Make your own kale powder

It's easy to make your own kale powder in the oven or a food dehydrator -- a great way to sneak lots of veggie nutrition into smoothies, soups and more.

When summer begins to wind down, my preserving instincts kick into high gear.

I start to panic: Fall is coming. What will I do without juicy fresh tomatoes? Or handful after handful of fresh basil? Or ripe peaches? Or fresh greens from right outside my back door?

Right now, my freezer is full of peaches, blueberries, strawberries and watermelon for winter smoothies and my pantry is loaded up with marinated dried tomatoes that I can turn into an amazing pasta sauce or layer on pizzas. And making a winter store of pesto and basil chimchurri is on my to-do list for next week.

So what about the greens?

While I have tried freezing heartier greens like kale and collards, they're really only good for soups and stews once thawed, as their cellular structure really breaks down once frozen. The best way I've found to preserve fresh greens is to dehydrate them and turn them into vegetable powders.

In the past, I showed you how to make tomato powder, which is an awesome way to add a huge pop of fresh tomato flavor to soups and pasta sauces or mix with yogurt or salad dressing to create a veggie dip. All it takes is a few hours in a food dehydrator or on low temperature in your oven.

Making greens powder -- in this case, kale powder -- is accomplished the same way.

My favorite use for this kale powder is very sneaky. Regular readers know Mr. Ninj, who never met a vegetable he liked, is my equivalent of mommy bloggers' picky 3-year-old eaters, so I'm always on the lookout for stealthy new ninja-like ways of sneaking vegetables into his diet.

Mixing this kale powder into his morning smoothies has become my secret weapon!

Cidered jerky (beef or venison) -- and tips on buying a dehydrator

Some great tips for buying a dehydrator, in which you can make this tangy cidered beef jerky or venison jerky.

A big hug and WELCOME to all you jerky fans!

Since my first chicken jerky post two years ago, I have been promising to post another jerky recipe. At long last, it's here.

Why so long, you ask? Honestly, it was the photographs. Let's face it: jerky does not photograph well.

I've made this particular cidered jerky recipe a bunch of times and the photo shoots were miserable failures. The did not pass the "would I eat this?" test.

But recently I realized that, as with so many things in life, striving for perfection was preventing me from being happy. Because this jerky is so freakin' good that it makes me really, really happy to both eat it and share the recipe with all of you.

Regular readers who know of my ongoing battle for backyard produce with the deer on our property will appreciate that the batch of cidered jerky featured in these photographs came from a big buck taken on our property last year by the intrepid young man who hunts our land.

In fact, I gave the hunter some of this jerky to try. The next day he texted me to let me know he ate it all in one sitting and proclaimed it "awesome", with FOUR exclamation points. So it's officially hunter-approved.

Make your own vegetable powders

Via Facebook and Twitter, I'm still reading about folks putting up the last of their tomatoes for the winter, so I think you'll find this post quite timely.

While I do grow my own tomatoes in my garden, my yield is often not what I hope. I have also had much better luck with small, prolific tomatoes like Sungolds than with bigger, beefier tomatoes, ideal for slicing and canning.

So, like many of you, I usually turn to my local farmers when it's time to put up tomatoes for the winter.

This year, I bought half a bushel.

Now, that may not seem like much but, trust me, when you wash them and line them up on the kitchen counter, it's a lot.

And I mean A LOT.

I didn't weigh my box but a quick search shows that the standard weight for a bushel of tomatoes in the United States is 53 pounds. So I'm guessing I had about 25 pounds of tomatoes.

Instead of simply making the whole lot into sauce for the freezer, I got a little creative this year.

Fruit leather

Boy oh boy oh boy, have I got an addictive snack for you.

Fruit leather. Which is simply the grown-up name for the Fruit Roll-Ups we had as kids.

(Do they even make those anymore?)

I longed to have Fruit Roll-Ups in my lunchbox but they were a rarity around our house. This, of course, made them even more desirable, nearly as desirable as candy, which is what they tasted like to me.

This homemade version is no different -- well, other than the fact that it is made with real fruit and no sugar. But it still tastes like candy.

And it's GOOD FOR YOU. I think that makes it freakin' fruit candy!

And addictive? That barely sums it up. I cannot stop eating these bad boys. I made the batch you see here with only apricots -- and it was fantastic. But I'm already dreaming about the different combinations I can concoct when my favorite fruits are in season. I'm dreaming a lot about blueberry-peach.

ZOMG.

Dried watermelon slices

Dried watermelon slices

It's challenge time again!

I hope you've been following along these past nine months. If not, here's how it works: Caroline over at Grow It Cook It Can It challenges us to make a pantry staple each month and then showcase the final product and how we used it in a recipe, if appropriate. So far, we have already tackled pasta, bread, butter, cheese, lactofermented veg, jam and canned fruit and pickling.

This month's challenge was to dry fruit.

This is right up my alley as I am the proud owner of an Excalibur food dehydrator -- what I like to call the Ferrari of dehydrators.

You don't have to own a dehydrator to dry fruits, veggies, meats and more; you can dry most of those things in the oven at very low temps (if your oven will go that low) for a very long time. But, if you're paying through the nose per gallon for propane to fire your oven as I do, a dehydrator may make a lot more sense ... and cents (the Excalibur folks claim it costs about as much to burn a light bulb as it does to run the dehydrator).

And there are many entry-level models that won't cost you an arm and a leg, either, if you want a low-cost way to give dehydrating a try.

There's great variety in what you can whip up with the dehydrator, some of which I've even posted about on this blog:

• Chicken jerky (people love it but dogs go bat-shit crazy for it!)
• Veggie chips
• Fruit leathers
• Fruit chips
• "Sun-dried" tomatoes

But to stay on topic, our challenge this month was to dry fruit. I thought about some of the usual yummy suspects -- apricots, peaches, apples -- but then I remembered something.

CSA Share Ninja Rescue: zucchini

Zucchini chips

This week, readers have started receiving zucchini in their shares.

Let the great summer zucchini onslaught begin!

I tried to include both traditional and non-traditional ideas for using zucchini; there's only so many times you can serve sauteed zucchini as a side dish without your family looking weary, am I right?

As always, if you need help with a veggie you've received in your CSA share, leave a comment below or send me an email before this coming Friday.

Recipes suggestions are posted on Mondays.

• Zucchini chips: Near and dear to my heart, as these are my only official prize-winning recipe. 
• Zucchini pecan cake: Whether you make it as a cake or muffins (minus the frosting), this recipe from In Praise of Leftovers is a winner.
• Lemony zucchini goat cheese pizza: I love this easy, unusual recipe from Smitten Kitchen -- perfect for casual summer dining.
• Cream of zucchini soup: I just discovered this one from The Meaning of Pie -- easy and delicious, my favorite combination!
• Morning glory muffins: Just substitute shredded zucchini for the carrots called for in this great breakfast muffin recipe.

You can also check out last year's suggestions for using zucchini.

What's your favorite way to prepare zucchini? The Ninj wants to know.



[Shared with the What's in the Box? link party]

Drying herbs: two techniques

Sage, rosemary and thyme, dried in a food dehydrator

It's comin' for us.

Winter, that is. In fact, parts of our lovely state of Vermont already have some snow.

This means that it's time to call the garden done and get it prepped for a long winter's nap.

I don't have much left in garden, veg-wise, but I do have a crapload of herbs, so this week I harvested what was left and set about drying them for use over the cold winter months.

I have dried herbs using two different techniques, one fast and one slow, so I'm going to share both of them with you. Both are simple and will leave you with dried herbs that are much more flavorful than any you can buy.

Chicken jerky: a recipe

Easy DIY homemade chicken jerky, made in a dehydrator -- loved by people and dogs alike.

I already know that this won't be one of my more popular posts, but hey, I'm in charge here and I love jerky.

At least, I love homemade jerky. Do not call Slim Jims or that other crap that they sell at gas stations or the packy "jerky" -- bleeeeccckkk.

Jerky is nothing more than dried meat and spices, so if you like meat and have never tried it because you thought jerky = Slim Jim, I urge you to reconsider.

Jerky is a great snack to have on hand when you want something a little salty, and the portability makes it ideal for hikes, lunch boxes, road trips, etc.

Not to mention that jerky is an incredibly high-value dog treat -- the Ninjette will pretty much do any kind of trick you ask and never take her eyes from mine when I'm holding even the tiniest bit of this jerky.

I make my jerky in a dehydrator, but you could make this by drying the meat on cookie sheets in a low (200 degree) oven as well. The beauty of the dehydrator is that it uses very little electricity, so it's a more efficient way of making jerky than leaving your oven on all day.

Additionally, you can make a lot more than jerky with your dehydrator: veggie chips, dried fruit, sundried tomatoes and fruit roll-ups/leathers, just to name a few.

Zucchini chips: a recipe

Zucchini chips

If you follow the Ninj on Facebook, you already know that my zucchini fell victim to the dreaded and disgusting squash vine borer this year, so I may be the only gardener in Vermont that actually has to buy zucchini right now. But I love the stuff, so I'm faking having an overabundance of it that I need to use up (shhh ... don't tell).

I made some zucchini refrigerator pickles yesterday that won't be ready for a day or two, so I'll give you an update on those next week.

I also made zucchini chips in my dehydrator.

If you don't own a dehydrator, go buy one. Seriously. It doesn't even matter if it's the lame-ass Ronco kind, it will still work. And it's amazing the stuff you can make with meat, veggies, fruit and more (the Ninjette is a big fan of chicken jerky and banana roll-ups).

Word on the street is that you can also achieve a similar effect by drying stuff in your oven at a very, very low temperature, but I can't vouch for that, as I've never tried it. Moreover, I doubt you'd want to keep your oven occupied for 14 hours in some cases.

Back to the chips.