Stay safe OldMtWoman and all the rest of you dealing with serious weather….we experienced a small bit of snow, but mostly rain for it seems weeks and weeks…but looks like sunny days headed our way shortly…
Okay, peeps, for those of you who have experience using the dehydrated foods one can buy, tell me what to do…I had recently ordered #10 cans of soup produced by Auguson Farms. At 80 years old, I’m not especially concerned with long years of shelf life, but rather having these types of things on hand to help me avoid having to go to the grocery store so often and to take less space than an equivalent number of condensed soups cans would need. You with me so far? Well, today I thought I’d open the Cream of Potato soup and have that for lunch. I followed the can directions carefully – that is 2/3 c soup mix plus 2 cups water; add mix to boiling water, reduce heat to medium and cook for 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Add water to desired consistency. Taste wise it’s just okay but with addition of salt and maybe butter, it could be passable. My biggest “oh no” is that it seems none of the veggies, that is potatoes and onions and something else I couldn’t make out, were palatable….hard, yucky, chewy, not good….should I perhaps have let the mixture soak for a while before trying to heat it up? should I have just added a whole lot more water and cooked maybe twice as long? The called for amount of water just created a gosh awful gooey paste. I don’t want to bad-mouth Augustan Farm products based on this one experience, but who can give me some hints at how to rehydrate these types of products so they are tasty….In addition to the potato soup mix, I got Cream of Broccoli and Cream of Chicken. Thanks for any ideas!!!
Update on my little indoor spinach garden: spinach continues to produce, nothing big and splashy but just the little baby leaves I can harvest and eat…makes me happy…also my onions from roots continue to grow and seem to be replacing the leaves I cut off…so, new hobby is a hit – keeps me up and moving and happy that I am actually growing something from seed…woo-hoo!! Will definitely continue to do the gardening thing at a level I can handle without stress…
Learned how to use my Food Saver yesterday so when I start dehydrating things I can put them in vacuum bags…haven’t yet figured out what to try dehydrating since deer meat plan fell through….and since I’m participating in the January Make from Scratch contest, I’ve refused to go to the grocery for anything except milk for my morning coffee and my second cheese-making attempt which also flopped. I believe it was Amy Dixon who pointed me to some better youtube videos I can watch so hopefully third effort will work.
That’s about it for now….thanks to all of you for your posts…they mean a lot to me….