This time of year many of us reevaluate our eating habits and make renewed resolutions to health and weight loss goals. Incorporating freeze dried fruits and vegetables into your plan can help you achieve those goals by reducing the time and money it takes to eat a healthy diet. Plus, as the winter months stretch into February, nothing tastes better than fresh summer produce. Now is the time to get started building your stash.

You actually don’t even have to rehydrate fruits and vegetables to enjoy them – they’re delicious as a crunchy snack in their freeze dried state. However, it’s easy to rehydrate produce to eat cooked or to add to recipes. For some fruit, just place it in a bowl of water and let it soak until it’s rehydrated. Or, you can just spritz it with water, or add water a little at a time and add it directly to your recipes. Rehydrated fruit is perfect for pies, cobblers and on top of yogurt, warm oatmeal or in creamy smoothies.

Vegetables are also easy to rehydrate – just prepare them as if they were fresh from your garden. Add hot water into a bowl of freeze dried veggies, or add water and warm in the microwave or simply cook them on the stovetop. You can easily add freeze dried vegetables right into your favorite soup recipes just like you would fresh or frozen vegetables. And, for leafy greens, just spritz with water or put them in a large ziplock bag with a moist paper towel so avoid making them soggy. Freeze dried leafy greens are also wonderful when crushed into a powder and added to spaghetti sauce or toss the crunchy greens right into your favorite smoothie recipe for a nutritional boost.