More Covid Diary Thoughts

Morning shots from yesterday, the 13th. I went out to look for Comet Neowise. I did see it!

I was not successful at photographing it, but I did enjoy a long predawn quiet of watching the sky and the fog change with the light.

Up at 4am because...well, because I had to blanch a LOT of green beans and get them ready for the dehydrator. 

I'm in that mode now. The saving produce mode. Pick carrots and green beans as soon as there is enough light. Wash them and trim them on the porch before noon and then set them in the fridge for the next morning.

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I ran out of freezer bags on Friday and thought since I had to run to the post office to pick up our new mattress I'd ordered, I'd run into WallyWorld and grab some freezer bags.

Imagine my surprise that the shelves were barren. Not only were there no bags of any sort, there were no 'Seal A Meal' items either.

Then of course there were the tourists, or the weekenders. More than one mom with Little Vectors and no masks walking about the store. 

I stopped in my tracks. What has this Covid-19 done to me? I stared at the kids as if I could make them go away and with carefree mask-less attitudes. Was I right? Was I wrong? Was I an idiot? Was I paranoid? Why did I see her and her own kids as dangerous.

6 months ago, I wouldn't have had a second thought.

I grabbed two other items I was looking for and vowed never to return to any store on a Saturday morning.

Ok. 

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Pick the veggies.

Wash the veggies.

Cut them up....

Dehydrate them! 

The cukes went into a refrigerator sweet pickle salad of onions and cukes.

To tell you the truth, I sort of have a love/hate relationship with doing vegetables. I know I will enjoy them in the winter. I sort of resent having to take up a good part of my day caring for them.

I'd much rather plant flowers and mess around with them.

But as my husband likes to point out.

You can't eat pretty flowers.

But, you can put pretty flowers with your unusual dried veggies and do a Still Life photo of them, right?

Just for information. 

That pint jar [vacuum sealed] of green beans hold about 22 servings of green beans for 2 people. I generally mix my dried veggies up in a jar like the carrots and green beans and open them when it is soup making time in the winter.

I toss a handful of dried veggies in the crockpot along with the broth and in about 6 hours, I have some incredible tasting soup.

I am careful to plan ahead and use up the dehydrated veggies during the winter months. Apparently they don't last forever in this state.

Another thought to consider is the storage. I can store more vegetables in a dehydrated state than I can in a freezer.

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Last Covid thoughts for today.

My Grandmother lived through the 1918 Pandemic and WWI. After that she had to deal with Prohibition. The Depression. WWII and raising a family with rations.

I get it now.

I get why Grandpa and she never let one tiny thing go to waste. Why Grandpa would bring home items from the dump. Why he kept every tin can and used it for things like seed starters or earth worm containers when we went fishing.

Why they even kept balls of twine or string. Or...even old bed coils. How they picked up old windows and built a green house...why not even a ratty old shirt got tossed...it could be used for a wash cloth, or...woven into a rag rug.

My grandparents were the original 'up-cycle' folks.

Life has changed.

I used to run to the store just on a whim. I was used to finding what I wanted when I wanted it.

My whole thought on humanity has changed.

...and it

is very 

un--nerving.

What has happened to us?

 

Gardening.

First some photos from the other morning. I thought these were pretty neat. I drove out to a different area to see the foggy sunrise. These were actually taken pre dawn and I was home by the time the sun appeared through the mist.

We had a pretty nasty storm that afternoon that dumped 2 inches of rain in less than a half hour with high winds that toppled our corn.

Thankfully there was no hail so the corn survived.

The photo below is the corn the next morning. But it is upright now.

Before it got too hot, I picked the carrots and the green beans.

Yes, I put a dinosaur in my garden for fun. I sent this to my youngest grandson who adores dinosaurs. He can name the type this is, I can't.

I spent the morning out on the porch with Charlie getting things ready to blanch as soon as we had a break in the weather.

After blanching them, I found to my surprise that I only had enough to make two bags with my vacuum seal!

I had to make a Saturday morning run to the post office to pick up a large parcel that they wouldn't deliver so I thought I'd run to the store to get a roll of bags while I was at it.

WHAT a mistake! 

First, no vacuum seal bags...the shelves were barren. And second? The place was over run with moms and kids with no masks and sense of distancing.

Wait. How did it become this way? One year ago, none of this would have bothered me [the kids and crowds]. 

Anyway thanks to my Kenosha friends I could still dry my carrots and beans and vacuum seal them in pint jars. 

I ordered the bags on line when I got home.

So this is what the carrots look like after being dehydrated.

7 trays of green beans fit in a pint jar, that is about 14 servings.

I will mix and match some of my dehydrated foods to make mixed veggies for soups this winter. It is quite handy to open a jar and shake it up then add it to broth.

I like to also seal the veggies in small frozen packets for meals.

I'll end my Saturday here.

Tomorrow I'll explain my little Bear-y ~~~ Berry adventure.

Gardening and Dehydrating

Oh no! I didn't get dehydrated while gardening!

I got a new food dehydrator and went at it the past few days.

I tried drying herbs last year and some of those grape tomatoes. I still have some excellent dried Kale, Parsley, and onion bits from last year.
However, I used up all of the dried green peppers and basil I had.

My first experiments in dehydrating food were pretty straight forward. I didn't want to use the oven as a dryer so I'd bought a cheap dehydrator last fall. I was looking for an alternate way of preserving foods and not taking up freezer space this year as we have big ol' Black Bart just about ready for 'market'.

Here is the new dehydrator just after I filled up two trays with green beans and two trays with green peppers.

Here is the one tray of green beans after dehydrating.

I vacuum sealed the green beans and stored them away. Even I was amazed at how small these whole meals of beans were reduced to. However, I will more than likely use the frozen ones to go with a regular meal and the dried ones in soups and stews this winter.

Rich and I picked some of the 'wild' apples from the meadow. I found a recipe on line for cinnamon and sugar dried apples. I sliced the apples thinly and didn't bother with peeling them. I dipped them in some vinegar water [which works just like lemon juice to preserve the apple's color] sprinkled them with cinnamon and sugar, and then placed them in the dehydrator.

OHH how delicious! It is like having apple pie in your hand!

Shown also are the green peppers and onions. I will grind the onions into onion powder for a spice after I am done drying the rest of the onions.

So while I was letting the dehydrator work its magic, I went out to work on my east flower garden.
Last year it looked like this...

And now?

It is coming along!
[ I may change the shape to make it easier to mow around in the future. ]

Compared to how it looked when I started. Whew...

I put the finishing touches on it and stood back recalling what the pile of bricks, drywall, and nails looked like. The ugly eyesore on the east side of the house. Then I smiled and did a little happy dance.

I have the rest of this side of the house to finish, but that will wait until next year. I have some plants to transplant from a few friend's gardens that will go well with what I have now.
I do love my marigolds in containers, especially the ones in old maple sap buckets.
They are easy to move around. Just pick up the handle and go!
Instant rearranging is so much fun.

I heard my husband tell his daughter "She is out there playing with her buckets again, moving stuff around!"

Saturday was another busy day. We went to a farm in Genoa to get a truckload of hay and spent quite a while visiting. I went with the farmer's wife to admire her gorgeous vegetable garden. We talked plants, gardens, flowers, freezing veggies, and safflower.
I told her about my experimenting with dehydrating and had brought some samples of my dried apples. They all loved them.

We left with our load of hay, a huge bag of sweet corn and safflower petals to dry.

Safflower is the poor person's saffron. I spread this out on the counter overnight.

Then I went to work on processing the corn. I blanched and vaccum sealed about 8 bags for the freezer.

Farmer's wife wanted some lemon basil.
So...instead of running the dehydrator for just two trays of herbs, I decided to see how corn dehydrated.

Well? I bet you are wondering how this all turned out?

I'd call it a success!
My next step is to put a portion of green beans in with the corn and some peppers along with some spices in a vaccum sealed bag and label it 'soup stuff'. I could just grab a package and toss it in a beef broth.

Next up. Apples. More apples!
The cheapskate in me doesn't want to waste all of those superb wild apples growing in the meadow.