package of pasta next to it.

For mashed potatoes, peel and chop your potatoes and leave them in a pot of water on the stove. If you add a splash of lemon juice the potatoes won’t brown or go bad.

For stir fries put the wok on the stove with a splash of oil inside and leave it on the stove with the lid on. Chop veggies and put them in various separate salad bowls in the fridge and chop and marinade your meat in a covered bowl in the fridge.

For casseroles or baked meat dishes mix the meat/sauce in a Pyrex dish with a lid and put it in the fridge. I love Pyrex. I wish everything I owned was Pyrex.

If a dish requires sauteed onions, chop the onions and place them in the wok with some oil, then cover the pan.

Place any canned goods you plan to use on the counter with the can opener beside them. If you are using canned beans get out your strainer and place it next to the cans of beans.

Lay any stirring utensils you need next to your pots and pans.

BUY A RICE COOKER WITH REMOVEABLE STEAMER BASKET!

My sister gave me one as a gift years ago (Thanks Andrea!) and it’s my secret weapon in dinner prep.

I measure the water and put it in the cooker, chop the vegetables and put them in the steamer basket, and measure out the rice and put it in a bowl on the counter.

Steaming the veggies above the rice causes all those ‘lost’ nutrients from cooking to drip into your rice (and if your husband or child won’t eat their greens you can secretly know that they’re still getting some nutrients from the rice!).

I used to just leave it on the counter, but one very muggy summer day I went to make dinner and found my veggies covered in mould from their hot day on the counter. Now even in winter I take the pot, put the basket of veggies inside, put on the lid and put the whole thing in the fridge.

It’s show time…..

When my husband walks in the door I turn on the elements or the oven, and spend less than 5 minutes cooking (if even that). The rice cooker basket is inserted, rice is dumped into the water under the veggie steamer basket and the on switch is flicked. The wok gets meat or veggies thrown into it to flash fry. Or a casserole dish is popped in the oven. Or pasta is boiled. Or if we’re having something like stew the food is ladled right out of the slow cooker and into our bowls.

If you are not a morning person, most of this stuff can also be done the night before if you prefer. You might find you have more energy to cook for the next day, AFTER you've eaten dinner.

There are no more tears before dinner these days, and home cooked meals feel effortless. We still order Thai sometimes, but just because we feel like a treat.