Keeping Things Spicy and Dehydrating Foods for Savings
As I was writing my blog post about grocery prices last month, I realized that in addition to making your own homemade yogurt, hanging your clothes outside to dry, and growing your own food, sometimes you have to keep things spicy. One way to do this is to make your own spices and dehydrated foods, and the good news is you don’t have to grow all of it on your own. Dehydrating foods will provide you savings in return, and you don’t have to have an expensive dehydrator as there are many ways to do this.
Keeping Things Spicy – Spices We Make On Our Own!
We grow quite a variety of culinary herbs such as the following:
- bay leaves (Note: we had a huge bay laurel tree that got struck by lightning last year, but the Viking in my life found us a new one at an auction believe it or not and it’s beautiful, but still only about 2 feet tall)
- cat mint
- cilantro
- rosemary
- sage
- several varieties of mint including chocolate mint, pineapple mint and variegated pineapple mint
- thyme
- and more…
We also grow medicinal herbs that we use for teas and remedies, but there are quite a few other items you can use in the garden for teas as well:
- borage
- elderberries
- for example we have an extremely healthy mandarin orange tree and we can use the peels in teas
- passionflower
- peppermint
- St. John’s wort
- yarrow
- and more…
Dehydrating Foods for Savings – Some We Get at The Grocery Store!
I also look for foods that are on super deals at the grocery store that I love to dehydrate. An example of this is pineapple, and I am allergic to sulfites so I have another motivation which is I can eat dehydrated fruits without getting sick!
List of foods I often dehydrate from the grocery store:
- any foods that are leftover that can be dehydrated are likely going to end up being dehydrated
- bananas
- blueberries
- oranges (but they have to be boiled in sugar first)
- peppers
- pineapple
- strawberries
- tomatoes
*Some of these are better dipped in a little lemon juice first; you will just want to do some trial and error and research on your own.
Typical foods we dehydrate from our garden:
- all of our herbs we grow
- eggplant
- figs (I make homemade jam with dehydrated figs!)
- green onions
- peaches
- pears
- peppers
- shisho (an Asian culinary herb)
- strawberries
- tomatoes
I may also experiment with dehydrating zucchini and squash this year. In terms of equipment, we have two huge heavy-duty dehydrators now with multiple racks, but for years we dehydrated with the round dehydrators that we found at yard sales for cheap. And truthfully you don’t need any equipment at all as for years I laid out a sheet and dehydrated food in the sun, and we also have bundled up corn and peppers and hung them upside down to dry from the rafters in the attic. It’s fun to get creative, and dehydrating in my opinion is the easiest way to preserve your harvest.
We also forage for edible foods and mushrooms, and we have dehydrated oyster mushrooms we found on our daughter’s property last year – so delicious! Note: You need to consult an expert or be trained by an expert before eating any foods or mushrooms you forage. Many of these have dangerous look-alikes, and even though we have numerous books on the topics, we proceed extremely carefully. Forage at your own risk!
The Viking in my life recently dehydrated some of my homemade chili just to test it, and it actually is very good as a snack! I wouldn’t have believed it either.
I hope this post has inspired you to start keeping things spicy and to dehydrate foods for savings. Stay tuned for more money-saving ideas from our little suburban homestead!
I wish you all a beautiful week! Until next time…
Fondly,
