Vegetables Gardening - Growing Organic Vegetables

Tina asked "Two questions - 1) how does one dehydrate SOUP?!

2) what recommendations do you have for vac-sealing apparatus?  What works?
What does not?"

Thank you!"

I'll answer the second question first. I have a Seal A Meal (I think Sunbeam made it, rather old now and the print is gone). It's been chugging along for about 6 years and doing fine. Son number 4 brings his Food Saver over for marathon canning/freezing/dehydrating times and they seem to work comparably well. The plastic is beastly expensive so we're going to pool resources and buy a large roll commercially. (Uline is great for storage things, plastic, boxes, jars, etc)
 
To dehydrate soup just takes a little extra effort. Here is how I do it for my emergency storage and hiking/canoe meals. To make vegetable soup, I combine dehydrated potato dices, tomato dices, corn, peas, minced, dehydrated onion, dehydrated finely minced celery, assorted spices, herbs (parsley, basil,etc), some TVP (textured vegetable protein) or freeze dried ground beef, tomato powder and either vegetable or beef bouillon or granules. That can all go into a freezer bag, glass jars, or plastic freezer containers.
 
Cream of potato is made with flour/cornstarch, powdered milk, powdered butter, dried parsley, dehydrated potatoes, dehydrated onions and dehydrated minced celery or celery flakes, salt and pepper to taste. If you prefer pasta in your veggie soup rather than potatoes, you can cook macaroni (works better than noodles for me), dehydrate the cooked,drained pasta and add to the soup mix. The soupy part will settle at the bottom of the bag, jar, etc, so I usually bag it in individual sized servings. Stored properly, it will keep a long time. (Cool, dry, dark and no air)
 
You can actually put V8 or thick tomato sauce through the dehydrator till very dry then powder them in the food processor. You can also buy cream sauce powder already made and just add to packets of dehydrated diced potatoes, onions, etc. Stores like Emergency Essentials sell tomato powder, in case you don't want to go through the dehydrating and pulverizing steps.
 
Look for hiking meal suggestions online, you'll find a lot of dehydrated food ideas. It is also easy to find beef, chicken, pork, seafood and vegetable bouillon online and in some stores. Odd that you'd ask this today as I'm drying diced tomatoes and basil right now and have a pot of garden leftover soup in the crock pot, lol.
 
I could probably go on for a book's worth but by then your eyes would cross and your ears ring and you'd run out of the house screaming "No more, please, no more!"
 
Hope this helps, Jeanne B in GA

"I want death to find me planting my cabbages."...Montaigne

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