Keeping Up With Garden

It’s a mad scramble this time of year to keep up with all the goodies from the garden. The dehydrator has been running non-stop with apple slices and the last of the plums.

Now the peppers are coming on strong and we did up a bunch of them into stuffed peppers, I did forget to take a pic before diving in to the creation. These are a yellow bell rather than the usual green bell peppers that most people use. I like to grow the yellows because when I dry them the results make it easy to tell the mild bell from the little bit hotter Serrano pepper that I also like to dehydrate. I don’t like surprises in the amount of heat I am adding to a pot of stew and finding out way too late that I will be the only one eating the dinner.

We are digging up a tire full of potatoes every couple of days and are enjoying hash browns in the morning, french fries at night and crock-pots full of potato soup nearly every day.

I am drying beets this year for my soup base vegetables. I tried last year and wasn’t pleased with the texture of raw dried beets so I tried something new. I took a raw beet and ran it through the grater then steamed it slightly before putting into the dehydrator.

I steamed them just enough to begin the cooking process. They were limp but still crunchy when I laid them out on the drying trays.

When done the beets looked more like strands of saffron than beets. Seven racks of the grated beets dried down to less than a quart bag.

We will see how the family likes the addition during the winter when comfort food is the staple.