Dateline: 27 January 2015
Salad Flakes, from Machado Farms
I was nearly seven years ago that I blogged about Rick Machado's excellent agripreneurial idea of Salad Flakes. If you are not familiar with Salad Flakes, and you are looking for some homestead-based, cottage industry inspiration, check out that link. Rick Machado is a down-to-earth innovator and I think innovation is an important part of making it as a small-scale farmer these days.
As my old essay shows, I made some of my own dried greens, much like Rick's Salad Flakes. I utilized them as a homegrown nutritional supplement, especially in the winter months. But for the next five winters after that, I had no dried greens.
Not until last summer did I finally get around to "putting up" some garden greens again for the winter, and I'm now having a good dose of them every day. I typically mix them into plain yogurt, with some granola and maple syrup. Occasionally I'll put a pinch of dried greens between my cheek and gum, let them slowly rehydrate in my mouth, and enjoy the flavor (dried beet greens are especially nice for this).
In addition to making some dried greens last summer, I took some pictures of the process (click pictures to see enlarged views)....
First, grow some greens. |
Next, pick a pail of greens. Here we have a pail of beet greens. (my favorite kind of greens) |
This picture shows my greens "colander." It's made with a piece of porous fabric suspended inside a clean pail. Note the high-class clothespins (ClassicAmericanClothespins.com). |
I wash the greens by putting them into a pail full of clean water, then agitating the greens. Particles of soil on the greens will settle to the bottom of the pail. |
After agitating the greens in the water, I let them set for a minute or two and take them out. This picture shows the water after a first washing. |
When washed greens are removed from the bucket, they are placed in the fabric colander. |
This picture shows a pail of beet greens after the third and final washing.They are a bit bruised, but clean. |
I heap the washed greens on a dehydrator tray, like this. |
One pail of picked and washed greens will fit into my Equiflow food dehydrator as shown here. |
A few hours later (not long) the greens will be dried and crispy. Note that they are still green. I keep the heat down low to preserve the nutrients. |
Here you can better see the nicely-dried beet greens. |
I put the dried greens in a bowl and crumble them by hand. |
This picture shows the beet green stems that aren't fully dry. They don't crumble and are easily removed. |
I put the crumbled beet greens into a canning jar. |
One pail of picked beet greens, dried and crumbled, will fill a quart canning jar half way. |
This pail of fresh-picked kale was dried in like manner. |
Homemade
Contra-Industrial
Green Multi-Vitamins...
The industrial system has done a very good job of training their consuming herds to think that the best nutritional supplements are "scientifically formulated" and neatly packaged. Surely, these well-presented products are superior to a nutritional product, like dried greens, that any gardener can easily make himself, or so the marketing geniuses would have us believe.
I don't buy it.
I believe that something as simple and good as homemade dried greens are far better than any synthetic daily multivitamin you can buy in a store.
Homemade dried greens are also practically free, but they do take some time and effort to make.
6 comments:
I started doing this with what I grew last year. I added carrot tops, tomatoes, bell peppers and carrots. Just ran everything thru the blender item by item and then mixed some of this and some of that to get the blend I wanted, eat with applesauce.
I have never dried salad greens before. However, I dried mint leaves last summer and stored them as whole leaves. I have enjoyed eating them plain this winter. They have a crisp texture and mint flavor that is milder than fresh mint leaves. They would probably be good in salads too, I just haven't used them for that yet.
Awesomesauce! We had so many greens last year and couldn't eat them all. I know what I'm doing this year! Thanx!
Great idea - thank you for sharing and for the tutorial!
Thanks for sharing this, and beautiful photos of your garden. We like growing greens and i look forward to doing this.
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