Frugality: Dehydrating Herbs

My husband and I live on very little. We are working on paying off debt, renovating our house and starting our homestead. Once all the bills are paid for there is little left to live on. When friends find out exactly how much is left over most of them ask how we manage that. They are used to convenience foods and going out to eat among other extravagances that we simply don’t have often. Somehow they fail to realize how much money they would have left if they didn’t do these things. Sure we slip and spend money on things we probably shouldn’t. After all we grew up in a consumer society and not just that but a consumer society with the internet. We had everything at our fingertips all the time, this did not teach us stellar impulse control. But we are growing and working on it, it’s a slow but steady process. So I thought I would do a series of posts on how we save money and maybe some of you would have some other suggestions!

(2 jars of oregano, 1 jar of parsley and 1 jar of chopped onions!)

Yesterday, I flexed my frugal muscles and saved some fresh herbs. I am making an effort to get more creative with my cooking so I tried a couple new meals this week. Both involved fresh herbs. Not having an herb garden (yet) I bought a bundle parsley and one of oregano. Neither recipe called for that much but that’s the smallest quantity sold at our store. In the past I might have just composted it but recently we bought a dehydrator! So I dried them and stored in canning jars. We also had an extra half an onion (none of my recipes use only half an onion!!) which I chopped and dried for chopped onions!

I did a little experiment with the oregano to see if it was easier to remove the leaves before or after. It was a good bit easier after dehydrating so I will be doing that from now on. The parsley was equally annoying before and after drying.

Dehydrating is a great way to preserve extra produce, even when it’s store bought!