3 ways to preserve your broths

Before we start, does everyone here know how to make a basic broth?

There are 3 ways to preserve your homemade broths, be it beef, chicken or vegetable stock. (broth and stock are indeed different, however are interchangeable in your recipes). With all the following preservations, remove as much fat as possible. You can freeze the fat for use later in soap recipes.

The first is canning. Pour your hot broth into a pint canning jar and pressure can 20 minutes at 10 lbs (11lbs on dial gauges). Allow to cool for 24 hours and then stack up in your pantry.

Next is freezing.

Pour your broth evenly into an ice tray. I highly suggest you line your tray with parchment paper or foil. Allow to freeze, remove and store in a freezer bag. Each cube is 1/8 cup of stock. This is also considered a cold bouillon cube.

And finally, and my favorite, dehydration.

Pour 1 cup of stock onto a fruit rollup tray and place it into my dehydrator. Set it on the meat setting or 145F. It tends to withdraw from the center and pool along the edges. Let sit overnight.

Once dry, peel and crack off the tray onto foil.

Tightly fold up your foil and place into a zip-lock type bag. If you have a food saver I would use it, and remove as much air as possible.

You end up with a little packet of flavoring that equals 1 cup broth. Kind of like those Ramen packets. You can do more than 1 cup at a time, just be sure you keep track of how much you use. You will need to add the same amount of water to rehydrate it.

This packet makes 3 cups of broth.

Got It!

The problems of this world can be solved by simply throwing a few strawberries into the mix. If only that statement were true for anyone but myself. I solved the most pressing issue of our time, by just pureeing a few strawberries.

I solved the watermelon leather crisis of 2006.

Adding strawberries to the watermelon puree tamed the concentrated taste. I think it is the perfect blend. Of course my children will not eat it because it has seeds in it. Figures.

No tornadoes erupted yesterday. After the heavy rains, it was still surprisingly cool enough to open the house. I took that opportunity to bake 4 loaves, 36 muffins, and 12 tiny loaves of banana bread. The muffins disappeared mysteriously as soon as they were cool enough for little hands to handle. Some day I will have to get rid of that poltergeist.



Tomato worms have invaded the garden. This is cause for panic. It's not bad enough that they are coming in {the tomatoes that is} slowly, now the ones that are, are being eaten. I can't release the chickens in the garden now, it's too late for that. Chickens will eat the tomatoes along with the horn worms.What to do? What to do. I read the if you sprinkle corn meal around the plants, the hornworms will nibble on it and explode. Sounds like a plan to me. Off I went into the deepest jungle of Kansas, sprinkling my store bought corn meal here and there and everywhere. Unsure of how much was enough.

I haven't seen a horn worm in a few months {they turn into moths in July}, nor have I seen any tiny carnage. But I do see gigantic mutant grasshoppers that with the enlisted help of the mutant rolly pollies, are eating my ripe fruit. WILL I NEVER WIN!?! Rolly Pollies are the bane of my existence. Tell your children to be nice to bugs, Don't be like Phelan. Oh yes, it's neat when you first discover that rolly pollies scream when thrown into a B-B-Q, but they will take their revenge on you later in life. Learn the lesson well children. It will save your sanity and your garden.

And They Said It Couldn't Be Done

Thunder is a pleasant sound to wake to, if you live in Kansas, in August, during a drought. This morning I hear the thunder, something that over the long dry days you forget what it sounds like. {Anyone else thinking, I ride through the desert on a horse with no name...} Looking out my window I see the telltale signs of hail. That is not a good sign. One problem is my garden, plants tend not to fair well when being pounded on with ice cubes. Another problem is that more often than not, hail here means a tornado. But wait! It's August, we are out of tornado season. I am hopeful that this menacing, looming doom is just a freak, and that we have not entered swing season prematurely.

Swing season? Yes, swing season. It's the time of year where mother nature can't make up her mind. She still enjoys the 90f degree {32c} temperatures one day, but the next her hot flash has turned into chills and you must suffer the 40f degree {4c} temperatures with her. This is when she is temperamental and we get tornadoes. Every year between winter and spring, summer and fall. Officially, Tornado season in Kansas is only in the spring, but we know and remember some nasty ones in November. I'd better bring Toto in the house.

I had a very busy weekend. As I told alrescate, canning season will be over soon, and we will get back to the more mundane things. With the new dehydrator at hand, I dried out some spinach and made Florentine. You'll be glad to hear that I waited for the noodles to dry, via food dehydrator {these things where invented for impatient people like myself}

I ignored the recipes I was given and went with what I thought a good Florentine recipe should be. It worked, and I am happy I didn't blow it.

But what would this blog be without me screwing up. I brought in one ear of Hickory Corn. I felt the overwhelming desire to make corn nuts. Please tell me, that some one that reads this has a decent corn nut recipe they are willing to share with me! I couldn't find a recipe in the homesteading books, so I went the route of the internet. There seems to be all of 2 recipes floating around out there. I copied them and followed the directions. The "corn nuts" tasted like burnt, hollow popcorn shells. Good choice.

I needed fruit, apparently lots of fruit. I wanted berries, but that was not in the cards this weekend. The family piled into the car and we headed over to the "local pick your own" farm. Only to discover that they were no longer a "pick your own". Bummer. People had been destroying the trees. So the fruits were already picked and the berries and been turned into jams and butters. But I wanted to do that myself. I bought some pumpkin butter, as I have never had it before, and some honey. A half peck of apricots, a half peck of pears and 4 plums. The plums were promptly eaten.

Home again home again, where my husband ran outside to play with his new weed eater. I gathered eggs and tomatoes. Once inside, I smelled watermelon wine coolers. Something I don't drink. Panicky, I remembered the watermelon that my two youngest boys had poked holes in and I had set aside to deal with later. I found it where I had stashed it, fermenting. The only thing it was good for now, was leather.

Nothing in the books about watermelon leather. But it did talk about how to thicken up the very thin pureed fruits. Watermelon would fall into that category. I cut, sliced, removed seeds and slowly boiled until thought it was a good thickness {but what do I know?} Poured it on the leather sheet and placed it into the dehydrator. While waiting I remembered to search online. {thus I did} No recipes on making it, but I did find a forum that was talking about it. "No, you can not make watermelon leather. You would have to have a lot of melon because of the little amounts of pulp it contains." or..."mix it with some applesauce, that might work".

HA! I give you pure watermelon leather!


After 6 hours, it was firmed up enough to pick at.{ that's not mice nibbles or little fingers, that would be me taking the small chunk}

Did I by chance say pure? Pure concentrated watermelon. I felt the need to don a purple velvet jump suit and solicit others "psst, you want some? It's pure stuff man, can you dig?"

This stuff hurts your teeth. It's not the pleasant "pink" taste that you get from watermelon candies. oh no!

I like watermelon, but this...this was just too much.




I rolled it up anyway, just so I can say I did it. It's a little sticky, but I had rubbed some oil on the sheet before pouring the puree on it, that helped.

Now what to do about the taste. I don't want to add sugar, as it is sweet enough, plus I read that leathers that have sugar in them will crumble in storage. Maybe applesauce?

I do have 4 quarts of the puree waiting for me, and as it only took 1 cup to make the one leather, I have enough to play with, for a while.

Call me Slacker

I did none of the things I claimed I was going to do yesterday. There was no time. I broke out the new food dehydrator that alrescate sent me. This thing is great!

So I'm easily amused, some people would kill for that.

This one is nothing like my old one. My old one took almost all day to dry tomato slices. Every 30 minutes I would have to turn the screens to make sure it dried evenly. If I didn't, one side would burn and the other side would still be wet.

The new one dried tomato slices in 2 hours. 2 HOURS! I didn't have to turn the screens. It has settings so you decided how hot it needs to be. And it came with instructions. Instructions people!

It also came with a small screen so my herbs wouldn't fall into the motor, and this, this is the best part, it came with a insert that you can make fruit leather on!

I knew the dehydrator was coming. But see in the last 10. . . well, it's been more like 14 years, I have learned to deal without. My last dehydrator was a gift from my in-laws. Something they bought at on auction. Food dehydrators are not on our essentials list, as we can use the oven in it's stead. So this gift from alrescate was much more than I expected. I felt like was 5 years old and it was Christmas morning. My husband even giggled at me when I was enthusiastically telling him and showing him all the details. He thanks you alrescate and sends his love as well. He also agrees that we should send you our thanks, and I know the best way how.

In other news that can be filed under, you’re an idiot Phelan;

I went to the feed store and was looking at egg incubators. They had them for $40 USD a piece. One was boasting about all this extras it had. I picked the cheaper one that had an egg turner, as the other one couldn't boast of that. {It was $5 USD cheaper} I brought it home, showed my proud-to-be-my-husband. and took it out of the box. You can see where this is going. All it was, was the automatic egg turner. ~sigh~ Luckily my husband told me it was ok, and we would by the set-up in pieces, just like we do most things. Silly me.

Today's mail

I almost wept when I opened up this package.

Thank you alrescate, you are a dear friend. And you will be repaid for your kindness.

Storing onions part II

A Homesteading Neophyte: Braiding and storing onions {with pictures!}


I thought it fitting to go back and talk more about onion storage. It seems that a few people have been looking around here just for that information.

Different onions store better than others, or so I have discovered. Sweet onions do not last as long as the strong ones. If you are braiding them and storing them in your kitchen {as I am doing} check on them daily for wetness. If they are wet, they are no good. What I have been doing is checking the sweet ones for softness. If they have become squishy but not yet damp, I will use it immediately, either by cooking it up to eat, canning it as French Onion Soup, or placing it in the dehydrator to make into powder later.

I am sure that the book was right about the low temperature that onions should be stored. Unfortunately I have nothing that cool {except a fridge} here. I have hung mine in my kitchen, out of direct sunlight and where air can move freely around them. My sweet onions will not last out the winter in this manner, but the strong onions should.

Sometimes on has to be creative and compromise to become successful at homesteading. Just about everything you read will need to be tweaked a bit to work for you.