The Thing is, Nobody Likes Peas or Spinach…

I was at the grocery store the other day browsing for some frozen vegetables to dehydrate since I recently started dehydrating again. If you’re unaware, frozen vegetables are THE best way to get into dehydrating on the planet, hands down. Coupled with an Excalibur dehydrator and Foodsaver (remember an appropriately-sized mason jar attachment) and you’ll be in business before you know it.

I started with our favorites–carrots and broccoli–a few weeks back and now I was looking for something else to dehydrate. Normally, I would also choose green beans and corn but we actually have enough of that in cans so I figured I would wait on those. Anyway, I was looking for something different, something I normally wouldn’t dehydrate…

…and then it hit me, why not dehydrate some peas? I quickly decided against it because nobody in the family really likes peas but they do occasionally wind up in our soups if a recipe calls for it. Except for that reason, we never eat peas. The adage “eat what you store, store what you eat” sounded quite appropriate here.

Then I got to looking at the spinach which is something else nobody really likes, besides my wife, that is. I’d never dehydrated chopped spinach before but, again, I figured I shouldn’t bother because there are very few meals where we actually use spinach. In fact, I can only think of one: veggie quesadillas.

At a loss, I decided to call “the boss” seeking her opinion. After giving her a handful of choices, as luck or fate would have it, I ended up coming home with several bags of both peas AND spinach to dehydrate because my wife convinced me that we could–and would–actually use them, in particular, during our upcoming camping trip.

So, now I’m busy dehydrating the spinach as I write this. I’m not surprised at how much it’s shrunk in size since spinach is mostly water weight. The peas, like corn, do tend to surprise me because they never seem to shrink down as much as I would expect given their already small size, at least, with respect to how much other things like carrots tend to shrink when dehydrated.

Seems I should revise my title a bit, the thing is that it doesn’t matter if nobody really likes peas or spinach, if “the boss” wants it done, it’ll happen. Of course, it’s good we have that voice of reason because if it were up to me my boys and I would probably live on frozen pizzas, chips, and chocolate… and beer… for me, obviously. 😉