What I am doing with our wonderful Purple Sweet Potatoes....

Here is a purple sweet potato that we grew in our garden this year.  I think we ended up with about 2/3 of a bushel of them from FIVE plants.  They did amazingly well. As I've told you before, sweet potatoes (orange or purple) are very easy to grow, and, at least where we live, are very productive.  All I have to do is dig them up, let them cure (I do it on the garage floor) for a week or two, and then place them in baskets or paper bags or cardboard boxes and set them in the house.  They will easily stay nice until the next harvest.  They are not sensitive to light like Irish potatoes, but they don't like to get cold, so don't keep them in a cold cellar or in your refrigerator.

These potatoes are much dryer than the orange variety. They also are sweet, but not as much as the orange ones.  However, what they might lack in taste (on their own) pales in comparison to the nutritional benefits. I assume you are familiar with the fact that blueberries are very rich in certain antioxidants? This purple color reflects a rich concentration of those same phytonutrients that we find in blueberries.  If you garden, then this is an easy and very inexpensive way to be able to eat those on a regular basis.

One morning, recently, I was laying in bed pondering what I might do to use more of the Purple sweet potatoes.  I do like to boil them, peel and mash with a little lime juice, some butter and sour cream and maybe some sort of sweetener.  I have also made very nice Purple sweet potato pie a few times. On the  morning in question, I decided to try making powdered Purple sweet potatoes.  It worked out perfectly.  If you have a dehydrator and a good blender, you can do this too.

I cut the Purple sweet potatoes into large slices, covered them with water and boiled them until they were tender when pierced with a sharp knife.  Then, I drained them, let them cool and removed the skins.  Next, I put them in my mixer and used the "paddle" attachment and added a bit of water and mashed them thoroughly.  Next, I spread them on fruit roll trays in the dehydrator, not very thinly, actually, and dehydrated them at 135 F. It only took a few hours.  When they were nice and crisp, I put them in the blender and turned them into powder.

Next, I put them in a glass jar and covered it tightly.

Here is a picture of a little bit of it in a spoon so you can see what the powder looks like:

So, you may ask, what do I do with this powder?  You can add it to anything you wish!  I've been adding some to bread, I sprinkle it on yogurt, or in a sandwich on top of something else. I'm sure it will be lovely in smoothies.  It is mild in flavor and packed with nutrients.

That pint jar was filled by just 3 of the potatoes.  Like I mentioned, they are quite dry, so they yield a lot in comparison with other vegetables and fruits.

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Dehydrating to save space...

Since we are now in a considerably smaller house, and my food storage space is much reduced, I've been doing a lot more dehydrating this year.  I've canned a few things, But now all of that space is filled.  Here is the shelf where I have the things I've dehydrated.

It is so convenient to make soup in a pressure saucepan, and I really enjoy having these items to use.  It only takes 10 minutes, at pressure, for the soup to be ready and as good as if I had simmered it all day.

I think these are the things I have done: green beans, sweet corn, diced potatoes, kale powder, tomatoes, tomato powder, small yellow tomatoes, summer squash, celery, cucumbers, green tomato slices, oyster mushrooms and okra.

Dehydrating Kale - Kale Powder!

This is a pint (2 cup) jar.  There you can see some dehydrated powdered kale that I made today.  This was made from 15 large kale leaves!  

I will add this to soups and smoothies through the winter when the fresh kale is not available.

Here is how I do it.

1. Pick the Kale

2. Wash the Kale in cold water and drain.

3. Remove the tough center ribs.

4. Bring a large pot of water to the boil.

5. Immerse the Kale for only 15 seconds.

6. Drain in colander.

7. Plunge into ice water and stir until the heat is out of the leaves.

8. Drain and run it through a salad spinner or pat dry on clean towels.

9. Arrange on dehydrator trays, only one layer deep.

10. Set temperature at 135 degrees F.

11.  After 2 hours, check it.  It could take as long as 3.  It should be completely dry and crisp.

12.  At this point you can just pack it into a jar with an air-tight lid, OR, you can powder it in a food processor or blender, and then store it in a jar, out of the light.  

This will keep nicely for a long time.  It actually tastes nice and slightly sweet.

Dehydrated Celery!

I've posted previously about what I do when I can get a good price for celery.  I'm currently on the lookout for a good deal on it.  HERE is what I've done for a number of years. But this time I'm trying something different.  The frozen celery is always used in cooking, of course, as it would be mushy when thawed.  The picture above shows you two large stalks of celery that have been sliced and dehydrated in my nice new Nesco, shown in the following picture.  The teaspoon is there to show you how much this ended up being after drying.

Here is the handle so you can see which model I have:

 The two stalks did not quite fill a pint jar.

I carefully rinsed the celery, sliced it, and blanched it in boiling water for 3 minutes and then plunged it into cold water, then ran it through a salad spinner to get off the excess water.  Then I spread it on the trays and set it at 135 F, and let it go all night.

I used about 1/4 cup of it in a batch of soup on Saturday.  It worked very well.  Now I don't have to keep it in the freezer.  Our freezer tends to get a little full with the extra family we have in house right now.  :)

If you live in a hot dry climate, you could easily just do this outside.  Rinse, blanch, cool, spread on trays and cover with a thin cloth out in the sun. Our oldest daughter lives in Nevada, and hers might dry in about 3 seconds I think.  ;)

Dehydrating sweet potatoes...

We were able to grow a very nice crop of sweet potatoes in last year's garden.  However, when we went to dig them, something (probably mice) had gotten into them and done a lot of damage.  Here is a picture of one of them with the chewed out hole:

I don't wash them before storage.  I think maybe they would not keep as well, but I don't really know that.  In spite of the damage, they keep fairly well, but as time goes on, they do start to dry out and get icky looking more and more.  I didn't want them to go to waste.  I had about a peck (1/4 bushel) of them in that condition, so I decided to dehydrate them and want to show you how I did it and tell you how to use the resulting product. This is rather long-winded, but it really was easy to do.

First, scrub them clean and then boil them until they are tender.  Pour them into a colander to drain and let them cool for at least an hour so they are easy to handle.

Remove the skins and mash well with a potato masher.  I suggest you do not use the electric mixer.  That makes them almost too soft to deal with.

Here is a dehydrator tray with the mesh in place.

Get 2 squares of Wax Paper and place one on the counter.  Put about 1.5 cups of the mashed sweet potatoes on it.

Cover with the other piece of wax paper.  By the way, wax paper has two sides (of course!) and one is slicker than the other.  Use the slick side.

GENTLY, using a rolling pin, roll out the mashed sweet potatoes...

This shows you the thickness I rolled mine to.  You don't want it so thick it has a hard time drying out, but you don't want it too thin, either because then trying to put it onto the dehydrating tray will not work out.

Peel off the top piece of wax paper.

Pick up the wax paper and simply invert it onto the tray and then carefully peel off the wax paper.

Put all of your filled trays into the dehydrator and set the temperature to 125 degrees F.  Here is one of them after it was good and dry.  You don't want it leathery.  All the moisture needs to be gone.  You'll have to check to see how long it takes, but it will be at LEAST overnight and probably longer.

When it is all dry enough, peel the sheets of sweet potato off of the mesh and break them into pieces into a bowl.

Chop part of them into a food processor and process to break up into little pieces, then..

Transfer to a blender and blend until a powder is formed.  Store the powder in an airtight container out of the light in a cool room or pantry.

Here is the amount of powder from that peck of sweet potatoes!  Isn't that amazing!

To reconstitute - in a heat-proof container, combine 1 part Sweet Potato powder with 3 parts boiling water, cover with a lid and let it sit for 20 minutes.

Stir, add a dollop of butter and eat!  Or, it can be used in breads, mixed with the flour, or meat loaf or in sweet potato pie!