Dried foods are perfect when it comes to preventing wastage saving cash in the process. There is no need for refrigeration since this is an additional cost. These foods include fruits, vegetables and meat products among others. They are also cheaper compared to canned foods. You can also do this at home when you have an excess of these products and then store them for the rainy day.
The only dried foods I buy are cereals and some fruits. Since the taste of dried vegetables isn't that great, I often prefer to buy fresh vegetables when I have to but that isn't often because I have a garden where I get most of my veggies. Learning how to properly dry vegetables, fruits and cereals can prove to be useful though because you never know when you'll need the skills you learn to preserve food.
I do buy some dried foods. Not much. Not vegetables, for sure. I prefer my vegetables to be fresh. Or frozen. There are a couple of vegetables which taste good when pickled. The radish is one. There's also a leafy vegetable which is a favorite among the Chinese for eating with porridge. Fruits I prefer them to be fresh. Oh, I like raisins. That's dried grapes, right?
I don't buy a lot of dried foods, but I like certain dried foods, so I'll have to add them to my grocery list in order to not forget them when I go shopping. I like dried fruit; peaches, pineapples, cherries. I guess that's why I like the taste of fruit cake so much, because it's chock full of dried fruit. It's a good idea to add a stock of dried fruits to my cabinets. I like to have different food items on hand just in case we get a taste for a certain something. We might not have the fresh ingredient(s) on hand, but we'll have a variation of it. I buy a fair amount of canned food, so the dried food will complement that.
I buy some dried food, but they are things like dried bean and rice, I find it a lot cheaper to make 2 lbs of beans in the crock pot even 2 months or so then freeze them, that way the are ready to be thrown into a recipe.
I love dried foods! Of course I buy dried fruits, and other dried things like grains and beans, but other than that, there's not many dried foods around. There are sometimes small bags of dried broccoli available at my grocery store, but it's a snack pack, and isn't able to sustain me for long at all. Otherwise, I think that dried foods, like beans and grains, are great and versatile!
I only tend to buy dried pasta, rice, lentils, beans or cereal. I don't tend to buy much dried fruit, vegetables or meat very often. The only exception to this really is that I'll occasionally buy sun dried tomatoes, particularly for use in salsas and things like that. On the whole I prefer to eat fresh food where I can. I understand that dried meat can be nice too, but it just isn't something I'm particularly interested in. I find that dried food is generally more expensive anyway though.
We are not health buffs at home but we are aware of our health such that we do not buy instant noodles. There are several documented cases here that it had caused kidney problem. As much as possible, we buy fresh ingredients for our food. In fact, we don't even store meat and fish in the freezer because it goes stale after a day. I agree that dried food is cheaper compared to fresh but it's like eating synthetic so we are willing to spend more for the real thing particularly when it comes to vegetables.
I keep dried fruits on hand, especially cranberries. They are great for cooking. We have done a little drying at home in the dehydrator too. We were very successful with tomatoes. Romas work best because of their meaty flesh and fewer seeds. We ate a lot of dried foods while out hiking a few years ago. They are excellent. You can make wonderful soups with dried vegetables. When they re-hydrate in the hot water, they are very delicious.
I buy dried food too like most of you...beans, pasta, rice, beef jerky once in a while when on sale and the thin variety, fruits like figs-raisins-cranberries-apples, cereals & grains like oats are among many of the dried food. We like snap peas too and will get things like sunflowers, pumpkin seeds and sweet potato chips too. Just go some apples CVS has on sale now and going to get more on Friday for it's so delicious. (image fromLog In.)
Nowadays, no, but before I used to do that, I would buy noodles and cereals to stack them up at home. But if you consistently eat them, it gets too old and you begin to get sick of eating it eventually.
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