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I’m sitting here listening to my sweet hubby laugh his head off as he is pulling up YouTube videos of “Carl” (Billy Bob Thorton) from the movie Slingblade making prank calls to restaurants and asking the clerks for “French fried pertaters and biscuits and I like some mustard with those biscuits, uh-huh”. The clerks are attempting to take this order with as much grace as possible. I have to admit that I’m laughing too. I guess I’m remembering the phone calls I used to make, from our church phone on Wednesday service nights no less, to Weigel’s Dairy Store in Knoxville, Tennessee to tell the clerk, in high pitched squeals, “Your cows are out!” immediately hanging up the phone. Real smooth, huh? Kinda like the phone calls my grandparents used to receive in the ’30’s, at their grocery store, where a voice asked if they carried Prince Albert in a can and with the answer in the affirmative, young voices would yell, “Then let him out!!” We are so brilliant when we are young. However, it seems that Mr. Thorton is still brilliant – he’s entertaining my husband, anyway!  There is nothing I enjoy more than putting a piping hot meal before Mr. Fix-It after a long day’s work. I especially love him because he loves soup and that is one of my favorite things in the whole world on these cold days. But I’m weird. I love it on warm days too – homemade that is. When I go to Olive Garden, I’m the “Never Ending Soup and Salad” kinda gal. Therefore, it is really pleasant to have all of the ingredients for soup right at my fingertips, dried and ready to reconstitute for any quick, hot meal. In this fourth and final in my series on dehydrating, I’ve got a recipe for broccoli cheese soup that will leave you craving more. Let’s go! 1 Tbsp Olive Oil 1 Tbsp dried celery (1 stalk fresh chopped) 1 tsp dried bell pepper (tbsp fresh) 1 Tbsp dried onion (2 Tbsp diced fresh onion) 1/4 tsp dried garlic (1 tsp fresh, chopped garlic) 1/3 cup dried potatoes (1 cup cubed fresh potatoes) 1/2 cup dried broccoli (1 1/2 cup chopped fresh broccoli) 4 chicken bouillon cubes 4 1/2 cups water 1 can milk or 3/4 cups half and half 1/4 lb Velveeta Cheese + or – 1 Tbsp corn starch + 2 Tbsp water              |
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Posts Tagged ‘drying’
Dehydrating Series Pt III Peppers
Wednesday, January 19th, 2011
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Part I Part II Pepper  Another vegetable that is fast and easy to dry is the bell pepper. All peppers can be dried, including jalopenos, but that is one pepper you will want to process in the garage or outside. Your eyes and nose won’t be able to stand the fumes while drying!! Here’s a fast rundown on drying peppers.       Oklahoma Pastry Cloth™ Company on Facebook
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Dehydrating Series Pt I – Celery
Monday, January 10th, 2011
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Here in Oklahoma, most of us are tough old birds. We’ve learned the only thing predictable is that there is nothing much predictable in this state. One minute you can bake a chicken in your car and the next minute you’re trying to figure out how to get that car out of a snow drift. Of course, the car can get cooked in one of our prairie fires as well. Ice storms can paralyze daily life for a week and tornadoes can change lives forever. And then of course, there are the hail storms. So, we Okies have pretty much figured out that you don’t need a government commission on emergency preparedness to tell us to be prepared. We’ve been prepared since the days of the Land Run when barrels of beans, flour and sugar and a crock of sourdough starter meant protection from starvation when the WalMart shelves were empty. Unfortunately, there ARE some city dwellers here who have either forgotten these facts or who moved here from some foreign country, like Los Angeles, who get caught with their rations down. But for the most part, we’re a pretty prepared and flexible lot. I got tickled the other day when a 30 minute program was aired to remind us that we have the likes of tornadoes and such here in Oklahoma. Ya think? A body would have to be living in a cave 24/7 to miss that little bit of reality. Anyway, the Oklahoma preparedness program has been called “Red Dirt Ready” and the name symbolizes the fact the Okies immediately jump in to help after a disaster, getting all covered in Oklahoma’s famous red dirt. That’s true. We do. It’s what makes this state great.   Electricity can be a problem around here. It is not unusual for us to be without for a couple of days and in many areas that can run into a number of weeks. That wreaks havoc on one’s frozen vittles if one hasn’t a generator and so it is nice to have plenty of stock that requires no refrigeration. That would seem impossible for such things as fruits and veggies, but not so! The age old art of dehydrating comes in really handy to offer up a pantry full of wonderful and healthy treats that will last a looooong time. Having a garden each year, I dehydrate stuff yearly, but lately, I’ve been a dehydrating fool. I have been challenging myself to see what I can dry next and how best to use it. I’ve decided to do a series on using a dehydrator with recipes. Today I’m demonstrating celery and broccoli drying. I was inspired to do the celery because our local store, Firelake Grocery, had celery on sale, 3 large bags for $1. The broccoli was on sale as well – two good sized heads for $1. I use a lot of both. Now, I need to sidetrack here for a sec because I realize that these are not organic items coming from a local grocer. However, with food prices soaring, many people can’t afford the more expensive organic foods and I want to let them know that it’s ok. This is where my faith comes into play. I see 3 large bags of celery for $1 as a blessing and I see God as my provider of blessings. Therefore, I just trust that all I can do is the best that I can and trust God to take care of me. In other words, I eat as healthily as I can and leave the rest up to the Lord. Shoot, I used to break thermometers when I was young and chase the little balls of mercury around on the table for hours with my friends! I promise, I don’t glow in the dark – although I do have very white hair. Do you suppose – – – ? Back to the celery and broccoli. The long and the short of it is that I bought 16 bags of celery and a lot of broccoli. Neither of these items is anything you can keep for any amount of time unless you dry them or freeze them. I like to freeze celery by chopping it, leaves and all, and spreading it onto a cookie sheet, freezing it hard and then taking it off of the sheet to place it into freezer bags. That way the pieces stay separate and don’t clump up. Frozen celery is a quick addition for sautéing and putting into chicken salad. However, as I said, frozen is useless when there is no electricity. Plus, I don’t have that much freezer space! I froze one bag of this celery and all of the rest I dried.              So there you have it. That will keep you busy for a couple of days and by Thursday, you’ll be ready for a recipe. I’ve made a New Year’s Resolution – I’m going to do my dead level best to post twice a week, hopefully Mondays and Thursdays. Just remember what happens to New Year’s Resolutions – they’re kinda all dried up too. |
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Sweet Taste of Success
Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010
 A dear friend surprised me with a freezer bag stuffed with clippings covered with the prettiest green leaves. She informed me that the clippings were from her Stevia plant and that she hoped I could use them. I like Stevia. My dear hubby doesn’t care much for it but I have decided that just as God creates us with different eye colors and different finger lengths, He also gives us different taste bud lengths. If you have short taste buds, then you’ll eat anything since the food doesn’t really touch much taste bud surface at all. There isn’t enough total taste taken in to determine, “Yuck. I don’t like that” before the item is whisked to your tummy. I also think that this is the reason why people who have ulcers still eat hot and spicy foods. Their taste buds are too short to tell them, “Whoa there, Bucko! That’s gonna kill your stomach.” People with the longest taste buds are the pickiest eaters – kinda like my friend – the one with the stevia plant – who insists that “Cheetos are the other yellow vegetable.” She won’t eat cooked squash (yellow) or sauerkraut (sorta yellow), but she will eat corn (mostly yellow) which is the main ingredient of Cheetos minus the artificial colors (including Yellow #6) and therefore a larger cousin of the Cheeto family. I’m not sure which genus. I am pretty sure the height of my taste buds is medium to low because I will eat almost anything except meat of any type that has the potential to move if it hasn’t been cooked, or canned peas. My taste buds are tall enough to tell me that canned peas consist of those legumes which didn’t make the cut, so were pressure canned to hide the fact. But MY tastebuds know the truth! So what was I saying? Oh yes. I like Stevia. You have to be careful about this sweetener because a little goes a REALLY long way. The processed type can be found in just about any grocery these days, as well as local health food stores. There is even a mixture of sugar and Stevia that is pretty good, however my hubby’s long taste buds can pick the Stevia out everytime.  So I took the clippings, given to me by my dear friend, and tied them in little bunches. I put a paper clip through the rubber bands holding them together.  I hung the bunches in the garage to let them dry. As you notice, my dear hubby not only has long tastebuds, but also collects Coca Cola memorabelia.  After drying the clippings for about 5 weeks, I took them down the other day. They were brittle.  I picked all of the leaves off of the stems which really wasn’t very hard. They broke off easily.  I figured that the next best thing to an herb grinder was the trusty old blender and so I pulverized those leaves until they were dust.  I stored it in a plastic bag for fresh keeping.  And so, today, I decided to brew some Oklahoma Prairie Blend tea. I put the Stevia powder in a small tea infuser in hopes of keeping the powder out of the tea since I knew it wouldn’t dissolve. No luck. It was still in there and it was still green, but green never killed anybody. It really tasted good and it was kinda cool drinking tea with a no calorie, no side effects sweetener that I had ground myself. Another new thing tried! Check! Fresh Stevia leaves make a wonderful edition to a salad, adding just a hint of sweetness. It is healthy and, evidently, really easy to raise. I will be putting a plant here in the Spring. I understand that it is important to check packages of commercial Stevia for location of processing. In the US it is processed using water filtration but Stevia is also imported from China where dangerous chemicals are used to filter it. I’ll bet you people with long taste buds can tell the difference!!! 🙂 |
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