Back to Basics

I think I must have starved to death in a previous life because I have always been interested in all things food. Yes, I'm a bit overweight but that's not the interest I'm talking about. I am fascinated by finding food (not necessarily in the supermarket) and storing it for future use. Even as a 10 year old, I was digging wild onions in the fields around my house and brought them home for my mom to use in stews. When Rich and I went to Jamaica last month, I found a coconut still in the husk floating in the beach water. I found a sharp edged boulder and proceeded to open that coconut right there on the beach. I've always wanted to do that! Picture it...the island woman, living with the elements, cracking the coconut for breakfast and drinking deeply of the valuable water within.

I DID get it open and I DID drink the water and eat some of the meat. But my fantasy had become a reality and I found out it just wasn't all that great. LOL. Oh, and the resort we were staying at bore little resemblance to a survival experience anyway. But that is another story.

My husband is a smart man and knows my passion for this kind of thing so nearly 2 decades ago, he bought for me, a dehydrator. It is, frankly speaking, a miracle machine. One year, it turned a full case of ripe tomatoes into about 3/4 of a cup of powdered tomato!

This year, it turned 18 pounds of bananas into just over 2 pounds of sweet banana chips and 16 pounds of bottom round roast into 4 pounds of beef jerky. My kids love this stuff and it was originally intended for Christmas though they all got it early. The best thing is that the foods are free from preservatives and chemicals and I know exactly what went into it all. And even though my babies are all grown, I still want them to eat good stuff!

Over the years I've dried cucumbers and squash, watermelon (that was a hoot!) more bananas than I can remember and lots of beef jerky. When the kids were little, I made fruit leather because they could eat it easier. And I'm still experimenting. I dried strawberries last year and though I wasn't fond of it, my middle grandson thought they hung the moon. The next batch of bean soup I make, I'm going to dry it and render it to powder and see how it tastes reconstituted, sort of like those instant soups that were popular a few years back. And like the tomatoes, dried stuff takes up considerably less room than frozen or canned and will keep a very long time if stored properly! It always made me smile when I added a teaspoon of tomato powder to thicken a big pot of tomato sauce.