Stuff like that. I think it comes from spending summers with my grandparents. Their place was only an half acre, but I think they probably grew food on my great grandparents' place also, which was 5 acres. I only know that my grandfather managed to can enough variety to last a year and three months, so when I think of canning or preserving, I think in terms of putting up multiple bushels worth at once, not solitary canning sessions. That tends to get me in trouble (48 hours straight.)
I provide that background so you will understand my compulsion to "put up a ton" is inherited honestly <grin.> When I stumbled across a huge deal on dehydrated onion flakes, I jumped. I've home dehydrated 50# of onions before (in a 4 tray Excalibur and a 7 tray round dehydrator....we won't talk about how long that takes. Hint: think weeks not hours.) In case you want to know: 50 pounds of onions, dehydrated, yields a #10 (gallon size) can filled, and 1 quart filled.
Yeah, that's not the same as 70 pounds of already dehydrated onion flakes. 70 pounds of already dehydrated is more like 400 pounds of fresh onions I'm guessing? It might even be more, because commercially dehydrated are all small, flat and virtually symmetrical flakes, whereas home dehydrated are more like onion dices, so home dried takes up more space.
End result: it takes a minimum of 61 quarts to dry pack 35 pounds of commercially dried onion flakes. I would have done the whole 70 pounds, but I ran out of clean canning jars.
Watch the awesomely cool video for this amazing adventure here: http://youtu.be/RJl6fU5ZqGE?list=UUcBqcPCg2yBUou3KRvOhloA
Segue: because I'm a math nerd, I did some rough onion math. 1 small onion is the equivalent of 1 tablespoon of onion flakes. It takes five medium onions to make a cup of onion flakes. A medium to largish onion weighs one-half pound (yes I weighed it.) Based on the 61 quarts I put up, 4 cups to a quart, 35 pounds of commercially dehydrated onions should be equal to 610 pounds.
Onion math looks like this:
20 onions per quart. (5 onions per cup x 4 cups)
20 onions x 1/2 pound each = 10 pounds of onions, dehydrated = 1 quart)
61 quarts x 10 pounds of onions = 610 pounds of onions, "wet"
That's just in one box. I bought two.
All of a sudden 610 pounds of "wet" onions for $36 (versus when I buy 50# of 'wet' onions for $11.99 and home dehydrate them) starts looking like such a bargain, it's nearly free (it comes out to about 1/2 cent per pound ICYMI.)
Ooookkkaayyy. So I should end up with over 120 quarts of dehydrated onion, or about 1200+ pounds (of wet onion.) That's a lot of onion. I'm thinking I'm probably good for a while and can cross it off my 96 ingredient list !!
Love prepping. Love seeing the jars fill up. I worried about using my beloved wide mouth canning jars for dry pack canning (I prefer re-using Classico or La Romanella brand spaghetti sauce jars: regular mouth canning lids and rings fit on these jars) so I fretted about whether I should buy more jars. My friend Wendi told me to just use up my wide mouth jars and then as I get more spaghetti sauce jars, sub them out. Duh. That's why she's the ultimate prepper, not me. Then in an ironic moment, I went to the grocery store last night intending to buy two jars of sauce for dinner. Classico was on sale for $1.79 a jar. I ended up buying 20, lol.
Sidenote: if you know someone on food stamps who wants to be self reliant, get them buying Classico spaghetti sauce. Those jars can be used for (dry pack) canning and they can start building up food stores. But that's another blogpost.
One can always find reasons to put off prepping. At the end of the day, we need to just do it.
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