Today was a nice productive day.  I started off by cutting up all those pairs of jeans so I could easily store the needed fabric for whenever I get around to starting a quilt.  The pile is significantly smaller now, which is good, since I was feeling a little overwhelmed with the amount of clothes needing to be put away for projects.  Then I sketched out a couple of designs for quilts for the boys’ room, and asked my ds15 how he liked them.  It’s good to have a basic design worked out because you really have to have a plan before you start.  Last week I cut out a bunch of squares, but realized that I was complicating things for myself by not having the plan in place first.  Fortunately my dd found the graph paper (it was missing last week when I wanted to start thinking on paper regarding designs) so I was able to do that today.  It seems like the kind of thing that can be done in little blocks of time. 

Then I went to the hospital with the kids, then to the post office to mail some organic tea to someone who generously sent me some heirloom seeds for planting in this summer’s garden, and back home.   We got a bunch of inexpensive zucchini, so much that there’s no way to fit it into the fridge.  And it’s one of those perishable veggies that don’t last long outside of the fridge. 

So we sliced a bunch up in the food processor to dehydrate.  We did it once before and it was very successful – the slices were so thin that when we dried them, they were like crunchy chips.  They ended up getting gobbled up as snacks the first day we made them.  You can also brush the tops of the sliced zucchini with olive oil and spices, and they are delicious when dried!

I bought a few bunches of celery from the reduced rack with the intent to dehydrate them, and I’m going to slice a bunch of that up and dry it tonight, too.  I’ve seen how useful having dried veggies to use has been so far in putting together quick meals when prep time is short, and it will be nice if we can add celery to the list of things I have on hand.  It’s nice to have a way to prep vegetables in ‘bulk’ and use them later on when we need them, and it’s nice not to need to rely as much on my refrigerator to keep things useable. 

Avivah