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Whew what a day it has been and it’s only 2PM!
Summer is here which means it’s backpacking season. I knew I wanted to get some food freeze dried to prepare for upcoming backpacking trips. I have also been changing some dietary things to improve my health and well-being and wanted to do some food prep for that. And finally, it’s the 3rd of July and we have a 4th of July party we’re attending tomorrow, and I need to take food to that.
Wednesdays are my ‘rest’ day from my Barre workouts. For some reason, I woke up an hour early which ended up being just fine. I got up and stripped the bed and the guest bed. Since we’ve been doing some backpacking, our dog sitter has been staying with our boys while we’re gone, so I stripped the bed she uses to wash the sheets. I’m also working on getting a bit more of a routine down and chose Wednesdays as sheets & laundry day.
Next up, I headed downstairs and made my coffee and breakfast – I’ve been incorporating a LOT more veggies and protein with breakfast – of sautéed zucchini, eggs and sausage and berries.
Most mornings this time of year, after breakfast, I head to the backyard with a small colander to harvest whatever is ready. This morning, I picked tayberries, raspberries and blueberries. (The picture below is from a couple days ago.)
Once I weighed and washed what I picked, I put everything away. I then headed upstairs to change clothes, brush my teeth and head out the door to pick up some free ‘canning jars‘ from Facebook Marketplace.
While I was out, I dropped a card in the mailbox and headed home to get my jars cleaned and ready for use. Well….these were not mason jars unfortunately and I ended up recycling many of them. It’s a good thing they were free! All of the jars were glass, but none of them were actual canning jars. I grabbed a regular and wide mouth lid to see which ones will work.
I usually use a vacuum sealer to seal jars that I store freeze dried foods in. I’ll use these jars for storage and will be able to see very quickly if a jar doesn’t seal.
Goo Gone is needed get these jars cleaned up. I prefer nice, clear, no residue jars.
Next up was to make up a salad I’ve been enjoying recently. It’s a very simple recipe of cucumbers, bell peppers, lime juice, salt & Tajin.
I recently freeze dried some to bring along as a cold soak lunch while backpacking. (Most freeze-dried meals require boiling water to heat up and rehydrate which you eat a hot meal. A cold soak means you add the desired amount of water to the container and leave the food to rehydrate over several hours. Its ready to eat later on as a cold meal.) I added some chicken that I had freeze dried last season to add some protein to my lunch. I loved it!! For our trip last weekend, I made up a couple of those for us to take along and we both loved it!
Today, I made up a large batch of this salad to freeze dry (probably 8 servings worth). I didn’t have quite enough to fill the third tray in the machine, so decided to only freeze dry 2 trays and save the rest to eat this week.
I then cut up 3 kiwis to fill the third tray in the freeze dryer. I did kiwi last year, but we ate it for the first time this past weekend while in camp. We loved it and our friends loved it too. Once we were back, I made sure to pick up more kiwi to get more freeze dried for future snacking!
I turned on the freeze dryer, set a timer for 15 minutes while it cools down the inside of the machine and got some water boiling to make deviled eggs.
I sat down for a few minutes to read a few pages in a book while waiting for both things to be ready.
After15 minutes, the food went into the freeze dryer and I headed to the stove and dropped in a dozen eggs to boil. I got out a big bowl and filled it with ice water for the eggs once their 12 minutes of boiling finished. (It’s easier to peel the eggs if they’ve cooled down and a big bowl of ice water speeds that up!)
I’m bringing deviled eggs to a friend’s party tomorrow for the 4th!
In the midst of doing these various tasks, I decided to refill the dishwasher detergent jars – washing soda and citric acid. Refilling those jars led me to check if other jars needed to be refilled. I went through the bulk spices I have and refilled the spice jars too.
(Having a small flexible silicone funnel makes that job easier! I bought mine years ago from Pampered Chef, but this set is very similar)
Once the eggs cooled, I turned them into deviled eggs. When I was a kid, I got a paperback trio of cookbooks that I still have. I used the Fanny Farmer cookbook recipe for the deviled eggs and sprinkled paprika on about half and dill on the other half.
By the time I finished all of that, it was time to sit down and have lunch! Whew, what a morning.
Now, on to make remake the beds and mix up some cookie dough to bake in the morning before we head to the 4th of July party!