Food Storage: Drying

At the end of season you will likely find yourself with an abundance (hopefully) of some vegetables that will need to be put into storage.  Actually, your goal should be to have way too much of everything so that you can have plenty to put into storage for the year.  So what is the best way to store some of this overstock?  Well, it depends on what type of fruit or vegetable you want to store.
Drying is one viable option for many kinds of fruits and vegetables.  There are many good reasons to use drying in some form for much of your stash.  The most important reason to use drying is that it retains most of the nutrients in your food.  When you can foods, you cook them and therefore loose valuable nutrients.  Drying uses a lower temperature to remove the water from foods so that the nutrients are able to remain there in your food.  A very healthy option.  Without water in your foods, microbes cannot grow.  This growth is what would cause your foods to spoil so this is actually how they are able to be stored.  Sometimes when you store foods you can also loose some of the flavor.  Dried foods are actually a concentrated form of the foods so that they are actually full of flavor.  Many people do not like banana chips because the flavor is too strong.  Don't forget the best part: drying foods is usually very easy to do.  You can get complicated and make fruit leather and jerky, but you don't have to.  You can slice foods and throw them on the trays and set the dehydrator.  It's that simple.
There are many ways to dry your food as well.  Simply leaving foods on the vine they grow on and letting them dry out like I discussed with amish snap peas is the best way to save peas, beans, lentils and things like that.  Herbs are dried by either hanging them up somewhere or putting them in a brown paper bag.  Many fruits and vegetables can be dried in the sun.  Anything that needs more constant heat like meats can be dried in a dehydrator.  Most anything can be done in a dehydrator because it is set up to regulate the time and temperature to get exactly what you need.  If you want to buy a dehydrator, here is an article to read.  I had originally bought myself a cheap version of a dehydrator and after using it twice I gave up on dehydrating altogether because it was so bad.  Don't waste your time and effort on something cheap if you have a garden that will provide a decent amount.  Buy a good one right away or build a good one.  I currently own an Excalibur and now have a renewed sense of why I wanted to try a dehydrator in the first place.
Drying foods has become a common practice this year in my household.  After learning how to do some new methods and getting a good dehydrator I'm going to have a decent stash of dried foods and herbs for this winter.  Not enough to live off of yet, but you have to start somewhere.  I have even learned how to use the dehydrator to "cook" some dinners.

Solar Cooking Fail

This picture is my attempt at cooking acorn squash in my solar cooker.  I bought nice dark colored squash thinking that this would be best for absorbing the sunlight.  I also thought that at 2:00 in the afternoon there would still be enough sunlight to cook this squash.  I was wrong on either one or both of these ideas.  I'm not sure which, but if I had to guess, the fact that I waited until two to put the squash out was the biggest problem.  Squash like this takes a long time to cook and the sun isn't really that hot much after 4:00ish.  I should have started this between 9:00 and 10:00.  I would think that six hours of cooking is what it needed.  I'm not entirely sure how much effect the lack of pan had on my poor results as well.  I noticed that the black pans both put off and retain quite bit of heat throughout the cooking process.  I'm sure the dark colored squash would get warmer than light colored squash, but probably not warm enough.  I also need to invest in an oven thermometer so that I can see how hot this cooker is really getting.  Cooking beans and squash it doesn't matter a ton if I over or under cooke them just a little bit.  If I start getting into more complicated dishes then I will need to be more precise.  Oh well, I learned a lot through this failure.

Solar cooker cooking: Sweet potatoes, Garbanzo beans

This is my solar cooker all set up.  I have two sweet potatoes in this makeshift pan cooking.  Notice it is a black pan in order to help absorb heat.  It is actually two round black pans, one being used as a lid to help increase the heat.  Once you put the food and pans into the cooker, place the glass over the top.  I had to use a brick to hold it in place because I used an old storm window which was too big for the box.  The box top is also not terribly flat and the weight helps make a tight seal.  You can probably alter most recipes so that you can use this cooker for them, it will just be a bit of a learning curve like anything else.  I started with baked sweet potatoes because it is ok if you over or under cook them a little bit.  These took 6 hours and came out nice and soft.  I went out part way through and changed the angle of the cooker so that it was pointing at the sun.  I noticed that it had started to be shaded which is not any good for cooking.  I have also made beans in this cooker since.  I just did garbanzo beans in water to be used for another recipe.  This took 8 hours and they came out great as well.  It just takes a little planning in advance and this cooker is an excellent addition to my "kitchen."

Solar cooker building

My solar cooker was easy enough to build, that is, if I did it right.  All there is to my new cooker is two cardboard boxes plus scrap cardboard, tin foil, duct tape, glass or plastic, and newspaper.
You take the first (smaller) box and cover it inside and out with aluminum foil.  Do this first because you have to wait for the glue to dry.

Cooking chamber with tin foil

This smaller box is going to be your cooking chamber, so be sure that your pot or pan will fit in nicely.  There should not be too much space between the top of the box and the top of the pan as this will waste heat.  The pan should be black to help absorb sunlight.  A short fat pan is better than a tall skinny pan, greater surface area directed at the sun helps absorb more sunlight also.

Cardboard stacks and some newspaper

While you are waiting for the glue to dry, make some small stacks of cardboard about 3"x3"x2" to put between the two boxes so you can fill the space with crumpled newspaper for insulation. The first box now goes inside the larger box, sitting on the cardboard stacks, with the crumpled newspaper filling in all the gaps between the two.  This insulation should be closed in by more cardboard.  I duct taped it all around to get a pretty good seal.

The first side taped and the newspaper all around

The glass or plastic is going to be the lid to your cooker. It sits on top of the whole box you just finished and it covers the pan and cooking area.   It has to be cleat to keep the heat in while letting the sun shine through.  I used an old storm window I found.  The last step is to cover one more piece of cardboard with aluminum foil to function as a reflective backboard.  It gets propped up at an angle to reflect the sun into your cooking area.  Done!

Finished product minus the glass

Pretty ugly, isn't it?

Cooking with sunshine

Have you ever wanted to bake when it was 100 degrees outside?  Maybe you needed a cake for a summer birthday or some other crazy reason.  Either way it is way too hot to be baking, unless you have central air.  I don't.  I am also always looking for ways to save money on electricity or just some strange new project to try.  So I bought this book.   This book teaches you how to build some simple solar cookers and how to use them.  It is full of recipes at varying levels of difficulty.  The recipes all seem fairly easy, I guess that difficulty level means how many hours of good sunlight they need to work well.  Either way, this is going to be my project for the next few days.  We'll see how it goes.