Durn Ouchy

Sauerkraut
Yesterday I was whizzing through a bunch of cucumbers when I cut the heck out of my thumb, I was being stupid and didn't use the guard on my slicer, it is a pretty good cut but I didn't want to set in ER for 7 or 8 hours to get stitches so I hope I can keep it clean enough to avoid infection. I might should have gotten a tetanus shot... hope I don't end up with lock jaw or something.

Good news is the cucumbers and 10 pounds of Lima beans dehydrated beautifully so all is not lost. I also won't be doing any yard/garden work for a few days, need to keep the dirt out until the cut heals some so I might just get a little scrapbooking done! Yepeeeee.

I had a few questions in e-mails this week about my fancy dancy new state of the art dehydrator so I hope the info below will help everyone out.

1.) I purchased the Excalibur dehydrator, after lots of researching it seemed to be the best on the market.

2.) Different foods take different times to dehydrate, there is lots of information available to give you an idea of how long everything takes and also what foods need to be blanched/steamed before dehydrating. I prefer steaming over blanching.

3.) I use the Food Saver vacuum packer once the food is ready, it is worth every dime, we use it for repackaging meats, freezing etc. Watch the sales at Kohl's for the 40% off deal.

4.) I am only dehydrating veggies from our garden or 2 local farms for things we are not growing, I don't want anything that I can't trace the origin of. You can dehydrate frozen foods but I am sticking to fresh foods only.

5.) Once I have a good variety of food dehydrated I plan on making some pre mixed soups, casseroles and such. This could really help our daughters who all work outside the home, maybe a little less eating out, I can only hope! Ha