Dehydrating and Dry Packing Marshmallows

Even though I like to make my own marshmallows, I still like to have some dried and fresh on hand. There are so many things you can do with dried marshmallows. Put them in hot cocoa, in cookie dough, on ice cream, pancake batter, brownies, rice crispy treats, popcorn balls, in carmel corn, oatmeal, frozen yogurt, cereal, or just eat by themselves or what ever else you can think of. 

This really is super easy. Get your marshmallows plain and flavored.

Spread out on your trays and dehydrate at 125 for 6 to 12 hour depending on how many you are dehydrating.  

As you can see they don't change much they stay the same size just get very hard and crunchy.

When done I just dry pack  them into jars. I also pack some fresh marshmallows to have on hand for roasting.

For the fresh ones I add a little powder sugar to keep them from sticking. 

 

Put in jars and use the jar lid attachments. I found mine at Cabelas, if you don't have them, they have regular and wide mouth.  

If you use you use your food saver be very careful not to expand the marshmallows to much. If they do it will be a sticky mess.

 

 

The one on the right expanded to much the other two are right, as you can see they look like normal marshmallows and the one on the right kind of looks like a blob.

 

I like to use this handy little gadget, If you have the attachments for the jars you can use this on them. It is a little easier to control how much air you pull out so you don't expand the marshmallows to much.  

 

 

 

Just put the hand held food saver on the top of the lid attachment then turn on you have to listen to tell when it is enough. It is easy to tell.  

Be sure to store in a cool place.

300 a Month, Week Goals,

Another busy week, I was able to get a little yard work done not as much as I would of liked but not to sure I ever get as much done as I would like. Helped Andy get the camper on a trailer, we are going to a music festival in a couple weeks so need to take the camper. We have been wanting to put it on a trailer so we don't have a pickup tied up all summer. 

My spending wasn't very good this week.
City Market had cheese, grapes and cream cheese on sale  , I bought 41 pounds of grapes and 36 packs of cream cheese and several pounds of cheese and 4 # ten cans of tomato sauce .
188.77 at City Market

At Wal-Mart I got hot dogs, smoked sausage,1 # ten can size of butter powder, clothes pins, bath tissue, a couple cases of water ( for storage) lined paper, Banana's and some more cream cheese that they priced matched from city market. 
101.50 at Wal-Mart

I stopped in IFA the (local feed store)  they carry some freeze dried food, they had # ten can sized powdered eggs  that were still 18.99 a can (online and walmart they have gone up to 50 dollars) they had 6 cans so I bought 4.
75.96 at IFA

I was able to get started on an afghan, finished the marshmallows, and got a few beans canned.

The goals for this week are
Get the camper cleaned out.
Grapes put in freezer.
Cream cheese canned
Smoked sausage & hotdogs canned.
Joleen is working for the Mosquito control and the use fabric bags to carry some of their stuff in, well the ones they have are old and falling apart so she volunteered me to make some. So I will try to get that started this week. I am having a hard time finding zippers that will work, may have to order some or wait till we go to Grand Junction in a couple weeks. Hoping I can get some soon so I can get started on this. ( They did supply every thing else).

Hopefully I can get most of that accomplished this week.


Since I am so late getting this posted I am not going to do the menu this week. Hope everyone has a great rest of the week. 

300 a Month, Week Goals, Menu.

Some of the jars that were at the action,

We have been getting rain almost every afternoon which is very unusual for this time of year. Having a real hard time getting clothes hung out to dry. Seems like by the time I can get outside to do some work it is raining or getting ready too. One good thing though my water bill is going to be pretty low this summer.

I got some crackers and marshmallows dry packed.
The chickens had been getting out and tore my yard up. Katie and I found the hole they were getting out of and got it fixed.   I wouldn't mind them being out if they weren't so stinking hard on my yard. I am thinking of putting a fence in between the yard and coop then I could let them out and they would have to go down below where they won't make such a mess of things. 

I got a little more done on my herbal course I am loving it I am learning so much and it is so nice that I can go at my own pace. 

We went to an auction Sunday they had a ton of jars ( the picture wasn't even all of them) I got 147 jars for 50.00 that is about .38 cents per jar which isn't to bad.I try to buy used jars for no more then 45 cents each since the news one run about 83 cents. With the new ones you get the lids , the bands and they are clean. Whereas with the used ones they have to be cleaned , they have no lids or bands and I have to count my time for having to clean them.  


My spending for the week.
City market had tomato paste on sale for .99 so I got 15 of them I got several more bags of marshmallows, some grapes, and cottage cheese  for a total of 33.99
Wal-Mart some bananas, spinach , ginger, and some ice cream. for a total of 13.27

All together I spent 33.99 +13.27 = 47.26

47.26 + 38.95 from last week is 86.21
213.79 left for the month
2859.35 left for the year.

Once again I didn't get as many of my goals accomplished as I had hoped. With all the rain we have had it hasn't been such a rush to get the drip system finished.

Worked about 10 minutes on my household notebook it will be nice when  get it all done.

So once again I didn't get even half my goals done this past week. I think I have ben having a big case of lack of motivation, not real sure why just know I need to get out of it I am not getting near enough done.

Maybe I will have a little better luck this next week getting things done. The goals for this week are.

Get beans canned
Finish the marshmallows
I want to crochet  afghans for the Kids , Sisters in laws, Sister and Mom. Which is ten in all. So I need to get started, like yesterday haha. 
If the weather permits I would like to do the drip and the play area in the yard,
Catch up on the blog.
Work on the notebook.
Get more meat canned
Work on meals in a jar.

Hopefully I can get to most of this.     

The Menu for the week

Breakfast
Cream of Wheat
French Toast
Cheese omelets
Oatmeal
Pancakes

Lunch
Scrambled eggs
Chicken Noodles
Ham Sandwiches
Fish Sticks
Mac & Cheese
Will have what ever kind of fruit I have, and crackers with the soup.
For Andy's lunch he will have leftovers from the night before.

Dinner
Cheese Burger Pie
Chicken Spaghetti
Beans
Ranch Bean casserole
Chili Rellenos
Chicken Fried Steak

Will have a veggie of some sort ,and bread with each meal.
Saturday or Sunday we will have leftovers.

Can your own Spaghetti Sauce.

 

It always seems like I don't ever have enough tomatoes (no matter how many I plant) in my garden to make everything that I want to make, so a lot of times I will buy the # 10 sized cans of tomato sauce to use. I will recan the tomato sauce in to smaller jars and I will make spaghetti sauce with some of it. it's pretty easy and really good. I use it for spaghetti, pizza, and anywhere a need a red pasta sauce.  

 

 

 

Canned Spaghetti Sauce

 

3 # 10 cans of Tomato sauce

5 Onions chopped, I use a quart of frozen or canned onions.

1/4 cup soy sauce

3 Tbl Worcestershire sauce

1 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup chopped garlic ( I use the chopped garlic in a jar from the store)

4 Tbl dried oregano

4 Tbl dried basil

3 bay leaves ( be sure to take these out before you can)

1 cup vinegar

2 tsp thyme

2 tsp rosemary

1 tsp celery salt

1/4 cup salt

 

Let simmer several hours. It will reduce down a little. Remove the bay leaves and fill sterilized  quart jars add hot lids and process in a water bath for 40 minutes ( be sure to adjust for altitude)

    



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Start with 3 # 10 cans of tomato sauce. Pour into a large pan.

 

 

 

Add all your spices and let simmer for several hours.

 

 

 

Put in Jars and process. 

 

 

 

 

300 a Month, Week Goals, Menu

Well the week didn't start off that great had a freezer go out, so we had to get a new one. We did get a little larger one which will be nice and it was an energy star, so as soon as I take in the paper work we will get a ninety dollar credit on our electric bill.
Andy took the whole week off so he could finish getting all the hay done and leave a few days early to the river. We go down every 4th with several other people to play music. He left Wednesday and I was going to go down Saturday. I took Friday off in hopes of getting caught up on some things. Then I decided to stay home all weekend to get some things caught up. Well as bad as I hate to admit it I got nothing done, I just hung out and chilled with the girls most of the weekend so now I am even more behind haha.
I did get 7 quarts of spaghetti sauce canned.


Here is my spending for the week.
I spent 38.95 at city market on milk, cheese, cottage cheese, marshmallows, grapes, junket tabs, and powerade, The powerade was on sale for 39 cents if you bought 10 so I got 10 so I would have them for the bottles to put my homemade gator aid in. City market is the only place that sells the junket tabs for making cheese ( putting into food storage hoping some day I can start making my own cheese) They had marshmallows on sale so I got 4 bags to dehydrate.

So for the month I have spent 38.95 and have 269.045 left for the month. and 2906.61 left for the year.

Well I pretty much got none of the goals for last week done.I did get another unit completed in my herbal class.
 So the goals for this week will pretty much be the same.

Get some more meat canned.
I have been redoing my drip system on my plants hoping to get finished or at least all most finished this week.
Get caught up on the blog.
I have a few ideas I want to do in back yard play area for the kids so hoping to get started on that.
I have been working on a household notebook so want to work some more on that.
Hopefully I can get more done this week then last week haha. 

Menu for this week

Breakfast
Pancakes
Scrambled eggs
Yogurt and fruit
Waffles
Cereal

Lunch
Grilled Cheese
Chicken soup
Macaroni and cheese
PB & J
Pancakes

Will have what ever kind of fruit I have, and crackers with the soup.
For Andy's lunch he will have leftovers from the night before.

Dinner
Cowboy casserole
Home made pizza
Crock pot Chicken fried steak
Beef tips
Stuffed peppers
Mexican steak

Will have a veggie of some sort and bread with each meal.
Saturday or Sunday we will have leftovers.

Hope everyone has a great week.




  
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Freezing Hashbrowns

I like to use frozen hash browns, so when I do all my potatoes I freeze hash brown as well. They are pretty easy to do.

 

Sorry I don't have pictures for all of this. First I boil my potato's with the skins on till they are semi soft/hard immediately put into a pan of cold water let cool. Peel when cooled ( you don't want them to soft or they turn to mush when grating). If they are large like mine were you can cut in half long ways if you are using in a food processer. If grating by hand you don't need to cut in half.

 

 

I like to use the food processor to grate mine. They don't turn out as pretty as if you did them by hand , but seems I am always in a hurry to get them done so I use the food processer. 
 

 

 

 After grated spread a layer on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper. I put several layers on a cookie sheet just put two sheets of wax paper in between each layer ( this makes it easier to get off.)put in the freezer for at least 24 hours.












Take out and put in freezer bags then use as you would store bought.