The new recipe I made, is a raw vegetable cracker. You soak chia seeds, raisins and sun dried tomatoes, and add other blended vegetables.
(spread out on parchment paper before drying in the dehydrator)
The interesting part, is that they are dried in the dehydrator. Now, I imagine you can bake these in the oven, but when it's 82° out, I preferred not to. Although yesterday it was 60°F.
The recipe(linked here) did not mention "yield" but I can tell you I spread it evenly on four dehydrator trays (on parchment paper). When it was time to remove the parchment paper and flip it over on the trays, I noticed the edges were almost dried, and the center still soft. So scoring them, was not too easy on the edges.
After the second drying time, I noticed they had curled up, and did not all dry flat. I broke them up the best I could and let them continue to dry. Also, the recipe states to dry at 110°F, and I found that temperature not drying them in the amount of time stated. They were still soft in the center, so after breaking them up as best I could, I put the softer pieces at the edges of the trays.
I could not find hemp seeds, so my crackers lacked those, but I did have spirulina, so it had all the other ingredients.
My crackers did not look as orange as the ones on the site where I found the recipe either. Once I mixed the spirulina into the seed mixture, it took on a greener appearance.
The taste testers tasted these raw vegetable crackers. The results?
This morning, I already have a batch of Fromage Blanc dripping in cheesecloth. It's back to the garden again today, if my bones can handle it. Yesterday, we got 157 plants in the ground, leaving 108 to plant today. And that doesn't include any hot banana pepper plants, if we do find any. I also need to get my cantaloupe planted (if I can squeeze it in somewhere out there). Why keep count? It's part of my pre-planning for a greenhouse and root cellar. I'm tracking our usage in my garden journal.
I apologize to my blog world friends, I have not been reading your latest posts, but hope to catch back up soon.
10 comments:
It took me many years of keeping track of what I planted in the garden, yields from same, how to plan for insect damage, crop failures, etc. before I felt I knew just how much to grow to give us the quantity of each I wanted, needed and could actually grow of each veggie. Now as we're getting a couple/few years of our root cellar under our belts, I'm on the learning curve of what keeps there and for how long. It's all trial and error but, oh so satisfying as I see the results come together. All your efforts will pay off big time!
Mama Pea, I'm thinking all that pepper mustard sauce I stocked up last summer, was a blessings, as this year I can't even find plants. I don't have any area suitable for starting seeds in the house (maybe when all the kids are moved out, and I can put grow lights on them and shut a door from cats). I'm pushing Hubby on the root cellar, so we can get a good start before he heads back to work. Bu...the barn, the dead trees, etc are big projects too.
The crackers look good after all of the drying! It is to bad you cant find those peppers this year. Our local greenhouse has quite a few, wish I could send you a flat!
Liz, Hubby said he'll check another greenhouse for me. Hopefully we'll find them. The only downfall on the homemade crackers,are the cost of ingredients. Chia seeds are about $4.99/cup on sale here in stores. I did not find hemp, but later found it for $10/bag. Too expensive. I'll have to find another source to make them again.
I like the fact that you don't have to turn on the oven. I know what you mean about the cost of special ingredients - I have found my favorite gluten free cracker recipe and make it often, but it needs an oven. I'm having to wait to finish planting my garden - there is a frost warning for tonight!
Your garden must be huge!!
Those crackers sound delicious, I still haven't invested in a dehydrater...it's on the wish list.
Happy gardening.
Susan, it is nice to use the dehydrator. I can go about the day and get work down and not worry about the timer etc. We had a frost warning last night too.
Emma, I still need another area tilled up for fruit. Hubby just shook his head at me, but I want to make more cantaloupe jam.
Those crackers look like the green crackers in the movie Soylent Green. There were crackers of different colors in the movie, with each color meaning it was made from a different thing making certain colors more valuable based on their main ingredient being more filling or less so, i.e. orange was vegetables. Green was protein so it was the most sought after because it kept you filled longer. (I'll let you find out what those ended up being made of). LOL
But with all those healthy ingredients in the ones here, I bet they're tasty.
We still have to get our herbs, lettuce, tomatoes and poblano peppers in the ground. We were going to use some top soil left in a bag from last year to do it, but found it moldy, so we're getting all new bags. It's suppose to rain this weekend, so we'll most likely do it right before it rains, to give them a good start at growing.
God bless.
RB
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RB, they are already asking for more crackers. It's raining here today so no planting for me.
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