excalibur Archives | Heavenly Homemakers

I haven’t attempted to turn a cartwheel since I was in my early twenties. I actually almost pulled a muscle just picturing myself turning a cartwheel today. BUT, I am so excited about the next two weeks I really am tempted to do some flips. After a lot of emailing, planning, organizing and brainstorming, I have a lot to tell you about. Where should I start?

First maybe I should explain what Funky Fresh Kitchen is all about.

Fall is almost here. I don’t know if you are like me, but this time of year I’m always looking for a fresh start. I want to get into a nice, organized routine. I want to set new goals for my family and for my kitchen. I want to enjoy all the wonderful, fresh food of harvest time. I want to start baking again as the weather turns cooler. I want to try new recipes. And I want my kitchen to be funky.

Funky? Yes, funky. Functional, if you really want to be technical, but I like calling it a Funky Kitchen, mostly because it makes me giggle. (Obviously, I’m easily amused.)

Make plans to join us here for the next two weeks of Funky Fresh Kitchen fun! I have new recipes to share, I’ll be offering up some challenges (are you ready to get your game on?), I’ve got some incredible giveaways and there will be some majorly discounted items in our shop.

I’ve got so many posts and so much excitement, I’m going to suggest that you may want to subscribe to Heavenly Homemakers and/or join my Facebook page so that you don’t miss anything. Trust me, you don’t want to miss anything.

The giveaways I have lined up? Well, you may just want to join me in the cartwheel attempts after you hear about these. Are you ready?

Cultures for Health has agreed to give away an Excalibur Food Dehydrator!! It’s true. AND (yes, I am screaming here) Paula’s Bread has offered to give away my most favorite Funky Fresh Kitchen item ever: a Nutrimill!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Let us all pause now for a moment of synchronized cartwheel turning and screaming.)

And don’t forget the new recipes I’ll be sharing. Some are chocolate and some include broccoli and all of them are easy and will inspire you to make fresh, healthy changes in your kitchen. Goodness, I’m so excited while I’m typing, I’m realizing that I have forgotten to breathe. You are all still breathing aren’t you? Okay good. We can’t all pass out before we even begin all the fun.

Share this post with all your friends on Facebook and in your neighborhood and tell your sisters and cousins and friends at church and college roommates and your bff and your bff’s sisters and cousins and everyone you can think of who could and should join us as we pursue our Funky Fresh Kitchens.

funkykitchencoversm To get us started, we are offering our Do the Funky Kitchen eBook (which is regularly $4.95) ~~for only $1.00. Yes, a buck.~~ Read my favorite tips and suggestions for achieving a funky (functional) and organized kitchen, fresh and clean for fall. ~~But hurry – our discounted price of $1.00 will only be available for the first 100 purchasers.~~ As of now, you can purchase Do the Funky Kitchen eBook for just $1.50 – available for the next 150 purchasers!! After that, the price will creep up little by little throughout the week. Take advantage of this deal while you can!

Watch for specials and discounts like this for the next two weeks during this Funky Fresh Kitchen feature.

Also: By leaving a comment on ANY post with the above Funky Fresh Kitchen button featured, you will be entered to win one of five $10 gift certificates good for anything downloadable in our Heavenly Homemakers Shop. Because the button is featured on this post, comments right here and now will be added to the drawing for our gift certificates! Let the commenting, the Funky Kitchen eBook purchasing, the facebooking and sharing begin!

Watch for frequent updates, new ideas and recipes, discounts and giveaways – you don’t want to miss a thing. Thanks for joining me! It’s gonna be a great two weeks!

My friend Anne told me last summer that if I was going to invest in a good food dehydrator, to get an Excalibur Food Dehydrator because they were the best!

Much to my loudly squealing delight, a few weeks ago Cultures for Health sent me a Excalibur Food Dehydrator free of charge, in exchange for telling you all about it here on my blog! Wow, wow, wow. I love every package delivered to my door, but this big ol’ box may have made me jump a just little higher (poor UPS man).

My husband and I are having such a fun time giving our Excalibur Food Dehydrator a work-out! This is the perfect time of year for us to give the dehydrator a whirl as we have all kinds of fresh produce needing to be preserved.

See the pretty peach fruit leather?

peach_fruit_leather

Matt cut up a bunch of our red jalapeno peppers and dehydrated them. Here they are before they went into the dehydrator…

dehydrating_peppers

And then just a few hours later…

dehydrating_peppers_2

We then ground them up to put on pizza and in chili. SO easy!!

Beyond fruits and vegetables, I’ve used the dehydrator to quickly dry homemade pasta! Note to self: Don’t cut the pasta too short when planning to put it in your dehydrator. Or, for Pete’s sake, make good use of your Paraflex Sheets!

homemade_noodles_16

The noodles still turned out great even if they were “bent out of shape”. I’ll be sharing the recipe soon!

Our dehydrator has five drying trays, which makes it possible to preserve a lot of food all at one time. LOVE that! The best part about anExcalibur Food Dehydrator is that all of the food drys evenly so that we don’t have to rotate the trays or be frustrated because one is done and the others aren’t yet. Oh, and if we only need two trays at once, we only put two trays in. There are several different “heat settings” so that you can keep some of your food raw if you want or even make yogurt!

We are LOVING our Excalibur Food Dehydrator and appreciate that Cultures for Health was kind enough to send it to us. We can’t wait to see what we can dehydrate next!!!

I’m sure you’d enjoy looking over the Cultures for Health site. They have wonderful products to make cultured dairy products and cheese and sprouted grain and more…not to mention the awesome Excalibur Food Dehydrator!!