Preservation Has Begun

I found this great chart Here.  It gives you a formula to use your dried tomato powder.  How do you get Dry Tomato Powder, you ask?  You have an abundance of tomatoes in your garden, cut and dry them for 1 to 2 days in a dehydrator, place the very dry tomato slices in your handy dandy blender and Whala!  You have dried tomato powder.  Now you can use the powder in all your winter cooking.

I also have an abundance of Kale in my garden.  I decided to grow it for the first time, and I planted several rows.  What I didn't know is that Kale is a plant that keeps on giving.  You pick the bottom leaves and more leaves grow on the top, so you don't need to have two rows, just a few plants.   This explains the abundance of Kale. 

Many soup recipes call for 2 cups of Kale, so I decided to freeze the Kale in 2 cup packages.  First I picked and washed lots of my Russian red kale.  I snapped off the long stems and put them on a towel to drain.

Now take a leaf and fold it in half and lay it on the cutting board

Draw your knife down the edge, cutting out the largest portion of the stem.  Since I will be making this for soup, I chose not to have the woodier stem.  It is perfectly fine to eat the stems in stir fry type dishes.

Chop into slices.  I did a single leaf so you could see the slices, but you can stack a great big pile and slice them all at once.

Big bowl of sliced Kale waiting for blanching.

Heat a large pot of boiling water.  I used two pots to make it faster.  When the water boils, throw the kale in and set the timer for 2 minutes.  As soon as the timer rings, drain the kale quickly in a colander and then plunge it into an ice water bath.

Swish around until the kale is very cool.   Drain and squeeze the kale gently to release most of the water.  If you want you can let it drain on a kitchen towel to remove the majority of the water.

Now it is ready to freeze.  You can put it into freezer bags, or containers.  Try to get as much air out of the packaging as possible.  I will use the frozen kale in my soup recipes, so I placed it into two cup measures and vacuum packed it with my foodsaver.  Now it is ready for the freezer.

That huge bowl of chopped Kale made 4 two cup servings.  Kale Potato Soup here I come.  (recipe coming soon)