Garden Goodies in the Winter

Preserving garden produce by means of canning is an excellent way to enjoy your garden during the cold winter months.   Along with this, another way to keep summer harvest coming is by dehydrating.   Here is a Post from a few months back showing my dehydrator doing a wonderful job drying garlic and tomatoes.   Now as a thick layer of snow covers the ground I can still enjoy the summer harvest!

Dried garlic, tomatoes and cayenne peppers – the peppers I simply let air dry and they can also be used in your crafty floral decorating.   The tomatoes are excellent and have a sweet flavor.   Having these ingredients within easy reach makes meal planning a little easier and quite a bit tastier!   I would definitely recommend an Excalibur Dehydrator for gift giving this Christmas or add to your own wish list.   Mine has paid for itself many times and is still cranking away drying more Chet’s Italian garlic which I will have listed in my shop selling in individual 2 oz. packettes some time this week.

I spotted this Spaghetti Bread recipe in an old recipe book, made some revisions and decided to bake up a loaf since I have the dried garlic and tomatoes ready for a recipe.   The dried garlic can easily be ground up in a blender (for coarse pieces) or a coffee grinder will powder the garlic for your own homemade garlic powder.   The bread does call for spaghetti as one of the actual ingredients so even though it sounds somewhat off the wall it actually tasted pretty good.   The dried tomatoes added the perfect taste.  A nice side bowl of marinara sauce for dipping and you have a totally unique appetizer, meal or even a gift!

Dehydrating Garlic, Tomatoes and Apples

My precious Excalibur dehydrator has been working overtime these past few days and is doing a great job!   The garlic is still drying at the present and I plan to vacuum seal into small packages for winter use since I still have plenty of fresh garlic right now.

The garlic and tomatoes did wonderful this year despite the extrememly hot weather and they are two of my favorite picks in the garden.

There are still quite a number of tomatoes still ripening up on the vine along with the bountiful harvest ready for salsa.   I did dehydrate a considerable amount also and I refer to them as my sun-dried tomatoes (even though they weren’t actually dried in the sun).   They are excellent in pasta recipes or even sprinkled in a salad!

Dehydrated Tomatoes

The tomato that I dehydrated is the Principe Borghese which states it is good for sun drying.   I found it quite small and full of seeds – the smaller romas which I also dehydrated were meatier and had very little seeds.   Next year we stick with the romas for drying.   Two other varieties that did well were -

Illini Star tomatoes

Cherokee Purple tomatoes

Before the kids left for college I was able to dry up a ton of apples for them to snack on – they really enjoy these … and so do I!

Here’s hoping they eat healthy!!!

Delicious Pasta Dish

Portabella, Parsley Pasta dish – sounds fancy but is quite easy to make.  I will admit I am not the main chef in the house; I leave that role to the dear husband – he has a natural knack and loves cooking….so why interfere with a natural talent???  It is remarkable how he can pull together a fantastic meal with a few ingredients.  Here is the dish we dined on over this past weekend.

 Portabella Parsley Pasta

The five main ingredients for this dish includes 6 oz. portabella mushrooms, sliced thin, 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley, 5 chopped garlic cloves, 1/4 cup sundried tomatoes and 1 lb. fine pasta.

The garlic I did grow in the garden this past season and the parsley was the ingredient that actually prompted this dish.  It was still growing with a passion outside in the middle of December!  The tomatoes I call sundried were dehydrated in my Excalibur a couple months back and are very sweet and keep well this way.

Cook up the pasta separately.  Saute portabella mushrooms, garlic, tomato, in olive oil until tender.  Add 1/4 cup romano cheese, 1 1/2 cup water with bouillon cube dissolved to make a broth and 1 teas. corn starch.  We also included 2 chicken breasts which were sauted in olive oil – this is optional.