Dehydrating Fruit and Vegetables

Food Dehydration is the oldest form of food preservation. In the beginning, people used a lot of salt to preserve foods, and they dried their food in the sun or on stove tops. Today we have the food dehydrator to help in the process of drying.

Food dehydration is safe because water is removed from the food. Because water is removed from the food, mold and bacteria cannot grow on it;thus it will not spoil. There is, however, a loss of vitamin A and C in dried foods due to heat and air. It usually takes vegetables 6-16 hours to dry, and fruit 12-48 hours. One can dry fruit and vegetables, and make jerky and fruit leather.

Choose Which Drying Method is Right For You

Sun Drying This is rather difficult because you need three to four sunny days of at least 100 degrees in a row.

Oven Drying Oven drying is an acceptable method of drying food, but it isn't very energy efficient, and foods aren't very flavorful in the end. If your oven cannot obtain temperatures below 200 degrees farenheit, use another method for food dehydration. You will need to prop open the oven door to maintain air circulation during the drying process.

Electric Dehydrating This is the best method of dehydrating food. An electric dehydrator is energy efficient and can be operated at low temperatures needed to maintain nutritive values in the food. Your electric food dehydrator should have some sort of heat control and a fan to maintain air circulation during the drying process.

The Drying Process

When drying food, don't keep temperatures too low or too high. Temperatures too low may result in the groth of bacteria on the food. Temperatures too high will result in the food being cooked instead of dried. Food that is underdried will spoil, and food that is overdried will lose its flavor and nutritive value.

Food should be dehydrated between 120 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit. You can begin drying your food at higher temperatures, but turn the temperature down after the first hour or so. The last hour or so of drying time should be turned down on a lower setting. You must turn the food and rotate the trays while the food is drying.

You will know your food is dried when when you touch it, and it is leathery with no pockets of moisture. If you are testing fruit, you can tear a piece in half. If you see moisture beads along the tear, it is not dry enough. Meat should be tough, but shouldn't snap apart. Vegetables should also be tough but can also be crisp.

When storing your dried product, keep in mind that no moisture should be allowed to enter the container...ever. Dried food absorbs moisture from the air, so the storage container must be airtight. Some acceptable storage containers are jars and plastic freezer bags. If storing fruit leather, wrap in plastic wrap and store in a another airtight container. Store your containers of dried food in a cool, dark, dry place. 60 degrees Fahrenheit or below is best.

Vegetable Drying Guide

All vegetables except onions and peppers,and mushrooms should be washed, sliced, and blanched. Dry vegetables in single layers on trays. Depending of drying conditions, drying times make take longer. Dry vegetables at 130-degrees Fahrenheit.

Beans, green:Stem and break beans into 1-inch pieces.Blanch. Dry 6-12 hours until brittle.

Beets: Cook and peel beets. Cut into 1/4-inch pieces. Dry 3-10 hours until leathery.

Broccoli: Cut and dry 4-10 hours.

Carrots: Peel, slice or shred. Dry 6-12 hours until almost brittle.

Cauliflower: Cut and dry 6-14 hours.

Corn:Cut corn off cob after blanching and dry 6-12 hours until brittle.

Mushrooms: Brush off, don't wash. Dry at 90 degrees for 3 hours, and then 125 degrees for the remaining drying time. Dry 4-10 hours until brittle.

Onions: Slice 1/4-inch thick. Dry 6-12 hours until crisp.

Peas: Dry 5-14 hours until brittle.

Peppers, sweet: Remove seeds and chop. Dry 5-12 hours until leathery.

Potatoes: Slice 1/8-inch thick. Dry 6-12 hours until crisp.

Tomatoes: Dip in boiling water to loosen skins, peel,slice or quarter. Dry 6-12 hours until crisp.
Zucchini: Slice 1/8-inch thick and dry 5-10 hours until brittle.

Fruit Drying Guide

All fruit should be washed,pitted and sliced. Arrange in single layers on trays. Dry fruit at 135 degrees Fahrenheit. You may wish to pretreat your fruit with lemon juice or ascorbic acid or it won't darken while you are preparing it for drying. Just slice the fruit into the solution and soak for 5 minutes.

Apples:Peel, core and slice into 3/8-inch rings, or cut into 1/4-inch slices. Pretreat and dry 6-12 hours until pliable.

Apricots: Cut in half and turn inside out to dry. Pretreat and dry 8-20 hours until pliable.

Bananas: Peel, cut into 1/4-inch slices and pretreat. Dry 8-16 hours until plialbe or almost crisp.

Blueberries: Dry 10-20 hours until leathery.

Cherries: Cut in half and dry 18-26 hours until leathery and slightly sticky.

Peaches: Peel, halve or quarter. Pretreat and dry 6-20 hours until pliable.

Pears: Peel, cut into 1/4-inch slices, and pretreat. Dry 6-20 hours until leathery.

Pineapple: Core and slice 1/4-inch thick. Dry 6-16 hours until leathery and not sticky.

Strawberries: Halve or cut into 1/4-inch thick slices. Dry 6-16 hours until pliable and almost crisp.

Fruit Leathers

Fruit leather is easy to make if you have a blender of food processor. The fruit leather is like a "fruit roll-up" and is made out of pureed fruit. Applesauce works great for fruit leather since it is already in puree form. Overripe fruits can also be used since these are easily pureed. For an added flare, you can add coconut,raisins,poppy seeds,seasame seeds, or sunflower seeds to the fruit leather. If you add any type of garnish to your fruit leather however, you will have to store them in the freezer or refrigerator. Otherwise, you can store fruit leather in an airtight container. Just roll up the fruit leather into a roll after it has dried, wrap in plastic, and store them altogether in an appropriate container.

To make fruit leather, puree your fruit. Apples, pears, peaches, and nectarines should be cooked before pureeing. Pour the fruit puree about 1/4-inch deep on special fruit leather drying sheets, or drying trays that have been lined with plastic wrap. Since the center does not dry as quickly as the edges, Only pour the puree 1/8-inch deep towards the center.Dry at 135 degrees Fahrenheit until pliable and leathery. The center should also be dry and have no wet or sticky spots.

http://farmgal.tripod.com/Dehydrate.html

Antibiotics and Your Food...

I've (Dr. Bones) written several times about antibiotics and the importance for every Prepper to have a stock of these in their medical supplies. As a doctor, I've focused on them as tools to treat humans without paying a great deal of attention to their use in animals. Well, for years there has been widespread use of these drugs to treat livestock. It’s put in their food and water, sometimes on a daily basis.

The animals that are fed this are occasionally actually sick and need treatment. Most of the time, however, antibiotics are given to prevent disease in crowded conditions or, amazingly, because animals given antibiotics are thought to grow faster and get to market sooner. I think that this is pretty awful just as it is, but there’s also a side-effect to this practice: It’s caused the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that is now making many infections in HUMANS harder to treat.

Some human infections now resist many antibiotics; the bugs include methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Salmonella, Shigella, and various others. More and more of these infections aren’t going away with the old standard drugs.

Earlier this month, stores and consumers across the country discarded 36 million pounds of ground turkey because more than 100 people became sick from salmonella, even though all these turkeys were regularly fed antibiotics. So, how can animals given antibiotics actually be MORE prone to infections?

Most antibiotics are given to livestock at low doses to bulk up the animals, speeding them to market. Well, this is bad, because when you under-treat a bug with an antibiotic, it rarely kills them, but it sure can desensitize them to the medicine. As the old saying goes, "What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger". The result? Antibiotic resistance. When we eat meat from animals routinely given antibiotics, if there’s a bug that survived to contaminate that meat, we can get sick and, worse, not be cured by normal treatment.

Many of those giving antibiotics to livestock say there is no proof to antibiotic resistance causing these outbreaks of contaminated meat. To me, this sounds just like big tobacco disputed cancer and cigarettes. This connection, however, is no surprise to us doctors, who have had to deal with antibiotic resistance for quite a while now.

Antibiotics have been around for more than 70 years, and they’ve saved a lot of lives. You’ve heard me talk about all sorts of strategies to make sure you get some in your medical kits in the case of a collapse. They’re way up there in terms of man’s greatest medical advances, but using them when other remedies will work just as well is diluting their effectiveness. Blame has long been directed at the widespread use of antibiotics within medicine, and I’m the first to agree that antibiotics have been over-utilized by doctors, sometimes just because their patients demanded it. I can’t tell how many times people came to me sure that antibiotics would be their cure-all. That’s changing, though.

The medical profession is now limiting the antibiotic prescriptions they write in an effort to decrease the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. What about agriculture, however? Did you know that 80 percent of the nation's antibiotics go to livestock? The Food and Drug Administration, in the 1950s, allowed antibiotics for this purpose in livestock, and it’s still a big part of the industry today.

Despite the simple logic at play here, there are those working for big agribusiness and big pharma who disagree. One of their representatives, from an organization called the Animal Health Institute, argued that using the drug in the feed was not a problem. "We don't really think that the antibiotics given to animals in feed are big contributors to the problems in human medicine,” He added that removing antibiotics would "increase production costs."

Even though there’s a controversy about this issue here, other countries including the entire European Union have banned the use of antibiotics for livestock growth promotion. Denmark, for example, hasn’t allowed antibiotics in pork for the last 15 years. even a U.S. study found that stopping the use of antibiotics resulted in reduction of resistant strains of bacteria.
Physicians are starting to organize in their push for new federal health legislation. More than 1,000 M.D. signatures have been collected for the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, This bill reserves the use of antibiotics in livestock for those animals that are genuinely sick. Endorsed by the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, this bill has died in committee the last 2 sessions. Whether it will ever see the light of day, only time will tell.

Official statment from the AMA: "Antibiotics are one of the most useful and important medical advances in recent history. Their effectiveness, however, is being compromised by bacterial resistance, arising in part from excessive use of antibiotics in animal agriculture,"

Meanwhile, the FDA put out a "Guidance on the Judicious Use of Medically Important Antimicrobial Drugs in Food Producing Animals". The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also has indicated its concern regarding the same. Recently, a U.S.D.A. contractor concluded that there is a strong link between rising cases of resistant infections and antibiotic use on factory farms. As often happens with these things, the report vanished right after it was posted.

The lesson to learn? Make sure you buy organic whenever you buy meat. If Big Agribusiness sees less people buying their antibiotic-laden meat, they might reconsider their methods. Also, consider natural remedies like garlic, honey or colloidal silver as first line options of treatment. Reserve your limited antibiotic supplies to those infections that natural medicine fail to cure.

Dr. Bones

Excellent Reminders for Huricane Preparedness and Other Disasters

I know this may be after the fact for those who lived through hurricane Irene, but I believe the concepts here are good to remember for ANY emergency situation.

Make a written plan for your family with alternatives, as Dr Bones said, have a plan A, B and C!! A family disaster plan includes:

1. Your vulnerability/hazard level, including flood zone/home structure
2. A safe room
3. Escape routes, safe evacuation locations and places to meet if separated
4. A CONTACT person who resides outside of the path of destruction/damage
5. Food, water and supply lists, buy non-perishables now
6. Your Insurance policy review and a flood policy
7. Medical supplies and how to learn some first aid
8. Items or flying object hazards including trees/branches to remove/secure/bring inside
9. How to secure/protect your house, including doors, windows, roof and garage door; and cars/boats
10. Copying all important documents and storing them in waterproof containers in more then one location. Consider flash drives, different computers, a safe box at the bank, a heavy-duty water and fire proof safe, relatives' homes, computer back-up virtual storage, any other place you can think of!

DO NOT PUT TAPE on your windows, it will not help.

Monitor NOAA weather radio for real-time weather information and warnings. Execute your family plan as soon as possible. If a storm threatens, use your common sense and evacuate even if you are not ordered. Evacuate if your local authorities has issued an order, do not attempt to ride out a storm in a vulnerable or hazardous area! If you are in a non-evacuation area remain within your safe room!!

Coastal areas are threatened the greatest by storm surge. According to The Hurricane Center (THC) ," storm surge is produced by water being pushed toward the shore by the force of the winds moving cyclically around the storm." Think about a large lifting up of water, like a wet-vac sucking up spilt liquid. This water is moved over the coastal/beach area and shoved inland. What can you do to be safe? Evacuate and follow instructions of your local authorities if ordered to leave. Secure your house, if possible, before you leave and follow your family plan to a safe evacuation location.

In highly flood prone areas, THC recommends to keep materials on hand like: sandbags, plywood, plastic sheeting, plastic garbage bags, lumber, shovels, work boots and gloves. Remember TADD, "turn around don't drown" when driving after a hurricane. If you cannot see whats under the water turn around. At least 23% of hurricane deaths in the US occur to people who drown in or attempt to abandon their cars. Water as little as 6 inches deep may cause you to lose control of the car. Do not leave your house until local authorities have announced it is safe.

Inland flooding from intense rainfall causes the most fatalities during and after a hurricane. According to THC, 63% of deaths attributed to hurricanes are due to INLAND FLOODING, not a storm surge. This is freshwater flooding, not salt water storm surges. It can affect communities hundreds of miles from coastal areas, which means you should not consider yourself safe just because you live a few miles away from the beach or coast.

Know your area and evacuation routes, including streams, lakes, drainage channels and any other body of water. Move to your safe evacuation area very early so you do not get stuck in a car during a hurricane. Do not drive around after the hurricane has passed until it is announced that it is safe. Monitor NOAA and official weather stations for announcements.

Post inland flood water is usually polluted. Do not walk around in, drink nor bathe in this water. Do not eat fresh food that has come in contact with floodwater and if cans have been exposed to the water, wash them off with soap and clean hot water before opening. Also, watch for downed power lines that may be lurking around in inland flooding!

Your family plan includes assessing your vulnerability which includes thinking about your home and whether it is in a high-rise building. If you must be inside a high-rise building recent research has concluded you are safest above the flood level and below the 10th floor. Blown windows are a big risk within these buildings and areas around them may be subject to flying glass. Make sure you always have a safe room and back up plans.

Some areas who have never experienced a hurricane before may have had tornadoes. Tornadoes formed during a hurricane are unlike those formed at other times. Tornadoes are likely to occur in the right-front quadrant of the hurricane and also embedded in the rain bands, according to THC.Also, as per THC, when associated with hurricanes, they are not usually accompanied by hail or a lot of lightning and can occur for days after hurricane landfall. Take shelter in an interior hallway on a lower floor, closet or small room, unless you are already in your safest room. If caught unaware and unable to do the above, get under heavy furniture and away from windows, advises THC.

There are several great sites for a list of hurricane and evacuation supplies. Do some research now. Remember the MOST important rule is safety first. You should already have all the water, food and supplies you need. Don't run to the grocery store at the last second for ANY supply, it isn't worth it. The winds get strong really fast, trust me I've lived through many of them. I've been in South Florida since the early 1970's, including Hurricane Andrew in 1992. This is a serious issue and I want you to be safe and prepared.

We are TOTALLY Unprepared.....

The east coast earthquake(s) are just the latest example of how unprepared we are for an emergency or major disaster.

Whether we’re talking about earthquakes, snow storms, hurricanes, floods, electrical outages or terrorist attacks, government officials, as well as individuals, have demonstrated time and again that we have a psychological inability to cope with high stress situations, a lack of foresight to stock emergency reserves, and have failed to prepare effective emergency response plans.

Though we hardly felt any movement here in the city of New York as a result of the earthquake, panic seemed to overtake a lot of people, as indicated by various news programs and social networking sites.

A single tremor was enough to cause mass confusion, building evacuations and cell phone service outages across the city.

…

So, I ask, are we ready for this possibility [Hurricane Irene], New York?

Consider: This region, more than any other, relies on electrical power. From high rise apartment buildings, to business computers, to the subway system, a massive power outage caused by a hurricane will have a significant impact on people’s lives.

Imagine if you were sick or paralyzed, and stuck on a building’s 35th floor without elevator service for days. Or, simply picture the isolation caused by television and cell phone outages. Ask yourself, where are your flashlights? Your radio? How will you keep up to date with important emergency information if the storm knocks out electrical services?

In order to prepare for this hurricane, ultimately we have to think not of the earthquake, which caused no lasting damage, but rather everything that went wrong during this past winter’s big snowstorm.

People were unable to leave their apartments, and emergency buildings were essentially unable to move around on the streets. We were woefully under-prepared, and most city workers had to play catch up to fix the significant problems that resulted from the storm.

Source: Fox News [Hat tip Bill]

Once cell phone service went out following high volumes of calls across the eastern seaboard, local police, fire and medical response was effectively shut down. Add congestion and confusion on roadways and you have a recipe for disaster.

The earthquakes this week were minor events in terms of severity and damage. But consider what might happen in a prolonged regional-disaster. Hurricane Katrina was such an incident, albeit still a short-term event, and luckily the rest of the country was unaffected. Emergency response took a week or more in some instances, and it reportedly took some three days to get bottled water into New Orleans. Bottled Water! And this is with a completely intact national infrastructure around the disaster zone.

Images of the looting, violence, preventable deaths and confiscatory martial law sweeps were beamed to millions of Americans. No one was paying attention, save a few individuals willing to think outside the box of complaceny and the status quo.

We realize the government has spent billions of our tax dollars making preparations. But how that money has been directed and managed is anybody’s guess. When it comes down to it, whatever preparations are being made by emergency preparedness experts at DHS, FEMA and other agencies, they will likely not benefit you all that much. If the time ever came that the infrastructure of the entire United States, not just an isolated region, experienced a far-from-equilibrium event we need to assume help is not coming. No ambulances. No police. No grocery delivery trucks. And no electricians to fix the power.

It’s going to be up to you.

Author: Mac Slavo
Date: August 25th, 2011
Website: www.SHTFplan.com