Don't blanch as a rule. I prefer to process fresh into the dehydrator. Some foods, like peaches or bananas, often require application of "Fruit Fresh", or some other ascorbic acid to preserve color. Some foods, like potatoes, must be blanched to stop the enzymatic process (usually starchy root veggies are the ones). Often I just dice the potatoes and nuke them for 4 minutes or so and the enzymes are deactivated and the starches set.

By the way, I had some complications with getting all my sausage made up this weekend. Too late I discovered I didn't have the right nozzle for the smaller casings, so I ended up processing 12 lbs of breakfast sausage into half links and half bulk. I froze the links on teflon cookie sheets then bagged them up. That was Saturday. Yesterday I went on a quest to find the righ nozzle for my sausage stuffer to do my snack sticks. Finally found what I needed at Bass Pro Shops and beat feet back home and processed up 10 lbs of sticks. Unlike the breakfast sausage, which is fresh, I had to put the sticks in the refrigerator to cure for a day before smoking and dehydrating them. Of course, today the weather is nasty out, so I am hoping by the time I get home it will subside enough I can run a few pans of hickory in the smoker enough to get the sticks started, then load them into the dehydrator or leave them overnight in the smoker and pull them Tuesday morning. They should lose about 1/3 of their weight or more due to moisture loss. I ended up using lean ground beef (2/3) and ground pork (1/3), which seems to make an ideal dry sausage blend, much the same as my old butcher's recipe for elk snack sticks.

I'll let you know how they turn out. Now that I have the right nozzle, I can plan on cranking out more sticks. They are a real crowd pleaser.

As for the veggies, we will just have to take advantage of that next time there's deals in town.

One thing I can let y'all know, working ground meat by hand that is ice cold will give your hands an ice cream headache enough to make you howl. Until I can get me one of them big Hobart mixers, this is the only way I know to properly mix ground meat into sausage. It is miserable pain, especially with arthritis, but it is still worth it. When I was done, I had to have the wife help pry my fingers open under luke warm tap water.