All things Prepper

[beast]

Dehydration is one of several ways to store food. The process involves removing most of the water from food by using heat. Heat, regardless of the source, kills bacteria in the food. Bacteria are what cause food to spoil, and they require water to grow. So, when you heat a food and remove its water, you create a new product that will take much longer to spoil.

Dried foods are also great for avoiding waste. When you grow your own food, you often end up with more than you can eat at once. Freezing is one way to store surplus, but your food will be ruined if you lose power for a significant amount of time. Canning is another method, and a good one. When done properly, canned foods are safe and last for years. Dehydrating foods is your third option for storage. Drying foods is less risky than canning. Although you have to take care when drying your foods, there is much less potential for contamination by botulism and other bacteria than when canning.

Dehydrated foods are tasty and make great snacks. It takes time to dry food, but most of that time is simply letting the food sit. For the effort put in, you get a really nice snack. Dried fruits, meats, and vegetables are fun to eat and make an easy and quick snack that the kids can grab whenever they are hungry.

How to Dry Foods

The easiest foods to dry, and therefore the ones with which you will have the most success, are fruits, vegetables, and meats. Technically, any food can be dried, but you will struggle to make anything edible out of dehydrated eggs, for instance. The basic steps for dehydrating any type of food are below:

  
 http://www.offthegridnews.com/2012/03/21/how-to-hehydrate-food-for-storage/

[Jee]

I commend you for getnitg on board with your mom about these diet changes. To do it right, getnitg and keeping the bad stuff out of the house is very important.You should be more specific about what kind of health food requirements for your mom  less sugar? less fat? less sodium? It makes a big difference in the way to change a recipe.Small changes at first are important with a diet change. Think of this change as retraining your tastebuds. For example, cutting out fast food and soda seem difficult to some people, but it's really not if the substitute food is decent. Browsing cookbooks at a bookstore or library is a fun way to think about a big, special meal. My favorite to start with is How to Cook Everything. It's just great and the ingredients are pure, for the most part. The author educates the reader about techniques and strange veggies and stuff.Here are some ideas to get you started:*Change to whole wheat or whole grain everything. This means no enriched flour. If it doesn't say  whole  it isn't whole.*Stock up on veggies and fruits. I threw much of the fresh stuff away at first because it rotted. I was stubborn about choosing those as snacks over, say, toast and peanut butter. Frozen or canned veggies are super convenient and the shelf life is better. Eventually fresh stuff is easy to keep on hand in the appropriate amounts, once you learn what you should and actually will eat.*Pure sugar and oils are better when necessary to cook with them. Stay away from syrups (i.e. corn syrup) and processed oils. Pressed oil is better (i.e. extra virgin olive oil).*Use broth to cook meats or anything on the stovetop. Real broth is best, but canned is fine if sodium isn't an issue. This helps reduce the amount of oil/fats in cooking.*Spices, spices, spices are key. Learn how to cook with them. Think of cooking as learning about cultures  Italian cooking uses parsley, basil, garlic and onion  Mexican food has cumin, cilantro, peppers, lime, garlic and onion  Thai food includes cilantro, vinegar, ginger and peanuts  etc. Pick up a cookbook and try a few, without worrying too much about the health value. It will greatly improve your fluency in the kitchen.*Buy a crockpot and let the meat/veggies cook slowly in healthy spices. One of the easiest things to cook in the crockpot is a lean roast (pork or beef) or chicken, and vegetables. The veggies will break down, mix with the juices of the roast/chicken, making a tasty sauce. (I always put a tablespoon of vinegar with the roast to make it more tender.) I make salsa from scratch (no salt) and dump a couple of cups of it with chicken breast. It cooks for a few hours and it super yummy! If you want to make the broth into a sauce after it's all cooked, shake a little flour with milk, then stir it into the broth to thicken it. OR you can save the broth for cooking something later. It freezes for a couple of weeks.Expect to spend some money stocking your cabinets with the right things. It will save you money in the long run, believe me. Nothing beats a home cooked, healthy meal! Happy cooking!Oops   forgot to add something about snacks. Until your mom can rely on a piece of fruit as a snack, she really needs to fill up at healthy meals and skip snacks (unless she needs them for a health reason). This particular issue relies solely on will power. Perhaps you can let her slide for awhile as she gets excited about changing what's in the kitchen and how she's cooking. Also, drinking fluids can be like a snack since it does bring about a full feeling. When all else fails, nuts can be a good choice, in moderation. Watch out for sodium and fat intake with these snacks. Instead, find recipes that have semi-sweet chocolate and oats, roll in some flax or other good option, and bring in some cashews into the snack. It can be like a trail mix. (Warning: dried fruit has much more sugar than fresh fruit.)