TurtleMama

Hooray!!! I'm happy for your success!

We were gifted with a big box o' persimmons yesterday when we picked up our Bountiful Basket that we had ordered for the week. Apparently nobody else knew what they were or what to do with them, so my husband and I split the huge box with another curious gentleman and brought them home. Hooray!

Turns out they are sweet and delicious (WHEN they are ripe....don't ever do what I did and taste a not-quite-ripe persimmon....it was NOT pleasant!!). I cut them up and pureed them yesterday, and today I am making persimmon jam!

It is going to be the brightest orange jam I have ever seen. Beautiful!

I'm waiting for my canner to come to a boil right now, and the persimmon jam is about to simmer on the stove...hooray!

Jeepers, I raw pack boneless skinless breasts and have always had wonderful results. It always tastes wonderful straight out of the jar. I cut it into chunks first, then fill the jars, add the hot water, wipe, put on the lid, and process in the pressure canner. I've never had a single one go awry. With the breasts, you don't have to worry about extra fat and stuff. I love it!

Have fun and let us know how it turns out!

Yeah, Canned Nerd, on the video she showed a close up of her dehydrated beans and several of them had split open. Seems to be the norm for dehydrating them.

I'm going to cook up a bunch of pintos this weekend and dehydrate them. I'll let y'all know how it works out!

Can you cook the beans with dry spices (like Bob's bean seasoning spice, or just dried herbs) to flavor them before dehydrating? I know that you obviously wouldn't want to cook them with a pork hock or ham bone (too much fat) -- but herbs and salt would be safe, right?

Cool!!! Thanks for the video...

Ambergris, what can you make with the ground beans?

Violet, you are awesome. Thanks!!!! And thank you, YYY, for asking the question that brought all of this up!

I was right there with you, YYY, going through withdrawal. LOL Good to see you again!

Violet, is the temperature (145 degrees) correct? Should it be lower so the beans do not "case harden?" Also, my dehydrator came with both plastic netting and little plastic trays to dehydrate with. The trays were intended for making things like fruit roll-ups. When dehydrating beans, do you use the netting or the plastic trays?

So sorry for all the questions! I just want to be sure I do this right.

Thanks, y'all!

I knew for sure you can't dehydrate things with high fat content....I just wasn't sure about the rice and beans. I saw a guy on youtube who was drying Ranch Style Beans from a can. I am more excited about the prospect of cooking and dehydrating plain beans that I have in storage...in a situation the fuel savings would be immense! Boiling beans (or even pressure cooking them) can take time and generator power/wood/propane etc. If all you have to do is rehydrate them -- well, that would be AWESOME! And the rice won't grow the icky bacteria that can make you sick? That was my main concern.

Thanks SO MUCH for your replies on this...I have potatoes going today and tomorrow, but I think that this weekend I'll be drying some beans!

Woo hoo! Thank you, kappydell! I think I'll be doing some expirimenting this weekend!

Is it safe??

I have been seeing SO much lately about cooking and then dehydrating rice -- and now beans. Is this safe? I know that rice can grow a nasty bacteria that leads to food poisoning if it's cooked and then not stored at the correct temperature. I love the idea of homemade, cheap quick-cook rice and beans, but before I go off and do this I want to make sure I won't make my family sick with it.

Violet? Anyone?

You can dehydrate prepared beans?!?!?!? Really???

I am a big fan of dehydrating potatoes. Takes up a LOT less space than canning them and I think you get better results (once they're rehydrated). Onions keep a good long time in the fridge or a cool root cellar or basement -- and they can be dehydrated too (do them OUTSIDE!! LOL). Dehydrated onions are awesome and so so so easy to work with.

I love my dehydrator!

Wow, y'all redecorated around here!!!!

So glad that Mrs. Survival is working again. I was pitching hissy fits every time I tried to get on and couldn't!

Thanks to Annarchy and everyone else who got things up and running....it's good to be able to "see" you all again!

Thanks, y'all!!!! Happy birthday, donnaIL!

Can you freeze the whey, or would that kill the "good" stuff that makes it useful for what you want to save it for?

I have alopecia totalis, and nothing really worked for me. I finally started "wearing" hair...a wig! I love my "hair" now...it's very low maintenence, everyone asks me who my colorist is, and my sister (who has enough hair for two people) always grumps at me because I never have a "bad hair day."

Best of all, I have a husband who desn't mind when I take it off at the end of the day!

Adding my congratulations to the mix, Doctor.

We're very, very proud of you.

I recently saw a video on YouTube where a lady was "dry canning" hamburger patties. EEK!!!!!

Where do people come up with this stuff??

I guess, looking at the silver lining, it's good to get in these bad experiences so that you know they might happen post- . It sounds like so many people had a bad gardening experience this summer. Where I live, we can't grow anything during the summer....but our second spring season starts just about now, so I'm going to be spending some time tilling up our beds, enriching them, and getting ready to seed them in the next week or two. I always try to look at my crop failures as "what not to do" experiences! Gardening is one of those things where Jimmy Buffet's advice comes in handy: "If we didn't laugh, we'd all go insane!" So I try to laugh it off!

Wormie, I pray that your hard work will be blessed with the endowment of wisdom and patience despite the lack of a good crop. You gained experience, at the least. I am so sorry that all of your (lonely!) hard work was for naught. Here's the good thing: you have he opportunity to research the problems that you encountered (hard-to-deter deer, for instance) and do research to hopefully prevent the same thing from happening next year.

We've missed you here, and I'm glad to see your wormy self back at Mrs. S!!!

It's always a bummer when people get mad at you for genuinely trying to help... But they have to WANT to hear what your saying and want to be helped. Free will, I guess.

Violet, the tomato juice sounds promising....especially for meat you're going to use in spaghetti sauce or something. Yum! Can you use V-8 to boost the nutrition content?