Sweet Potato's

We like sweet potato's year round and they are a must for the holiday's. Since we don't have a basement or a root cellar the only way I have found to preserve them is to dehydrate. They are super easy to do, check out "dehydrate2store" web site look under mashed potato's I think it is to see the great video on how to do this! I keep a quart jar of dehydrated sweet potato's in the pantry for ever day use, the rest I vacuum pack and store until I need to refill the jar. I was having trouble with the bags not staying sealed due to the edges of the potato's being so sharp, I now wrap them loosely in wax paper before I vacuum seal them, so far it is working great. We like a little butter, brown sugar and cinnamon on ours, when I reconstitute them I toss it all in. I also make a sweet potato casserole the same way but add mini marshmallows to the top and run them under the broiler for a few minuets to brown up. Keep your eye on them if you try this, they can and will burn (yep done it many times) Tyler loves to help me get the potato's ready to dehydrate, I give him his own wax paper, rolling pen and a blob of potato's, he will hang with me rolling and re-rolling his potato's until I am done and get mine in the dehydrator, his DO NOT get dehydrated!! Talk about a cheap toy!!

Right now I am getting my potato's from the farmers market, they are running $.89 a pound he digs fresh ones everyday. I did check the ones I have in the square foot garden a day or two ago, they seem to be getting bigger so just maybe I will have some big enough to work up before our first frost for free! Yepee. We are still getting lots of okra each day, I have been throwing it in the dehydrator and bagging it up, whoever stops by is welcome to all they want. The late cucumbers are finally coming in, not sure we will have enough to make another round of bread and butter pickles so I will pick some up at the market to can next week. Zucchini and squash both have blossoms looks like we can keep eating those until frost. The broccoli is coming along and whats left of the cabbage is doing good, silly rabbits took out 2 rolls of the cabbage. Next week I am going to try to add lettuce, carrots and radishes, figure the seeds are cheap so it might be worth trying, we are still having 80-90 degree heat not sure they are gonna like that.

I am off today to pick up my work for the Republican party get out the vote, if things don't change soon in our country we are in for a real mess, heck it already is in a mess but I fear things are going to deteriorate even more. We are not going to be able to spend our way out of this hole, we need American companies to keep jobs in America and stop getting tax breaks to send jobs out to the country for one. Who the heck do they think is going to pay taxes when people don't have jobs? Enough, I don't want to get started, go plant something, cook something, read a book or a blog on a skill, clip some coupons and have a blessed day