Dehydration - Not So Bad When You're a Tomato, by guest blogger Tammia

Tammia brings us Food Preservation Part 2 - Dehydrating!

I'll admit it. I've got a problem, a food preservation problem. In one day I canned 5 quarts of tomatoes, made 16 jars of blackberry jam, 1 quart of sauce, pickled 2 quarts of onions, and dehydrated a quart of cherry tomatoes. Since that's a lot to cover in one post, let's break it down into bite sized pieces. "Sun-dried" bite sized pieces.

 

First, you'll need a huge load of tomatoes, salt and pepper, a bunch of basil, and a dehydrator.

I borrowed my dehydrator from a friend of mine that has TWO. She's a food preserving bad ass.

 

If you don't own one, you can buy one for about $40 (the dehydrator, not the badass friend - she's priceless).

One Huge Load of Tomatoes

Step 1:  Clean and halve all the tomatoes.

 

Tomato bath.

Step 2: Clean out all the seeds. A spoon could be used, but it's so much easier to just use your fingers. 

 

Scoop out the seedy guts.

Step 3: rinse, dry and chop basil. toss the cleaned out tomato halves with kosher salt, pepper and basil.  

 

Step 4: Place the tomatoes skin side down on the dehydrator trays.

 

 

ooooh pretty!

 

Step 5: allow to dehydrate completely - about 8 hours/overnight.

 

 

Dried Up Tomatoes!

Step 6: Place in a clean dry jar and use in salads, soups, pasta sauce, pizza...the uses are endless. I tend to just eat them straight out of the jar, they're so delicious!

 

Dessicated tomato-y goodness

 Thanks for this great post, Tammia! I LOVE dried tomatos, and I put them in everything, especially egg sandwhiches and omelets!

Guest Blogger Tammia: Pickling!

Guest Blogger Tammia is a fountain of food preservation knowledge. Actually, a fountain of all kinds of knowledge! I'm pleased and excited to bring you her first Guest Blogger post about pickling onions.

 

There are a lot of ways to preserve food. It can be canned, dehydrated, frozen, vacuum sealed, and pickling. Pickled onions are pretty simple to make. They're kind of a big deal in my family, and I remember countless visits to my gran's where she was making pickled onions. Here's how you do it.

 

• 2¼ lbs pickling onions, peeled
• 4 tsp pickling spices or
• ½tsp coriander seeds, ½tsp mustard seed, ½tsp black peppercorns, ½tsp dried chili flakes
• 1 oz  salt
• 35 fl oz malt vinegar
• 6 oz  sugar

1) Peel all the onions, then toss them all in salt and put into the fridge for 24 hours.

2) Rinse and dry the onions. pack tightly into glass jars.

 

 

3) Pour the vinegar, sugar and spices into a non-reactive pan and heat until barely boiling. remove from heat.

 

 

 

4) Pour hot vinegar over onions, leaving an inch of headroom in each jar.

 

 

5) Can the jars for 15 minutes in boiling water. remove from water, and allow to cool untouched for 8 hours. Pickled onions are best eaten 2 weeks or more after pickling.

Smooth skin, guest bloggers, and other fun surprises

One week into the Oil Method face washing and I have to say that I am AMAZED. Seriously. I could sound like an infomercial right now. "Oil Cleansing Method changed my life! I look younger and more well-rested than I have in years! All my problems have been wiped away!" Well, maybe not quite that crazy, but you get the idea.

It could be partly due to where I am in my hormonal cycle, but even if that IS the case, my perma-zits along my jawline and chin are... Gone. G-O-N-E. Smooth, almost unnoticeable pink ovals mark the places where tiny volatile volcanoes sat angrily for years. And those pink ovals are getting smaller and smaller every day. I'll let you know how it is going after I've made it through a full month, but so far, I can heartily endorse this very counter-intuitive sounding oil wash.

Next up: Guest Blogger! Yay! Mia has been hard at work with all manner of Homesteady preserving methods, and she was kind enough to take some photos and write up some tutorials! I'm excited to share those with you this week.

Other Fun Surprises: Blog Editor-in-Chief Auggie has been nutso about his new home-made dog food. Who knew he would gobble lentils and millet and nutritional yeast as eagerly as his nasty canned dog "food"? No packaging waste, no creepy preservatives, no BPA exposure for The Editor. Excellent surprise WIN.

Ok, so maybe that was only a fun surprise for ME. The fun surprise for YOU is that I've been working on a bunch of crafty home-made things lately, and I'm really pleased with the results. I've got a whole photo shoot planned so I can share some of these surprise successes, and would love for you to share your favorite Greeny, Home-made WIN in the comments section. I even have a little prize idea....More details to come.

Fighting Oil With Oil

Several months ago, I posted this post about finding a new face soap, and my friend B suggested that I try something called "The Oil Method". I laughed to myself. "I'm pretty sure I can't use OIL to wash my greasy, acne-prone, stressed out skin". I filed it under "Things I Swear I Will Never Do". I should have known right then that I would eventually embrace it, since many of my current raves are things I originally scoffed.

I was running out of my bar face soap, and while probably greener than my fancy bottles of Olay, my face was still dry and flaky and oily and zitty all at the same time.

So.... I did some more reading about the Oil Method and started to come around. Then Whole Living did an article about it, and I was sold. See, sometimes all it really takes to convince me are some pretty pictures.

The article and the online info suggested a 75% olive oil, 25% castor oil blend for oily and acne-prone skin. I ordered a bottle of Castor Oil online, and I tried it for the first time tonight!

EVOO and Castor Oil blend

Clean white wash cloth

I got a 1/4 tsp from the kitchen and filled it up "most of the way" with olive oil, then topped it off with the castor oil. Very precise... Yeah, that's why I stick to cooking rather than baking. Anyway. I poured the 1/4 tsp into my hand and then used my palms and fingers to rub the oils into my face (bonus! mini face massage!) while I counted to 90. It felt surprisingly pleasant, and not at all like I was rubbing salad dressing into my pores.

After you rub in the oil, you drape a HOT damp washcloth over your face to steam the now-grimey oil back out of your pores. Let the washcloth cool off, then use the washcloth to gently wipe away the oil and gunk. It was hard to just stand there with a washcloth on my face while it cooled, but it did feel pretty great. After wiping the oil away, my formerly pristine cloth looked like this:

Makeup and city grossness

All that came off with just a 1/4 tsp of oils! Joy! My skin feels soft and clean. You are only supposed to wash this way once per day, and then just splash your face with cold water in the morning. Even LESS product being used. Love that.

From what I read, this works because the olive oil is a natural skin softener that binds with the castor oil, which is a natural cleanser. The olive oil acts as a vehicle to get the cleansing castor oil down into your pores, and then the steam from the washcloth yanks them both back out of your skin again. Soft, clean, and 100% natural.

So, thanks B for planting the seed of the idea all those months ago! I'm really happy with this new plan. I'm also hopeful that the Oil Method will help rebalance my skin, and maybe even make it less oily over time.

I know. It blew my mind too.

Go get some more oil on your face!

September Challenge - Balance and Grace

I had been really excited about the September goal I had planned, mainly because it involved shopping. Even though I haven't had a "back to school" excuse for about 11 years now, glimmers of fall weather still make me want to throw out everything in my closet and start fresh with tweed and tights. And since I actually did come into some unexpected cash thanks to a random gift from my mother-in-law, I thought it could be fun to challenge myself to re-invent "my look" with the greenest options for my budget. Kind of a "Get the Look for Less [Impact]" challenge.

Oh, what fun that would be!

Except.

I can't get into the buying spirit. Haunted by the famine in Somalia, an invite to a benefit dinner for and NGO that works with victims of human trafficking, pictures online of the families in the path of the Carolina storms that watched their houses wash into the surf. I had an existential meltdown on Friday, tried to tack together some calm and balance with a heavy pinch of rationalization and then tried to go shopping Monday. It didn't really work out.

In an almost humorous fashion, my purchasing attempts were thwarted at nearly every turn. As in suddenly there are no cashiers anywhere to be found and all the customers are milling around baffled and annoyed, so I put down my would-be purchases and leave. Or putting a skirt on hold at the first store I visit, walking around for a few more hours, deciding to return to buy it only to find the store had closed early for some reason. Or the Whole Foods-ish store that had EVERY kind of natural makeup I could have wanted, except, you know, the one I wanted. Left again. Got more and more discouraged. Sigh. (In the interest of full disclosure, I did eventually buy 2 things before heading home. And they were not at all green. I like them, but I'm a little disappointed with myself. Hello, emotional buying.)

This Overwhelming Ugh doesn't feel like guilt, really. Because guilt can often be assuaged with a donation here or there. It's like a punch in the stomach. And an ache in my heart. Reflecting on what a freakin' privilege it is to choose an organic wool jacket or some made-from-scratch eye shadow. To choose anything, really. To have a bank account. With money in it. The illusion of safety, the trappings of comfort.

Green with Grace. Grace grace grace grace grace.

Blogfriends, do you think there is a way to balance this? I couldn't shake the idea that maybe the unexpected cash was meant to pad a donation, or buy something for someone who needs it. Can I go half-sies? Sort of a "One for you, One for me" strategy? How do you decide when you "need" something? As in work clothes that allow you to dress your age and your current actual size?

How do you have grace with yourself, while acting boldly and counter-culturally in a world so jam packed with injustice?

Les and I had a pow-wow about all this stuff and he (God bless him) was a total rock star about everything. Of course we want our family to have our eyes on the right prize. And the prize is definitely not "more stuff". Here's what he and I came up with so far after my sob-fest. I'm not listing this to show off how holy and awesome we are. We're totally totally not. You've been reading long enough to know that maybe 22% of my ambitions actually come to any kind of fruition. But maybe by writing them I will be more accountable to actually do them:

1. Invite our friends to an in-person and virtual Letter Writing Party to urge our leaders to make the famine in Somalia and the refugee crisis a priority. Spread the word in FaceBook. Talk to our pastors about addressing it in church.
2. Research some effective non-profits and make a donation.
3. Pray for the people (mostly mothers and children!) who are literally LITERALLY starving to death. Especially whenever we give thanks for our food. Maybe even fast sometimes to do this.
4. Attend the benefit dinner and learn more about human trafficking, and how we can help.
5. Live joyfully, thankfully, and mindfully. Keep thinking of ways to be bold about the stuff that breaks our hearts.

Ok. well, that's a start at least. So my shopping challenge has morphed into a challenge of Balance and Grace. Sorry to be a bit bleak, but, you know, this is where I am this month. I'm sure I'll buy stuff too, but all purchases are going to have to pass a whole checklist of scrutiny before it makes it into my house from now on. That's the plan, anyway. Oh, the best laid plans.