2 posts in one day WOW!!

What a nice quite uneventful day, LOVE IT, I really can't remember the last time the house was empty. After getting the garden caught up this morning in the unbearable heat I spent the rest of the day working on headbands for the babies, catching up on mail and resting. Looking forward to a small meal alone and early to bed with a good book on my Nook.

Wanted to share what 7 1/2 pounds of dehydrated potatoes look like. I originally tried to vacuum back the potatoes but the edges are so sharp they ended up cutting the bags soooo, I switched them into jars with oxygen packs. The jars are going to take up a lot more room than vacuum packs but for now its the best I can come up with.

Here is the really cool part, when I want to fry up some potatoes with onions (also dehydrated)and bacon all I need to do is soak the potatoes in water for a bit then throw it all in a skillet, walla good old fried taters in a jiffy. We love German potato salad but it is a pain to make; boil potatoes, peel, slice, then make the sauce and saute. Now all I need to do is soak potatoes to rehydrate them pour the warm sauce over the potatoes and we have a side dish that I normally only make for special occasions.

Not only is the dehydrator going to save me time putting a meal on the table but it is also saving us so much money. The majority of the food I am canning or dehydrating is coming from our own garden however whatever we don't grow ourselves I buy at our local farmers market while it is in season and the price is low. I can also cash in on sales at the grocery when they run a great sale like they have been running on local taters. Best of all I never have to worry about a veggie being recalled on the nightly news, I know where our food is coming from with no harmful chemicals that I can't pronounce.

I know from e-mails many of you are working gardens this year for the first time, I hope that you will see from the blog this summer that you can take your garden to the next level and feed your family for almost free much of the rest of the year from your garden with just a bit more work and an investment of a few good kitchen tools.