Dessicated (or Desecrated) Vegetables
With thanks to CW Re-enactors' List
You will need a food dehydrator for this to work well. It can be substituted by doing this stuff in the oven, but it is a great deal harder to work with in the end.
Ingredients:
Cabbage, 2 medium to large heads
Carrots, 1/2 bag of sliced, frozen kind will do.
Turnips, about 4 medium sized with the tops on them.
Parsnips, about half the volume amount of turnips
Onions, maybe 3-4 of the smaller yellow onions.
VEGETABLE PREPARATION:
Slice the cabbage into quarters, then remove the stem, and separate them so that the leaves are not connected to each other. Cut the turnips into small slices with the turnip tops diced into smaller
portions and set away from the meatier turnip bodies. Slice the onions up.
VEGETABLE COOKING:
In a large pot, boil the turnip tops and cabbage together until tender. In a separate pot, cook the boil the rest of the ingredients together until they are cooked completely. DO NOT OVER COOK the veggies. They must be done almost completely but still retain a hard texture. Drain everything well, pressing as much water out as you can. The best way to do this is take a smaller bowl and push it on the veggies in the strainer to get out as much water as possible. The more water you remove now, the less the dehydration process will be.
DEHYDRATING THE VEGETABLES:
If using the dehydrator, use the 4" x 4" x 3" freezer containers for molding the veggies into shape. It will help if you poke a lot of small holes into the containers (about the size of the tip of a ball point pen) to aid in the dehydration process.
If using the oven method, put the veggies into a 9"x13" pan and preset the oven to 200-250`F.
Layer the veggies into the containers in the following manner:
Cabbage mix (1/2 inch), carrot mix (one even layer)
Always start and end with the cabbage mix. The layering should end up with a 3 inch thick lasagna type dish.
If using the dehydrator, dehydrate the containers until the veggies in them become hard bricks. There can not be any moisture in the mix when done with it. This can take a few days to do. When done, take out and it should be ready to go.
If using the oven method, put the pan in the oven, then put a wooden spoon or something in the door of the oven so that the moisture will escape. This may also take hours to work.
When they are all done, take a saw (yes I said a saw, like a butcher's bone saw or a clean carpenter's miter box saw) and cut the big block into smaller blocks of about 2-4 inch squares. You may need to first trim off the edges if they have turned dark brown before trimming the bricks into the appropriate sizes.
AN EXTRA TOUCH:
You may also want to wrap the bricks into brown butcher paper (the older dark brown type and not the newer shinny light brown stuff). This will hide the plastic bag and give it an authentic packaged look. I am not sure if it was issued in the brown wrapper, but it will still look good while you are holding on to it until you are ready to use it. It will also keep the black powder out of the veggies if you spill or split a cartridge in your haversack before you are ready for dinner.
DISTRIBUTION:
To distribute a small quantity of these, please find the following:
1 Qtrmstr Sgt for the distributing of these items.
1 Armed guard to keep the enlisted from trying to kill the Qtrmstr Sgt.
and an optional horse to aid in the Qtrmstr's escape.
