Kenny Coogan: What’s the strangest thing that you’ve successfully been able to freeze dry?
I think it was the item that surprised me the most or like my most genius idea, was to freeze dry all the wet ingredients for the zucchini bread. So mixing up the eggs, the vanilla. In the recipe itself, most zucchini bread calls for oil and as we just said, you can’t freeze dry oily things. So my recommendation is to switch to applesauce. So it was. With apple sauce and the shredded zucchini and just that combination in itself is very weird, I think. Uh, but it worked exceptionally well and I still have freeze dried zucchini bread in a jar in my pantry.
Josh Wilder: Welcome to the Mother Earth News and Friends podcast. At Mother Earth News, for 50 years and counting, we’ve been dedicated to conserving the planet’s natural resources while helping you conserve your financial resources in [00:01:00] this podcast we host conversations with experts in the fields of sustainability, homesteading, natural health, and more to share all about how you can live well wherever you are in a way that values both people and our Mother Earth.
Please see the article that Alayna reads here.
Kenny Coogan: Good day everyone. It is Kenny Coogan here with the Mother Earth News and Friends podcast team. Thank you so much for reading your article, and we have a few follow up questions we’d like to ask you. In the magazine, we have all of our authors bios, and in it you mentioned that you were a math major.
The, one of the best parts of that article is everybody wants to play farmer and they have dreams about being on a homestead, but knowing the actual numbers of is this activity worth it or not? That’s the real takeaway.
Alayna McDonald: Yeah, it can be so hard to determine if buying a freeze dryer is worth it for you.
I always tell people that if you are growing a bulk amount of groceries or like fruits and vegetables yourself, [00:12:00] that it can be if you’re gonna go to the store and buy a ton of groceries just to freeze dry and you don’t purchase them on sale it might not be worth, that investment for you. Personally we grow so much that it is, uh, but again, you really have to watch the sales to maximize the cost efficiency of buying a freeze dryer.
Kenny Coogan: What are some of the major don’ts for freeze drying? I was surprised that you mentioned meat and eggs.
Alayna McDonald: You can freeze dry meats. You can freeze dry eggs. But some things that you might not wanna freeze dry are really oily. Things like peanut butter, butters, jams, and jellies and syrups, they don’t freeze dry well. Sometimes you can freeze dry things that have a little bit of chocolate in it and wait for the chocolate to like re harden, but you can’t take a Hershey chocolate bar, put it into your machine and hope that it’s going to freeze dry because it will not.
Strangest Item to Freeze Dry
Kenny Coogan: What’s the strangest thing that you’ve successfully been [00:13:00] able to freeze dry?
Alayna McDonald: I think it was the item that surprised me the most or like my most genius idea, was to freeze dry all the wet ingredients for the zucchini bread. So mixing up the eggs, the vanilla. In the recipe itself, most zucchini bread calls for oil and as we just said, you can’t freeze dry oily things. So my recommendation is to switch to applesauce. So it was. With apple sauce and the shredded zucchini and just that combination in itself is very weird, I think uh, but it worked exceptionally well and I still have freeze dried zucchini bread in a jar in my pantry.
How Long Do Freeze Dried Foods Last?
Kenny Coogan: How long do these freeze dried items last?
Alayna McDonald: Upwards of 25 years if they’re properly stored. So we’re talking Mylar bags oxygen absorbers in a dark cool place in a pantry. I use mason jars with vacuum seal. They have screw on ones that you can suck [00:14:00] all the air out. I do those for things that I expect, uh, to be eaten within the year.
Kenny Coogan: We mentioned that you can freeze dry meat. Can you talk about the process of how you would freeze dry eggs?
Alayna McDonald: So eggs are really interesting. There’s a couple different ways that people do them. You can either pre scramble them and freeze dry them, cooked. I personally like mine done raw because then it leaves me with more opportunities to use ’em ’cause I can use them in baking. I can reconstitute them and scramble them myself. And so what I usually do or typically do is take a bowl and I will crack all of the eggs into a bowl. I’ll whisk them all up and I will either A, have the trays like loaded into the machine, sitting slightly out, pouring the scrambled eggs in and then slowly sliding the tray in ’cause if you’ve ever tried walking with a tray of, uh, scrambled eggs, those trays are not very high on the [00:15:00] sides. You will make a mess. Or I will do the same but in my freezer, I will have the tray loaded in the freezer, and I will pour the mixture of scrambled eggs on the tray that’s already in the freezer, so I don’t have to walk with it. You just wanna really avoid walking with a tray of raw scrambled eggs. It never goes well outside of that you load it into your machine, you run it just on like the standard mode. You want to weigh your eggs beforehand and after, so you can see the loss of water. You can use that ratio to determine how much water you need to reconstitute. It’s one egg is two tablespoons of the freeze dried egg powder and two tablespoons of water. If you wanna get more specific than that, maybe you think your eggs are more dense. You can do the whole math to determine it.
Favorite Freeze Dried Snacks for Kids
Kenny Coogan: Alayna what are your favorite freeze dried snacks to make your kids.
Alayna McDonald: Every kid loves candy but not every parent wants to give their kids some candy. So my kids super like watermelon. It tastes like cotton candy. So it’s a very [00:16:00] good alternative for that. They also like bananas. You can find them here anyways, locally. I like what, 49 cents a pound at QuickTrip.
My kids absolutely love when I take cereal with milk and I make cereal bars. That one is fun and you just pop ’em out and you eat them as is.
You don’t have to add like water or anything to ’em to reconstitute it. They eat the bars, just powdered milk and cereal. That one was fun. They did enjoy that a lot.
Kenny Coogan: Thank you so much for the great tips about how to freeze dry food at home.
Alayna McDonald: Mm-hmm. You’re most welcome.
Josh Wilder: Thanks for joining us for this episode of Mother Earth News and [00:17:00] Friends. To listen to more podcasts and get connected on our social media, visit www.motherearthnews.com/podcast. You can also email us at Podcast@OgdenPubs.com with any questions or suggestions. Our podcast production team includes Kenny Coogan, Alyssa Warner, and myself, Josh Wilder.
Music for this episode is the song Hustle by Kevin MacLeod. The Mother Earth News and Friends podcast is a production of Ogden Publications.
Jessica Anderson: Until next time, don’t forget to love your Mother.
