Flavored Oatmeal

I am a old fashioned oats oatmeal eater. I married a flavored, instant oatmeal man. 

He would eat it when I made it but he didn't really enjoy it. I liked adding dried fruit to my oatmeal, but couldn't handle the texture and the sweetness of instant oatmeal. 

Ahhh, the internet! I went searching for some quick oatmeal ideas that would suit both of us. I found several versions of "do it yourself" instant oatmeal packs so I decided to give it a try.

I started with 10 cups of oats, a cup and a half of brown sugar, a cup of powdered milk, and a couple of teaspoons of cinnamon.

Half of the oats went into the food processor and I hit the pulse button a few times to break it down and then added the remaining ingredients and mixed them all together to form my oatmeal base.

At this point, I pulled out a bunch of fruits that I had dehydrated, some nuts and some other seasonings. I measured  about 1/2 a cup of the oatmeal base into a jelly jar (you could do this in plastic bags, but I like vacuum sealing these in jars). I prefer the jars because they last longer and they are easier to deal with in my pantry that is full of other mason jars.

I added about a tablespoon of nuts if I was using them, and a couple of tablespoons of the fruit. Spices were added in 1/4 tsp increments.

These are the varieties that I made and the additions:

Apple Cinnamon--I added an extra 1/4 tsp of cinnamon, and some chopped pieces of apples that I had dehydrated.

Apple Pie--a little cinnamon, some apples, a little nutmeg, golden raisons, and a small amount of walnuts.

Brown Sugar and Cinnamon--a little extra cinnamon and a little more brown sugar.

Strawberries and Cream--an extra 1/2 teaspoon of powdered milk, some dehydrated strawberries.

Cranberry Almond--some dried cranberries and slivered almonds.

Pumpkin Spice--pumpkin powder (dehydrated pumpkin ground into a powder) and pumpkin pie spice.

Banana Nut--Chopped up dried bananas, a touch more cinnamon and some walnuts.

We have both tested most of the flavors and have pretty much been pleased. I made a couple of notes to change for the next time, the biggest being to make sure I added enough of the pumpkin powder in the Pumpkin Spice--you could taste it but is was very subtle. 

When I do things like this, I make a ton of them so that I don't have to do then that often--I doubled this recipe so I have about 35-40 jars of oatmeal vacuumed sealed in my pantry. They make a great quick breakfast and can be tossed in a lunch box for a snack or breakfast at our desks at work.

I love that these have real fruit in them, I can control the sugar, it has a heartier texture for me than commercial packets, but a smooth enough texture for my husband. Pretty much a very tasty win-win!

Tomato Skins

Waste not, want not, right? When I made my wing sauce last week, I had this lovely bowl of tomato skins left over and decided to dehydrate them and make tomato powder.

Loaded up ready for the dehydrator:

After drying for several hours:

After they were thoroughly dried, I put them in a blender and pureed the dry skins. Here is the powder that I ended up with:

What to do with tomato powder? I plan to add it in my dough the next time I make pasta. I stirred in some when I made ranch dressing the other day, just for a little change. The next time I make pita bread I might try it out in there. 

I love the fact that I was able to use something that would have just been tossed in the compost bin and made something that I can use in my cooking.

Tomato skins are pretty lightweight and when I removed the trays from my dehydrator I found some dry skins that had blown off the trays! 

Adventures with Pineapple

Last week a local store had whole pineapples on sale for $1 each. I love pineapple and canned pineapple is one of my go to fruits during the winter months when there isn't much fresh fruit available. I decided to can my own this year. I went to the store to pick up my pineapples and loaded 20 into my shopping cart. Let me tell you, if you buy that many pineapples at one time people will stare at you. Especially if that is the only thing in your cart! I have bought large quantities before but 20 pineapples is enough to completely fill the basket. I got a lot of stares, a few questions and then someone asked if they could come to my luau. I have found that when people are commenting they pretty much fall into a couple of categories:

1. They are experienced canners themselves and know why I have that much of one product.  

They are curious to see if I am making something that they don't know how to make or don't have a recipe for and sometimes they offer suggestions for things that I hadn't thought of, love talking to those people!

2. Sometimes they are new canners and they want to know how I am going to use it, or they are people that will tell me they want to learn how to can.

3. Some people are just curious!

I have never canned pineapple before. I only bought 20 so that I could see how long it was going to take me to process each pineapple. I learned that lesson after I bought all the citrus that took me forever to process. I had bought this hand little too last year on clearance and had yet to use it. It did make quick work of each pineapple. Each pineapple comes out cored and sliced. I just had to trim away a little bit sometimes on the top and the bottom slices.

The core stays in the pineapple along with some juice that I poured out and used as canning liquid. 

After seeing how long it took, I knew I could do more before the weekend was over so I went back for 20 more for a total of 40 pineapples. I ended up with 50 pint jars of pineapple chunks.

I also had enough left to dehydrate 9 full trays of pineapple slices. 

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When I was a child I go go shopping with my Mamaw and was amazed that she always found someone to talk to no matter where we went, she would end up talking to someone. We always joked about it. Now I am that person :P. It is weird people will just start talking to me in stores or in waiting rooms. I am pretty shy and really never just start talking to people I don't know. Kip is amazed that he can go off for a bit and come back and I am talking to someone that is telling me all about their life. 

That always reminds me of my Mamaw and brings a smile to my face and my heart. It's just one of those times that I feel so connected to her, even though she has been gone for over 12 years. So I really don't mind people stopping me to talk, because I wonder if she had a hand in it and is laughing too.
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I found the pineapple tool at my local Kroger, but I have seen them in a lot of places that see a lot of kitchen gadgets such as  Bed Bath and Beyond.

Dehydrated Citrus

I was able to buy a couple of cases of citrus on a bulk order a few days ago. I love citrus fruits and I was looking for several different ways of preserving what we couldn't eat before it needed to be eaten. I have made juice, marmalade, canned it in various ways and also decided to dehydrate some for later. I have more lemons in the dehydrator. Most of these will probably end up in tea at some point, but I would love to hear what you do with dehydrated citrus.

I am still loving my new Excalibur dehydrator. Deciding to buy one took me about two years of debating back and forth with myself. I knew I would use it and and it would be worth it in the end, but it was still a hard decision. I am happy to say that after a couple of months and many batches later that I have zero buyer's regret. In fact, after my first batch, when I saw how beautiful my dehydrated food was, I only wished I had gotten it sooner.

Strawberry Kiwi Fruit Leather

As we have been eating healthier and I have been learning more about preserving foods, my dehydrator  has been getting a lot more use. It used to only come out for the occasional batch of jerky then go back on the shelf until I was in the mood to make jerky again. Now it gets used all the time. If I find a good deal on veggies at the store, I dehydrate them. If I have a couple of stalks of celery left over after making stock, I dehydrate it so it doesn't get pushed to the back of the fridge and forgotten about. My friend's daughter Samantha loves to play in the kitchen with me and one day I mentioned that we could make our own fruit roll ups with real fruit and in any combination that we could think up. She was all for that! For this batch we chose strawberry kiwi fruit leather.  In the photo about you can see that after pureeing our strawberries, we spread them evenly over parchment paper on the dehydrator tray, then we randomly added the kiwi.

And her we took a butter knife and spread the kiwi around a little. We have also made these by pureeing the strawberries and kiwi together and doing solid sheets.We were just experimenting with something new.

Here is the final product after drying, minus a corner for sampling purposes. The color of the kiwi gets a little lost in the red, but you can really taste it. 

I like to make these on the parchment paper because I can use kitchen scissors and easily cut them into strips and roll them. Once they are rolled up they can be put into a lunch box without taking up too much room. Samantha loves to take them in her lunch and I have found that they make a great snack for me when I am craving something sweet. 

Dehydrated Pineapple

My dehydrator has really been getting a workout lately! I used to only use it to make jerky every once in a blue moon, but in the past six months or so I have been dehydrating lots more fruit and vegetables. I found pineapple on sale last week and bought a couple of them. After peeling them, I sliced them pretty thin and put them in the dehydrator. I love how these turned out, they are so pretty. I will eat them as snacks and some will probably be chopped to add to granola. 

One thing I have been doing is looking for marked down vegetables at the grocery store. The store I shop at most will mark them as a "manager's special" the day or day before the sale by date. When I am lucky enough to find mushrooms and other things like that I will purchase them and dehydrate them to be added to soups later.