Garden Snacks?

[pudly]

Sorry. Don't have experience with them. Just threw out the idea. Hopefully someone else can help.

 

[skulhedface]

I managed to pick up a norpro dehydrator with 5 trays (iirc) for my stepmom at goodwill for $5. Love my Excalibur, but 5 bucks is hard to beat.

 

[17 squirrel]

Hmmm. I actually LIKE sunflower seeds. Any idea how to keep the birds out of them? My wife has planted a bunch in the past, but the birds DESTROY them as soon as they go to seed.

Yep.. Put screen bags over the seed head..a piece of soft screen folded around the seed head and held in place with a little wire tye.

 

[Leadeye]

I would imagine that with some research snacks could be made from both wheat and corn flour. We have a dehydrator and wife runs everything through it imaginable.

 

[PistolBob]

I managed to pick up a norpro dehydrator with 5 trays (iirc) for my stepmom at goodwill for $5. Love my Excalibur, but 5 bucks is hard to beat.

Goodwill is my secret dehydrator store. I have a half dozen counter top dehydrators, all from Goodwill, all $5 or less....

 

[17 squirrel]

Grow some popcorn..

 

[JettaKnight]

here's my dehydrator:
High Volume Food Dehydrator Racks

It's all all about drying with air, not heat.

 

[PistolBob]

I know a guy that uses box fans and a few furnace filters to dry his beef jerky....works like a champ. No heat.

 

[CountryBoy19]

Gardens are a lot of work and some expense. Wouldn't it be better to work a part time job and get paid rather then working for food that's already super cheap at the store.
I mean if having more money is the goal.
Of course it does provide family time so that's always a good thing.
Just a thought.

Lets start off comparing apples to apples here, not garden quality produce to cheapo food in the store. Sure, my tomatoes cost more than a $.99 off-brand jar of pasta sauce, but the quality difference between the 2 is so radical that they aren't even on the same planet. Not to mention, who knows what is truly in the stuff you buy at the store; commercial food growers operate just like normal farmers, they use chemicals on their plants etc, and simply just have to follow a "withdrawal before harvest" timeline for those chemicals, the traces are still there. The rat turds from the processing plant are in there too... and who knows what else...

Potatoes: I don't grow the cheap russets, I'll happily buy russet potatoes for $1.99/ 10 lb bag. I grow red & gold potatoes. Lets compare the prices of THOSE potatoes in the store. $3.99 for a 5lb bag of reds, I harvested a couple hundred pounds of reds & golds 2 years ago, for an input cost of about $5 in seed potatoes and a few hours time (potatoes are pretty much maintenance free)... I didn't grow potatoes last year because I was overseas last spring and my wife was pregnant so not much of a garden got planted.
Cost: $5, 8 hrs time
Benefit: we'll say $180 (we did give some away to friends/family so the full $180 savings wasn't realized by me, but it was realized in generosity and neighborly/loving kindness to others) savings plus having FRESH potatoes whenever I wanted, just go dig them from the garden.

Tomatoes: Even the "vine ripened" crap you buy in the store is severely lacking in flavor. It's impossible to make a good sauce or salsa with flavorless tomatoes. So we must go to a farmers market etc to get quality tomatoes that would compare to those grown at home and fully, truly ripened on the vine. At $1/lb or more, and my consumption rate of 200+ lbs of tomatoes per year.
Cost: $10 in seedlings and misc supplies, 15 hrs time (does not include processing into finished product which would still be necessary for purchased tomatoes as well)
Benefit: ~$200 in cost savings, plus fantastically fresh, flavorful product

Leaf lettuce: To buy truly fresh leaf lettuce in the store will cost you $4-6 for a 8 oz package. I grow a whole garden full of it for $1.79 for a seed packet.
Cost: $1.79, 3 hrs labor (includes weeding, harvesting, & washing lettuce)
Benefit: ~$60 savings, super fresh, always accessible when/if I want a fresh, healthy salad.

Garlic: garlic pretty much grows itself. You plant in the fall, put some straw on before the heavy freeze, and don't touch it again until it's time to dig it up. I plant 60-80 heads per year, of which 10% goes back to seeding next year.
Cost: $2 for a bale of straw (harvested garlic is used to seed next year's supply)
Benefit: ~$40 saved per year in garlic, plus I have different varieties of garlic that yield different flavor profiles

Green beans: I'll admit that canning green beans is a net cost loss. But fresh green beans from the garden over buying fresh beans at the store is a definite cost saver. We don't can our beans, we only eat beans fresh out of the garden...
Savings: I'll say very little because if we didn't have the beans in the garden we would just eat canned beans.

Sugar snap peas: super easy to grow
Cost: $1.00 for seeds
Benefit: fresh anytime you want, ~$10/yr cost savings

Zucchini: grows itself pretty much
Cost: <$1 for seeds
Benefit: fresh any time you want, $10 cost savings


Of course, this all completely neglecting other factors. Those factors include but are not limited to:
If you're making fresh baby food from these products the cost savings are drastically higher...
If you find it hard to make healthy decisions in a grocery store, gardening helps facilitate those decisions (having the garden readily available means you choose healthier snacks more often).
Gardening provides other health benefits from the physical work.
Gardening provides some security in your food supply and a sense of self-support.

here's my dehydrator:
High Volume Food Dehydrator Racks

It's all all about drying with air, not heat.

I found out years ago that the cheapo "heat element under a grid" type dehydrator sucks. I bought a professional quality forced air dehydrator and it works wonderfully. Can vary temps from 70-170 and the fan is always on... still requires some rotation of the trays but not as bad as the type without a fan.

I make my jerky in 100+ lb batches...

 

[Slawburger]

Radishes (many varieties) are easy to grow and make a nice snack item. I usually have a bowl of them in the fridge during the summer.

Turnips and rutabaga are root vegetables that store well and can be eaten raw as a snack item (preferably with some salt).

 

[BigBoxaJunk]

Of course, this all completely neglecting other factors. Those factors include but are not limited to:
If you're making fresh baby food from these products the cost savings are drastically higher...
If you find it hard to make healthy decisions in a grocery store, gardening helps facilitate those decisions (having the garden readily available means you choose healthier snacks more often).
Gardening provides other health benefits from the physical work.
Gardening provides some security in your food supply and a sense of self-support.

I'm not sure that the most valuable thing I get from gardening is the sense of peace I get when I'm up in it.

 

[Zoub]

This is a great thread. I may be able to spring for the dehydrator this year.

Remove garden from the equation, dehydrator still pays for itself anyway. Buy what is on sale at the grocery store and dry it. Once you dehydrate something you like, you will never turn back. Strawberries are great dried and mix well many things. If they dump blueberries cheap, do it. I live in cranberry country so buying them already dried and cheap here is easy so I do. Love them mixed with sunflower seeds or toss both in a salad.

An old Brit friend of mine, who spent many years roaming South Africa and a fact that is totally irrelevant to this thread, put me onto keeping dried tomatoes in a large jar full of olive oil. Sweet Jesus was he right. I use a tall, wide mouth jar. Dump in lots of dried tomatoes, cover with olive oil. Keep on kitchen counter. They don't go bad in the oil, are great to cook with and the oil is infused with flavor as well for cooking. I snack on those buggers all the time. Replenish oil and maters as needed.

Along the lines of snacks, making food taste better with dried herbs is easy if you keep infused oils and vinegars in bottles in your kitchen. Some herbs you dehydrate others you hang and air dry but they are "snacks" from the garden that utilize the dehydrator. Oregano, Basil, Sage, Thyme and Peppers are all no brainers.

Roasted Garlic paste is HUGE in our house. Easy to make. Goes on or in damn near anything. Snack, not really, but using these things every week proves their value. You take a quality veggie and upscale it by making the next thing up the line you might buy form the store.

Go price sun dried tomatoes.

 

[bwframe]

Remove garden from the equation, dehydrator still pays for itself anyway. Buy what is on sale at the grocery store and dry it. Once you dehydrate something you like, you will never turn back. Strawberries are great dried and mix well many things. If they dump blueberries cheap, do it. I live in cranberry country so buying them already dried and cheap here is easy so I do. Love them mixed with sunflower seeds or toss both in a salad.

An old Brit friend of mine, who spent many years roaming South Africa and a fact that is totally irrelevant to this thread, put me onto keeping dried tomatoes in a large jar full of olive oil. Sweet Jesus was he right. I use a tall, wide mouth jar. Dump in lots of dried tomatoes, cover with olive oil. Keep on kitchen counter. They don't go bad in the oil, are great to cook with and the oil is infused with flavor as well for cooking. I snack on those buggers all the time. Replenish oil and maters as needed.

Along the lines of snacks, making food taste better with dried herbs is easy if you keep infused oils and vinegars in bottles in your kitchen. Some herbs you dehydrate others you hang and air dry but they are "snacks" from the garden that utilize the dehydrator. Oregano, Basil, Sage, Thyme and Peppers are all no brainers.

Roasted Garlic paste is HUGE in our house. Easy to make. Goes on or in damn near anything. Snack, not really, but using these things every week proves their value. You take a quality veggie and upscale it by making the next thing up the line you might buy form the store.

Go price sun dried tomatoes.

As always, damn you Zoub.

I just click, click ordered the Excalibur I've been putting off. Kroger sale on fresh pineapple, $1 per...

 

[Zoub]

Wait until you see the smoker I am going to build. You will have to have one!

I bet pineapple will be awesome dehydrated.

 

[bwframe]

...I bet pineapple will be awesome dehydrated.

I need to make another Kroger run this evening. Last day for dollar pineapples. Six pineapples did three trays, so I need 18 this trip.

I dehydrated pineapple, cherries and bananas. The "pineapple candy" is certainly the best of those. The bonus was the quart of fresh pineapple juice recovered as a result of the process (on six pineapples.)

Sorry for the bad focussing. I'll work on that...

 

[bwframe]

Granex onion harvest:

 

[philo]

Granex onion harvest:

I hope you dried the onions outside.

With that dehydrator you could consider venison jerky a garden snack.

Do you like that pineapple slicer?

 

[bwframe]

I hope you dried the onions outside.

With that dehydrator you could consider venison jerky a garden snack.

Do you like that pineapple slicer?

OldNovice is correct, don't want to do onions inside. The smell is horrendous initially. Towards the end of drying, it smells more like french onion soup. I actually did finish the drying inside.

30ish onions filled the dehydrator and then a half gallon jar.

The pineapple cutter is the only way to go, couldn't imagine how much trouble it must be without it. The pineapple "candy" doesn't last very long though. Didn't take me long to eat up two dozen dehydrated pineapples.

 

[bocefus78]

The pineapple cutter is the only way to go, couldn't imagine how much trouble it must be without it. The pineapple "candy" doesn't last very long though. Didn't take me long to eat up two dozen dehydrated pineapples.

I did the same as you. Bought a cart full of them for a buck each. Bought the same cutter you did for about 7$. That was a great 7$ investment. I was shocked at its ease of use and how little waste.

I have eaten it all already. Should've bought a few hundred lbs I guess haha.

 

[MRockwell]

I did the same as you. Bought a cart full of them for a buck each. Bought the same cutter you did for about 7$. That was a great 7$ investment. I was shocked at its ease of use and how little waste.

I have eaten it all already. Should've bought a few hundred lbs I guess haha.

I picked up a pineapple last week, cut it up and put in the dryer today(along with cherries). Had a question-How long did you leave your pineapple in the dehydrator?

I'm using a Nesco dehydrator, temp set at 135. The book says 6-12 hours. It's been almost 11hrs and they seem to be wanting maybe 3 more. I have 5 trays of cherries, 1 tray of pineapple. Cherries are almost finished.

I should have done this last weekend. Pineapple were on sale at Meijer 10 for $10(sale ends today). I tried a dried one a little bit ago, and think I might be hooked.