This year, I started doing a lot more dehydrating because, well, I kept running out of canning jars and didn't have the budget to go get more. At first, I would run get freezer bags, but the freezer filled up quickly. I even gave away a cooler full of frozen green beans to a church and refilled that space in the freezer before I could blink. We had run out of room for jars anyway, too. It's been an exceptionally good year in the garden. Dehydrating saves a lot of storage space and the food lasts longer than any other method of preserving. So, I have dried everything I could: green beans, tomatoes, tomato purée, carrots, eggplants, okra, sweet peppers, bell peppers, Malabar spinach, onion, mustard greens, winter squash.
And then I got the idea to sneak some leafy greens into my picky-eater husband's food by using them in place of parsley. He didn't notice, so I went a little further and eventually let him in on the secret. That opened the door to use even more veggies as flakes and finely ground powder. I've been using a lot of ground mustard greens, green beans, and eggplant. I especially like using the eggplant; its flavor smooths out sharp flavors and gives brothy soups a nice semi-creamy look. Tonight, I made up a meatloaf and some tasty turkey Swedish meatballs adding the Malabar Spinach and eggplant.
In late summer, the green beans got ahead of me and would bean out so that I'd wind up with a lot of shellies and not many snaps. I'd throw out a lot of pods that were somewhat tender, but not enough to keep the pods to serve. It made me really frustrated and I got to wondering about using those pods for a powder. And so I dried a big batch and it works just fine. They dry quicker than the snapped beans, too. It was the best of both worlds: I got the shell outs and the protein from the still tender pods, as well.
The only things I've decided not to repeat is drying puréed tomatoes and winter squash. The puréed tomolatoes didn't rehydrate to a smooth consistency. Tomato powder is versatile and if I need a purée or sauce, I'll just preserve it that way. And I disliked the flavor of dehydrated winter squash. I'll stick with canning winter squash.
Overall, I'm happy with dehydrating and surprised at how the veggies are getting used.
This all kind of makes me want to say, "Well, la dee da!"
