Dehydrating #3: Shrimp

Making my own dried shrimp was one of the earlier ideas that popped into my head after we got the new toaster oven. Dried shrimp is known for being more expensive than regular shrimp because the flavor is so much stronger. You don't have to use as much at one time, but it's more versatile because it is dried. When we went to Taiwan last year, I really wanted to bring some back. I saw someone selling a giant bag of dried shrimp at a market one evening but never got around to purchasing it to bring back home. I cannot legally buy it from the market to bring back because it is not properly packaged and labeled. By the time we were getting ready to leave, I didn't make a last minute grocery store trip to bring any home. I talked to a friend about it and she had said some of her friends tried bringing it back before but it is tricky because of the refrigeration. So from the time it gets packed into the luggage in Taiwan and makes it back to your home in the states, many hours (a day?) have passed and the quality may have been affected. 

I had done some research online and they said to dehydrate your own shrimp, start with cooked salad shrimp. This saves the step of needing to boil the shrimp before. I was at HEB getting some groceries when I saw a bag of salad shrimp. I spontaneously decided to get a bag and try making my own dehydrated shrimp at home that weekend. I honestly didn't even pay a very good price for the shrimp. The bag cost me about $7.00 and these were a pound of 150-250 size cooked shrimp. I can get a bag of the same size for uncooked shrimp and save $1.50. I think I can boil my own shrimp at home for less than that. 

Regardless, it was a capturing-the-time moment so I was already at HEB, the shrimp was in front of me, and I bought it. 

Dehydrating the shrimp wasn't difficult. I took the shrimp and laid it out on my dehydrating trays. I set the oven to 135F and the timer for 10 hours. I peeked in a few times to check on the shrimp, but when they were done, they were dry and felt just like the store-bought ones.  

 

My husband was smart. I didn't think about this, but it was a Friday evening to Saturday morning when I dehydrated them. At the time I had asked him, do you want to do the dehydrated shrimp first or *item number 4* first? He told me to do the shrimp first because I wasn't teaching over the weekend so it would give the house some time to dissipate the smells. Boy was he right. 

 

  

 

I'm happy with how my shrimp turned out. They look just like the ones from the store. The size of mine are a little smaller because I probably started out with smaller shrimp to begin with. I buy the size M from the store so they probably start with size 75-125 shrimp or so. The yield was similar. My pound of shrimp turned into 77g of dehydrated shrimp. The packs from the store have 100g of dried shrimp in them. 

 

When they're on sale at the grocery store, I can get the bag on the left for less than $7. The jar of dehydrated shrimp on the right I made myself cost me $7 in shrimp and time/electricity to dehydrate myself. 

 

I don't think I'll ever dehydrate my own shrimp again. The cost breakdown doesn't make sense and my whole house smells like a seafood market for about a half day. If I had access to bulk seafood at super discounted prices, my response might be different. But, for where I live and what I have access to, making it myself won't be cost efficient.  I'm glad I did it once just to have the experience and know-how. But now, I also know that paying for a bag of dehydrated shrimp from the grocery store really isn't that expensive. 

Dehydrating #2: Squash

We were at the grocery store one day leisurely pushing the cart around the store. I think we only had one item on our list which was already in our cart. Everything else was bonus. We passed the produce section, and I asked my husband, do you want to try zucchini chips? He okayed the idea so I went to get some.

Now I was a little confused for a bit because the signage in the store said zucchini but the label on the bag said squash. I never really looked into the difference between the two, but the vegetable looked correct for what I wanted, so I bought it and just thought, "I guess I'm making squash chips instead." Turns out that zucchini is a type of squash, but not all squash are zucchini. This makes sense to me as I'm used to seeing squash as a large gourd with tough skin.

I used our mandolin to thinly slice the squash into rounds. I seasoned with a few spritzes of oil and the slightest bit of salt. I placed them into our toaster oven and had to jerry-rig a two-tray system. This was before I bought the extra air fryer baskets for dehydrating. I ended up using the wire rack as my second tray. The slices did begin to curl around the wires as they cooked, but the overall flavor and texture were not affected. They just ended up looking a bit wavy. 

 

 

I found that 135F at 10 hours was a good amount of time to cook squash when sliced into round discs. I made these another time with oblong slices and didn't increase the cooking time - that was a mistake. The second batch with oblong slices was not as crispy as the first batch.  

These chips were so delicious. A lot of them were consumed while sitting in bed watching television in the evening after the kids went to sleep. For me, these were tasty enough to crave and serve as a substitute for potato chips. Now that I have extra dehydrating trays, I can dehydrate 6 squash at one time - it came out to about one squash per tray. 

I told my kids to try these and they did but weren't as impressed as I was. They would still prefer regular chips over these any day. Their palette is still young and immature. 

I really enjoyed making these squash chips and they will definitely be on my list to make again.  

Dehydrating #1 : Kiwi

We've had the same toaster oven since we got married which meant it was just over 11 years old. There was nothing wrong with it - still fully functioning - but our family has changed in the last decade and our needs are different. I found myself wishing I could heat more food in it at a time - if we had chicken and french fries, I couldn't heat enough for our whole family at one time. I could barely heat enough for both my kids at one time. 

This led to some searching online and buying a new toaster oven that was much larger and had more features than our old toaster oven did. The main reason we bought this one was for the size. It's advertised to hold a 20 lb turkey! I don't think I will ever roast a 20 lb turkey in my toaster oven, but it's nice to know the size is there if I ever truly need to. In addition to the size, I was intrigued by the features, primarily, the dehydrating feature. This oven has digital temperature settings as well as a digital timer, neither of which our old toaster oven had. 

We use our new toaster oven a lot to reheat food and toast bread. That's a given. Four years ago, I did an experiment by counting the number of times I used each of our small appliances.  Three specific ones were excluded from the count because I knew we were going to use them all the time and therefore, it wasn't necessary to tally each use. The toaster oven was one of them. 

The first item I wanted to dehydrate was kiwi. I don't even buy kiwi on a regular basis, but it was the first food I immediately thought of when I ventured down this dehydrating path. When I lived overseas for a year, I was exploring a market one evening and came across a booth selling dried fruits and nuts. I saw the dried kiwi and knew I had to try it. It looked so beautifully green and round. I bought a pack (I want to say it was around $5-7USD per pound...?) and just as they appeared, they were delicious. It was a burst of sweet kiwi in my mouth with every bite.

13 years later, I dehydrated my own kiwi. A grocery store had them on sale after we bought the new toaster oven so it seemed like the perfect signal. I was going to dehydrate my own kiwi! I sliced them about a quarter inch thick and laid them out on my rack. The toaster oven automatically set the temperature to 135 degrees F and 8 hours on the dehydrate function. I let it run overnight and the next morning, I had my very own dehydrated kiwi.

It wasn't as beautiful as the bag I bought. The green wasn't as vibrant - they definitely colored theirs. And my kiwi wasn't as sweet as the ones I bought - they added sugar. But it was delicious in a naturally unaltered tart kiwi kind of way. An online blog described it rather well: like a homemade sour gummy candy. 

I really enjoyed them. It was a fun first try with dehydrating! 

Does Size Matter?

Our washer and dryer are going on 12 years old. We purchased them for our first apartment because we could either rent the units from the apartment complex for a monthly fee, or we could buy our own. We bought our own and they've been working hard for the last 12 years. 

We were grocery shopping together last week and got a free sample of laundry detergent from the sample dispenser. The marketing line? 1XL pod = 2 regular size pods. So the sample was 1 XL pod. I turned to my husband and immediately said, "I'd rather have the 2 regular size pods!"

 

Our washer has a 3.6 cu ft capacity. When we purchased our set, I didn't think about the size as much as I did the cost. It was very cost efficient compared to other sets and for just the two of us, it worked great. I've never had trouble with cycles not cleaning well, but size has become an issue. If everyone's (littles and bigs) laundry basket is full, I can't do everyone's laundry in one cycle. It has to be two. Sometimes, if our hamper is completely full, I can't even do all the bigs laundry in one cycle. 

When I look at our washer, it doesn't appear to me as small. 
But when I look inside other washers, mine looks small...

I end up doing a lot of laundry in one week. On an average week, it's about 3 loads. Most of the time, it's not because there's a lot of dirty laundry. There's a decent amount, but if I had a bigger machine, I could do less loads.

I honestly would rather have the 2 regular size pods as a sample because for our machine, 1 XL pod is overkill for 3.6 cu ft of laundry. Whenever I use laundry detergent now, I have to remember to fill the cup for the "medium" loads even though I'm washing an XL load on my machine because that's how much I'm washing compared to what some of the larger machines out there can hold!  From the research I've done, there's a good number of washers between 4.8 - 5.5 cu ft! Our machine is 25-35% smaller than a lot of machines on the market. 

I've been asking myself for years, is it worth it to upgrade to a larger washing machine even though ours works? Sometimes, I tell myself we don't have any problems with our washer and it's fine. Other times, I really want a different machine (a removable agitator?!) to be able to suit my needs (or glorified wants?) better. 

Last year for Black Friday, Lowe's was giving out free appliances to one winner per store. I didn't wake up early to get in line because I don't believe in my chances of winning, but man, it's a nice pipe dream to wish I could have been one of the winners. 

Do you like the size of your machine? 

2025: Books!

I read a lot of books in 2025. I keep one-upping myself from the previous year. Unintentionally. I won't be writing blurbs about all the books I read this year, as honestly, I don't remember too much about each one. As I reflect on this list of reading, I think it's a reflection of my year. There's a lot of light/fun reading this year. When I'm in the mood for light reading, it means I'm looking to read something other than what my reality is experiencing. 

I allow myself to do fun reading now. It's nice to enter into a fictional character's world, see life through their eyes, and then step out when the book finishes. I've had to ask myself: why read if I can't remember half the books I've read?  It feels a little counterproductive at times, spending so many hours with these books and not being able to recall anything of importance. But I think that misses the point.

We meet so many people in our lives throughout the years, and we probably truly keep in touch with less than half, maybe even less than a quarter. Were those people we met before "unnecessary"? I still think about my elementary school friends and how close we were at the time. I'd go to their houses to play or do group projects together. 

Even though our lives were not meant to keep in touch with every single person we've ever met or interacted with, it doesn't mean his/her presence wasn't important at the time, even if only for a short while. I think if we actually did keep in touch with every single person, our lives would explode with anxiety and stress at dealing with so many people all the time. 

So much like our interactions with people and the way only a few (relatively) truly stick around and last, reading books feels the same way at times. We read to explore various characters and stories. Many will be forgotten once the back cover closes and others will linger on in our minds, reminding us of the locations we sat and read or multi-tasked while listening to an audio book.   

 

Ornithologists Guide to Love

Veronica Speedwell #1: A Curious Beginning

Accidentally Amy

Happily Never After

Flirty Little Secret

Veronica Speedwell #2: A Perilous Undertaking

The Love Wager

The Secret Service of Tea and Treason

Veronica Speedwell #3: A Treacherous Curse

Veronica Speedwell #4: A Dangerous Collaboration

The Do Over

Veronica Speedwell #5: A Murderous Relation

P.S. I Hate You

Better Than the Movies

Nothing Like the Movies

The Silence Between Us

Fourth Wing

Iron Flame

Just For the Summer

A Pho Love Story

Love on Paper

You Bet Your Heart

Onyx Storm

Wreck the Halls

Veronica Speedwell #6: An Unexpected Peril 

Part Of Your World

Yours Truly

Powerless

Veronica Speedwell #7: An Impossible Imposter 

First Time Caller

A Sinister Revenge

The Wish Switch

Reckless

Love That Dog

Veronica Speedwell #8: A Grave Robbery

Maid For Each Other

The Friend Zone 

Life's Too Short

Fearless

Hamlet

Sounds Like Love

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion Volume One 

Love and Other Great Expectations

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion Volume Two

I Just Wish I Had a Bigger Kitchen

Love Unmasked

Fearful

(The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe came somewhere before Prince Caspian)

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion Volume Three

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion Volume Four

Prince Caspian 

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion Volume Five

Great Big Beautiful Life  

 

 

 

I made it to 53 this year.  

Takeout with the Tos #27 : Gluten-Free

This may be my last Takeout post of the year. I have still been cooking but a lot of the dishes have been repeats of ones I've already made. When I cooked this gluten-free dish for a friend, it inspired another dish, both which I will talk about in this post. 

One of my friends is gluten-free and I was at her house. I can't remember how it started exactly,  but our conversation went from food to fried chicken to gluten-free to gluten-free flour. I told her I could make her a gluten-free fried chicken if she had the gluten-free flour. Indeed she did! 

I took her flour home and made fried chicken with it! 

You would never believe this was gluten-free if I didn't tell you. 

My breading of preference with fried chicken is actually panko. When I use panko, the crumb is larger so it sticks better to the chicken. When I used the gluten-free flour this time to fry, a lot of the coating went into the frying oil. Not a problem at all, but it doesn't leave a clear oil when you're done frying. In the past, I've just dumped the oil and the flour in it in the trash. However, this time, there seemed to be a lot of extra flour in the oil. 

Then it hit me. I had just fried chicken and inadvertently made a roux! Roux is pronounced "roo" like kanga"roo" if you don't know. Typically, it's made by cooking flour in oil in a pan for a long time before making gumbo. People have created other shortcuts to roux by baking the flour in the oven first before cooking it in the oil to cut down on the stirring time - you must stir your roux or it will burn and burned roux is bitter.  I think I just found the greatest double-duty hack of all time: fry something with a flour batter, and then use the extra cooked flour and oil to make something that requires a roux!

I poured off the excess oil from the top and then I was left 
with this beautiful dark brown, flavorful roux.

Now you might be looking at this in the bottom of my wok and think this is way too much roux to use for any dish. That's exactly what I thought. It was a lot of roux. I pulled out my silicone ice cube molds (which I've never used for ice) and spooned a portion of the roux in. These molds went into my freezer and now I have pre-made roux cubes for next time!

I only spooned out four cubes worth. In retrospect, I probably 
could have spooned out...at least another two. Wisdom for the future.

It was unfortunate I could not share this gumbo with my friend as well as I had fried non-gluten-free food in the same oil after I fried her gluten-free chicken first. I don't know all the contamination rules with gluten and frying, but I wasn't going to risk it. 

My gumbo was not traditional as the Cajun trinity involves onion, bell pepper, and celery. I used neither bell pepper or celery in my "trinity." My gumbo started simply with onion and carrot. Then I added leftover ham, lentils, and shrimp. Not traditional at all, but absolutely delicious. I would definitely make it again and use the same ingredients or even try mixing up other ingredients. I actually enjoy okra in my gumbo but I didn't have any in my freezer so it wasn't included. If this isn't a real gumbo to you, then I guess you can call it a very rich stew. 

Yum.

I flipped the order this time, but this is my cost breakdown:

4 large servings of gumbo at $12.99 per serving: $51.96

15 gluten-free fried chicken tenderloins at $2.50 each: $$37.50

Total: $89.46

Tax: $7.38

Grand Total:  $96.84

It's been a fun year blogging and sharing about my food and stories. I hope you've enjoyed reading about what I cook, how I cook, and occasional tips and tricks with freezing and saving food. I have a couple ideas for themes next year that still revolve around food. When I finalize which one I want to do, you will be reading about it on the blog. If you cooked anything I shared or received inspiration from a recipe, I'd love to hear about it! 

Twenty-One (and some) Years Later

I see my dad on a weekly basis now. Unless he's sick or one of us is sick, we will have a visit every week. I've come to enjoy these visits a lot more. There was a time when I really dreaded going to visit him and felt burdened by having to do so. At the time, each of these visits would leave me drained and sometimes angry. I never wanted to go because I'd leave in a foul mood after. 

It's taken years to reach this point, but my relationship with my dad is the best it's ever been. Now "best" is relative.  We're on a low scale here...by best, I mean we see each other once a week, we don't yell at each other, and we can have some surface-level conversation. Maybe sometimes more than surface-level. But honestly, if we're talking at all, and it's not yelling or reprimanding, that's a positive. 

I never got to have an adult relationship with my mother. When she died, I wrote a letter. In the letter, I listed a series of events and experiences she would miss from my life : my high school graduation, my college graduation, my marriage, the birth of my children. All of these have happened. But one thing I didn't have foresight into: both of us would miss having an adult relationship with each other. She would never stop being my mother, but the relationship of a mother and child is not the same as the relationship of a mother and an adult child. 

I have a vivid memory of being in middle school. I trace the timeline back to about 7th grade because I don't remember my brother being with me. My mother had driven to pick me up from school. I don't remember when she stopped driving, but 7th grade was less than a year before she died. She never waited in the carpool line because traffic was horrendous. Instead, she pulled up a street around from the school, and I'd walk down and look for her car. 

Upon opening the door, I got in the seat and loaded my violin and backpack around me. Immediately, I got yelled at because my violin was in the way of my mother's ability to drive. I got angry she snapped at me. We drove home in a sour mood and didn't speak to each other. I vaguely remember her later explaining to me she couldn't reach the gas pedal properly due to my violin being in the way, and that was dangerous. 

She was right. All these years later, I know she was right. I was just being a bratty teenager who didn't want to be corrected, and in that moment, I was annoyed at how bulky my backpack and instrument were. As an adult and mother myself now, if my child did the same thing, I'd be snapping at him/her in an instant, too.

I never had the chance to drive my mother around. She died a year and a half before I received my driver's license. I've driven my dad around a number of times on adventures with my children. I often wonder if it's strange for him to see me now doing things for him he used to do for me.  For a while, I resented the fact that it wasn't her. Why didn't my mother get to be the one to play with my kids and hear their laughter? Why wasn't my mother the one sitting in the passenger seat beside me as I drove? 

I learned to stop asking why. No answers will ever suffice for these questions. For now, I'm just glad my dad and I have time.