Dehydrating frozen strawberries

Cheesecake! Yum! Yum! 

We're hosting the Cousin's Lunch this coming Saturday, and I thought I might make a cheesecake. It's that or an apple crisp. Maybe both. The future is unwritten and who knows where the spirit may lead?  Or maybe dessert will be a good, old-fashioned apple cobbler and I'll keep the cheesecake for us. 

Last winter we ordered two dozen strawberry plants from Burpees, a very well-known company. The plants arrived a little late for planting in my area (strike one), and because of that, only nine of the plants lived. That's not a good margin of success. I doubt I'll order roots from Burpees again. A local nursery seems a much better option if I go for blackberries. 

Several of the stronger plants did produce a berry or two which was enough to pick and eat on the spot but nothing more. Those stronger plants have also sent out runners and the sets seem to be taking hold. The plan is to move them into the greenhouse this winter since they are in containers and not yet the ground. I hope to get a harvest in 2022. 

With cheesecake on my mind, I pulled a bag of sliced strawberries out of the freezer and spread them out on the dehydrator trays. Once they've dried to a light crisp, I'll put them in the coffee grinder and turn them into a powder to add to the cheesecake batter. It will only take a tablespoon or three of powder to intensify the strawberry flavor. Powders are a great way to take the flavor to the next level. Beyond that, green powders can add nutrition to soups and other dishes. Himself hates spinach but doesn't balk at a tablespoon of spinach powder added to some dishes. The trick is to only add to the point where it may become detectable and stop. 

Another perk of dehydrating strawberries is that the house will smell of delicious strawberries for several days. The man of the manor is correct in one thing. Spinach doesn't add a thing to the air. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor (The Hideaway)

Garden fail: Radishes

 This is my year to experiment and learn about container vegetable gardening. As I've mentioned, an in-ground garden would be decimated by the deer, so my focus is on what I can grow in my little garden corral. 

Here's the link to a video of the deer in our woods: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0JXEfL2vqk . As destructive as they are, we love watching them. 

It's a given that not everything I plant is going to prosper - case in point is the radishes. I purchased good seed from Burpees and got really good germination. It was downhill from there. 

Radishes are said to detoxify your blood, help lower blood pressure, boost immunity, and taste de-lish! I know not everyone agrees on that last item, but we like them. My plan was to serve up some fresh in a few salads and dehydrate the rest. Once dehydrated, they're stored in airtight containers until you re-hydrate them for use.  

But back to the garden fail. I did pull a few young radishes out for salad toppers, enough to be sad we missed out on the rest. 

Good seed germination doesn't equate to a good crop. Lots of things can go wrong like the gardener putting the grow-bag in the greenhouse and allowing the radishes to get too warm. Radishes are a cool weather crop, liking temperatures anywhere from about 40F to 70F. When the weather prognosticators predicted a hard frost, I set the bag in the greenhouse for protection - and then forgot to take it out the next morning. (There was NO frost, by the way.) And so the radishes died before their time. 

I'm disappointed, but I'll try again this fall. Radishes mature quickly so if I plant again about six weeks before our average first fall frost date, we should, hopefully, be able to harvest a nice little batch. 

Maybe, come fall, the radishes we harvest will look like the ones in the picture I ripped-off of the Internet and I can post a good photo for everyone else to use. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

How to measure a snowfall using a milk can

Two of my most prized possessions are the old metal milk cans that sit on the porch outside my sunroom office. They belonged to my grandparents and when Pop said he needed to get them "out of the way," I jumped. I brought them home, cleaned and scraped the rust off with a wire brush, and shot them with a couple of coats of Rustoleum spray paint. That was forty years ago now. 

They're different in that one is short and squatty and the other taller - more like antique lovers would expect to see in a milk can. They aren't placed with any great care. I move them around all the time but I always make sure one of them is out from under the eaves. For decades, when it snows, I open the door and stick a ruler down to see how much snow has fallen. 

The man of the manor used to scoff at this. He didn't believe the milk can could be accurate, but winter after winter my measurement has matched his, and I didn't need to put on boots to trudge outside to take mine. Yesterday, when the snow finally ceased falling, I measured a firm nine inches of snow. The man of the manor got the same number on the walk that leads to the patio on the other corner of the house.

The milk cans are more than a country porch decoration and occasional snow gauge. They are a daily visual reminder of my grandparents and because of that I will never part with them. They remind me of a sunlit fall day when my Pop settled his Orioles ballcap tighter on his head and said he'd better start the tractor and get them up the lane to my new house before I changed my mind. 

As if I would, Pop. 

The Lady of the Manor

Yes, he's going to eat spinach

 

The spousal unit hates spinach. To him, it's nothing more than a slimy mess. His aversion to cooked spinach carries over to fresh spinach in salads, too. There is no accounting for personal tastes in food, so instead of arguing with him about it, I've generally just not served spinach to him. It's not difficult to add spinach to only one salad, but I confess I've been annoyed when doing it. But I may have it upon a solution. 

Transitioning into a home-based lifestyle means learning some new things. YouTube is a wealth of information. We've enjoyed watching Living Traditions Homestead for a little over a year, and it's led to finding and watching a raft of homesteading, gardening, and food preserving channels. One that crossed my path is The Purposeful Pantry. The host is keen on dehydrating and she does some interesting things. When she dehydrated spinach down to a powder, I took notes. 

Spinach powder. How interesting. I bet a tablespoon of spinach powder in soups and stews will go totally unnoticed by Himself. Same for in a quiche. I deemed it worth a try and got two pounds of organic spinach at Sam's Club for under $5 and set to work. Last evening I washed and drained all of it, and then spread it out on my dehydrator trays, set the machine on high, and went to bed. This morning I had five trays of really crunchy spinach leaves. 

Next step - I put the leaves in a bowl and manually crushed them until they were a bit finer. Then I used my coffee grinder to make a powder. The net result is about three-quarters of a half-pint jar of powder. I added one moisture removing packet and set the jar in the pantry. I'll need to give the jar a shake every day for the next week or so to make sure the packet is doing its job, but that's it. A simple way to get the vitamins and minerals in spinach into our diet. Bonus fact - it takes up virtually no room on the shelf and none in the freezer. 

I'm calling this adventure a success!

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor