My Year Living On Food Storage

REAL Cream of Wheat

2011-10-09T23:15:00.000-07:00

Have you ever made homemade cream of wheat? It does not even resemble the stuff you buy in the box and it is YUMMY, and so good for you. I made some this week and took pictures in case you have not tried it.

First you need to grind the wheat very coarsely. My electric wheat grinder can't do coarse enough. My hand grinder can but it's too big of a pain to drag out so I use this handy little coffee grinder. (You can also use a blender with the pulse setting.)

Just put a handful of wheat in there and grind it until it looks roughly like this:

I actually usually don't do it quite this fine because I like the larger pieces in my cereal. They kind of pop in your mouth when you are eating them and they are SO good! Anyway, once you grind your wheat, bring about 1 cup of milk and a pinch of salt almost to a boil on the stove and then add 1/2 cup of your ground wheat. Whisk it to prevent lumps.

Cook over low heat 10-20 minutes depending on how fine you have ground your wheat. Use the longer time for more coarse wheat. You also may need to add more milk to get the desired thickness. Continue to stir ocassionally. When the cereal is cooked add a half a tsp of vanilla and brown sugar if you want - I definitely do!

Yea I do stir that in before I eat it :)

One of my favorite breakfasts on a cold morning, and it is really good for you (minus the brown sugar maybe :)

Also, I found Ghee on sale at Costco this month! If you don't know what that is, it's clarified butter. Keeps for 6-12 months and does not need to be refrigerated. I bought a Costco sized bottle for just $15 which is a screamin good deal for Ghee.

The guy at checkout was fairly dubious I knew what to do with this. He said, "Do you know what this is?" I promised him I did. He was not convinced and said, looking at my lilly white skin "You know Indians are the ones who use this." HaHa!

Ghee on homemade bread

Anyway, if you've never used Ghee it does taste like butter but has a more grainy texture. It will become hard if you put it in the fridge but on the counter stays at a more liquid state. It does melt normally on toast and stuff but definitely takes some getting used to. Believe me, if it's all you had, you would LOVE it. However, it does need to be rotated regularly with such a short shelf life so if your family doesn't like it enough to use it now it might not work for you.

Also, if you live near a WinCo - ours began carrying Gamma lids a short while ago and they are just $6.49! That is a great price and I love these screw on lids for 5 gallon buckets. It's so much easier to get in and out of my buckets and keep things rotated. I did notice that Emergency Essentials also has them on sale right now if you need some and don't have a WinCo.

Canning Pears

2011-09-25T22:19:00.000-07:00

Every year my friend places are large order of pears from the LDS church's pear orchards, and every year I can them.

Pears are actually the only fruit that I like canned. Everything else gets too mushy for me. Anyway, this year I took a bunch of pictures so I could blog about it.

To start with, pears only require waterbath canning so you don't need a pressure canner for this. Besides the canner (or even just a giant pot really), you need basic canning supplies and jars and lids. Some people really prefer Ball jars over Kerr but I've used both and didn't see any difference. I do, however, only use wide mouth jars. They are easier to fill and empty. Amazon has a pretty nice section devoted just to canning supplies and information. Shop around though because Walmart's prices are sometimes cheaper.

First I ran my jars and rings through the dishwasher to clean and sterilize them. I just left them in there until I was ready to fill them so they would be nice and hot. Cold jars into a hot canner = exploding glass. And yes, I speak from sad experience.....

Then I filled up a big container of water and added some Fruit Fresh. This keeps the pears from turning brown. You can also use lemon juice.

Peel the pears, cut them in half and use a melon baller to core them. You can cut them into smaller pieces of you want but it just seemed like extra work to me, plus I like them bigger so they retain as much of their shape as possible. I kept the pears in the Fresh Fruit solution until they went into the jars.

Pears must be packed in a solution of water and sugar or fruit juice. It's up to you which to use. I have tried both and I didn't not like the juice nearly as much. Sugar is added to improve flavor, help stabilize color, and retain the shape of the fruit. It is not added as a preservative. When making the sugar water syrup you can make it heavy, medium, or light, depending on what you prefer. My family likes the medium. To prepare syrup, heat water, add sugar slowly, stirring constantly to dissolve. Bring to a gentle boil. After preparing the liquid syrup, keep it hot (but not boiling).

Sugar Syrup


_Syrup	_Sugar	_Water	_Yield
Light	2 cups	6 cups	7 cups
Medium	3 cups	6 cups	6 1/2 cups
Heavy	4 cups	6 cups	7 cups

Now I had multiple items going on the stove. First the water was heating in the canner, plus I had my lids sterilizing in a small pot, and finally I had the syrup heating so it would be ready to add to the jars.

Once everything was hot and ready to go, I could add the pears to the quart jars. I only took a couple out of the dishwasher at a time to preserve heat. Then I carefully placed the pears in the jar packing them tightly without squishing them. Now many people hot pack the pears, meaning they boil them in the sugar water for 5 minutes or so before putting them in the jars. I have always cold packed them and they turn out fine.

Once the pears are in the jar you need to pour some of your syrup in the jar, leaving about 1/2 inch head space. The pears should be covered completely by the syrup. Then take a knife and release all the air bubble trapped under the pears.

Finally, wipe the top of the jars with a clean, dry, towel to remove any moisture or food particles that might prevent a good seal. Carefully take a lid from the hot water and place it on your jar with a ring. Do not over tighten the lid. Turn the ring until it just tightens and then stop.

Place the jars carefully into the canner. They should be covered with at least 1 inch of water. Also, never put jars directly on the bottom of the canner, they need to go on a rack like the ones that come with the canner. Use the chart below to calculate your processing time:

Water Bath Times. Recommended process time for Pears, halved or sliced in a boiling-water canner, in pints or quart jars.
Process Time at Altitudes of
Jar size	0 - 1,000 ft	1,001 - 3,000 ft	3,001 - 6,000 ft	Above 6,000 ft
pints	20 min	25	30	35
quarts	25 min	30	35	40

After processing, use your jar grabber to carefully remove your jars from the canner. Do not tilt the jars as you remove them, and carefully place them on a towel or rack. Again, placing them on a cool, or even room temperature, counter can cause the jars to crack or explode.

Leave the jars out for 24 hours without touching or bumping them. After they are cooled, you can tell if they're sealed by pushing on the center of the lid and listening for a popping sound. If the lid pops, it did not seal. You will need to put that jar into the fridge and eat it soon.

When you are ready to put the jars into storage (store in a cool, dark place for maximum shelf life) be sure to remove the rings. Lids can sometimes lose their seal and then reseal if the ring is still on tight. You will never know the seal was compromised. If you remove the rings the lid can not reseal.

Canned pears will maintain quality best when stored up to 66 months at 40/F, 40 months at 70/F, or 15 months at 90/F.

On a related note, I also canned more chicken. I did breasts this time but since I had used up all my quart jars, I had to do them in pint jars. That was a mistake because a pint jar only holds 1 1/2 chicken breasts LOL! Way too small for my family. Still it's all I had so I did it.

I really can't get over how EASY it is to can chicken. I was cramming it in between a soccer game and a baptism and didn't have any trouble. I also tried my re-usable canning lids on a couple of them. Last time I had trouble with those sealing but this time I lightly tightened the rings as normal, and then after I took them out of the canner I tightened them down further. Both of mine sealed correctly.

For a more detailed post on canning chicken please see my previous post: Canning Chicken with Re-Usable Canning Lids.

Yes, I am aware that canned chicken looks like a Biology dissection experiment waiting to happen, however, if you can get past the looks, it really is incredibly convenient and delicious. You don't add any liquid when canning chicken so what you are seeing is pure chicken broth from that chicken. Plus, it does not need to be refrigerated so you can take this chicken camping without having to worry about keeping it in the ice chest. Or if you get home late and have to throw dinner together in a hurry, there you have precooked chicken just ready to shred or chop into whatever recipe. I really can't say enough about how great it is!

I Must Be Crazy!

2011-07-31T19:24:00.000-07:00

So I bit the bullet and decided to agree to be a guest on a blog radio show for preparedness. It's called the "Doctor Prepper Show" - so cute right?! Anyway, it's a live show so I'm pretty nervous but I figure I'm only talking about what I know so it should be fine. Plus, I usually jump at any chance to help people become more prepared.

If you want to listen in, the show will be at 11am PST on Tuesday August 2nd. You can listen in at this link. If you listen live you can call in with questions. If you can't make it for the live show you can listen to the recorded version later.

Wish me luck!

My Food Storage Cookbook

2011-07-24T19:47:00.000-07:00

Anyone that has followed my blog at all knows that my whole adventure had just one purpose - figure out how to actually live off food storage. The hardest part of that was finding recipes that call for just food storage.

Well, that job just got a whole lot easier! My good friend just started a blog called MyFoodStorageCookbook where she lists hundreds of food storage only recipes that she has tried. She also introduces her recipe system that she uses to keep it all rotated and to ensure that her family has something different to eat every single day for a whole year if they had to live off their storage. AMAZING!

I encourage you to take a look.

Powdered Peanut Butter

2011-07-03T21:37:00.000-07:00

Did you know that peanut butter does not have a long shelf life? I didn't. Duh. You would think the fact that it's practically swimming in oils would have clued me in but no. I bought a whole years worth before I realized I had a problem.

It really is a tragedy. Peanut butter is beautiful on so many levels. First it's a good protein source, it's also a great thickener, it's delicious, and in a pinch it really will satisfy a sweet tooth if you have nothing else. But alas, I have to move on to peanut butter plan B.

So I purchase some powdered peanut butter. Not my idea of fun, but then neither is living without peanut butter. I found a company that seemed very excited about their product AND they would let me purchase just a small trial package - BONUS! I love that some companies are doing that now. No more buying a #10 can of something just to try it and find you hate it.
However, if you are ready to take the plunge and get a whole jar of it, you can also find it at Amazon, which is very convenient because I pretty much shop there weekly......

Anyway, they actually have different flavors of peanut butter, one of which is CHOCOLATE peanut butter. Seriously. I would never kid about chocolate for food storage. Of course I bought a trial package of that too.

So here is the run down. Instructions say it is 2 parts PB powder to one part water. I tried that and the flavor was actually really good, however the consistency was a bit off. So next I tried half/half water and oil with the PB powder. That made the consistency better, but now the flavor was off.

In the end I decided that it is better with just the water. I can live with a slightly different consistency. Plus I'm imagining 1,000 beautiful uses for chocolate peanut butter in food storage :)

The shelf life of powdered peanut butter is not fabulous, just 12 months, but that is probably because there are no preservatives in it. The only ingredients are roasted peanuts, sugar, and salt. It's a solid alternative to regular peanut butter but it will have to be rotated regularly.

When Camping Spots Attack..........

2011-06-19T17:50:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I HATE camping! Totally and completely. I didn't always feel this way, when I was a kid I thought it was the greatest thing ever, but that was back when I didn't plan, pack, cook, clean, or care about dirt. Now I'm the mom and seriously, WHAT can be fun about living in the dirt and trying to feed your family out of an ice chest? But I digress.....

There is one upside to camping for me and that is that camping supplies, by their very nature, are emergency perparation items, SO when I found myself unavoidably forced to go camping last week I resolved to at least stock up on a bunch of emergency preparedness "necessities."

I figured if I was going to have to camp, I was at least going to be as comfortable as possible so we went to Cabelas and practically bought out the store's camping section. I'm not kidding. We had THREE sales guys helping us load all our stuff on a big pallet cart. They were so excited I could tell they were looking at all the stuff we were buying and thinking "Well our jobs are secure for the rest of the year!"

Not to make anyone jealous but we got 2 tents (one is 10x20!), a nice, large cooking stove with accessories, a kitchen complete with a kitchen sink :), a shower WITH hot water, a giant shade screen to fit around our picnic table and kitchen to avoid bugs, 2 double high air mattresses with sleeping bags that convert to a bed set so you aren't squished into a narrow sleeping bag, plus a host of other things. Yep I was going to be camping in style and getting prepared at the same time, or so I thought.

So we traveled all the way down to Arches, UT for our little adventure and truthfully I was excited to try out my new stuff. It took us four hours to set up camp but I figured it would be worth it. We were camping with all of my extended family, some in tents, and some had rented RV's that were in adjacent sites to our group site. You can see from the picture how awesome our spot was. Day one went great, I LOVED my kitchen and the new "beds" were so comfortable I slept like a baby all night. Day 2 was still going well when the men and older kids decided to go on an evening hike about 7pm, leaving us women folk at camp with the little children.

My sister and I watched the 2 littlest boys playing in the sand while the other kids were off playing somewhere nearby. We chatted at the picnic table enjoying the relative peace and quiet when all of the sudden we were hit with a wall of sand traveling up to 100 mph! We watched in horror as our 2 little boys were swallowed up by the sand. I ran to my 4 year old and did the only thing I could, I wrapped him up in a human cocoon to keep him safe while my bare arms and legs were pelted mercilessly by the flying sand. My mind was in a panic wondering where my other kids were but it was impossible for me to move the wind was so strong. As soon as it let up the littlest bit I picked up my son and ran for the tent thinking I would put him in it and search for my other kids. However I saw that the poles had come loose and were flying dangerously in the wind, it was about to collapse. I had to instead put him under the semi covered "porch" of tent number 2 and tell him to stay there with his eyes closed. I had no choice but to leave him to find my other 2 kids. I struggled against the sand and wind screaming their names but the storm was so loud no one could hear me. I started to panic. I had no idea where they were and no way to find them. I bumped into one of my nieces who yelled over the storm that she thought they made it to one of the RVs. I ran over there and opened the door. There was my 6 year old, on the floor of the RV curled up in the fetal position crying. My 8 year old daughter had found him tumbling down the road like a tumbleweed and rescued him. She sobbed to me, "I was with cousin Jacob too mom but I couldn't save them both. I had to save my brother. I don't know what happened to Jacob."

I think the storm (I hear they are called a microburst) lasted probably less than a minute but it felt like SO much longer. When it was all over everyone was safe but our camp was decimated. All of my stuff survived but only because we were on the side more sheltered by the trees, my siblings were not so lucky. Three tents were literally torn to shreds and their poles bent beyond repair. Everything we owned had sand in it. Even my camera which had been in my tent, in it's case, was full of sand. My sister's family spent the night in their van as nearly everything they brought was destroyed. The next day we packed up and left.

So what does this have to do with food storage? Well I learned that most of today's camping equipment is meant to be used in the cushiest of circumstances, in nice weather, in a nice campground. Of course you can buy extreme weather items, but who does that? Almost everything I own would be of no use unless conditions were basically beautiful.

I will say that when the weather was good everything functioned wonderfully. The hot showers were AMAZING and cooking was a breeze. I even brought my canned hamburger and made tacos. My siblings thought that was one of the coolest things ever, no need to refrigerate the meat, and didn't even have to cook it, just reheated it.

However, I'm no longer deluding myself into thinking that we could use our camping gear for any kind of long term, rugged emergency situtation. I'll have to consider that and make up a new plan. In the meantime, I am grateful that although I came by this knowledge the hard way, the only thing that was lost is replaceable. We feel so blessed that the people we love most were safe and in the end we were all reunited. After it was all over my mom said to me, "Why would God let this happen to us?" but all I can feel is gratitude that He protected us all when it did.

Canning Chicken with Re-useable Canning Lids

2011-05-01T18:53:00.001-07:00

So I tried canning chicken several weeks ago but I'm only just now getting around to blogging about it. Pesky Spring Break vacations and such have kept me from my blog :)

So I wasn't initially going to bother canning chicken. I already store the store bought chicken in a can, which I don't mind the taste of, and it stretches pretty far. However, curiosity got the better of me as so many people sing the praises of home canning chicken. To make it interesting I decided to can boneless thighs and I used re-usable canning lids.

If you haven't heard of re-usable lids they are made by Tattler and supposedly you can use them over and over rather than having to throw them out after each use like the metal ones. I've been wanting to try them out for awhile because no matter how many lids I store, I'll eventually run out. Re-usable ones seem like a smarter way to go.

To start off, I boiled my lids and their rubber ring, just like you would with regular lids. The white lid you see in the pot is just like the regular metal canning lid, although it's not metal. The red ring you see is a rubber gasket that provides the seal. It is also re-usable.

You do not need to precook the chicken. It will cook as it boils in the canner. I put 1 tsp of chicken bouillon in the bottom of each jar. This is not necessary but I was interested in having really good broth for chicken soup. I cut all the fat off my boneless, skinless thighs, and then put them into the jars. There is no need to add any liquid. You should not pack them down tightly but they cook down quite a bit during the canning process. Next time I will put more in than I did this time. Make sure that you leave an inch of head room though.

Now the jars are ready to go into my canner. You can see in this photo the three jars in front showing the three steps to putting the lids on. First make sure your jar rim is clean. Then put on the rubber gasket. Next place the white lid on top. Finally, put on the metal ring. Tighten as you normally would, then turn BACK a 1/4 turn. That is the only thing that was different about using these lids.

I had my first canning accident as I put in my first jar of chicken. I had no sooner put it in the canner then I heard a giant CRACK! Ugh, the bottle had cracked and the bottom came off completely. It was my own fault, I had let the jars get too cool and then put them in the hot canner. I had to throw that whole jar away. Bummer. I ran hot water on the rest of the jars before putting them in the canner. Thankfully there were no other problems.

Here are my jars of chicken all done hot out of the canner. See that liquid? That is pure chicken broth baby! YUM! Ok, I know it doesn't look that appetizing. In fact my MIL came over, looks very skeptically at my jars and said, "Um, can I ask what that is?" I tried to answer as matter of factly as possible. "It's canned chicken." She said, "But you aren't going to eat it like that?" "Well, you certainly can, it's fully cooked, but I'll most likely be shredding it for enchiladas and such." She responded, "Well, you really are Miss Betty Homemaker aren't you?" LOL! I know we preparedness people look like freaks to the outside world. I'm totally ok with that.

So now for the bad news. I had a 50% fail rate on my re-useable lids. Half of them did not seal. However, I'm pretty sure that this was user error. I think I might have loosened them too much before putting them in the canner. So I'm going to give them another shot because I really like them. I definitely like the whole concept. I've used several jars of chicken since canning them and I just put the lids and rings in the dishwasher, and they are ready to be used again.

Here are a few of the items I have made with my canned chicken. It has been super convenient and really yummy. I absolutely love just grabbing a jar of chicken and using it in meals.

The first thing I made was chicken noodle soup so I used the broth and everything. I just dumped the whole jar into the crockpot and shredded up the chicken. It was really good, flavorful soup.

I also made homemade toquitos. Wow, they were so awesome! Usually these would be a lot more work but all I had to do was drain the chicken, shred it with a fork, and add it to my recipe. Awesome!

Finally tonight we had homemade chicken pot pie. Again, it would have taken a lot longer without the convenience of just grabbing the jar and shredding the chicken. Absolute perfection if I do say so myself. :)

I'm definitely a fan, and will continue to can both hamburger and chicken. I have a date to help my SIL can her meat too so I'm sure that she'll be converted soon as well. I find that the chicken goes a long way. We've only used 3 quart jars so far and we are feeding 8 people. I'm planning my canned meat as part of my 3 month supply since it does need to be rotated regularly. Canned meat expires in about a year.

Yet Another Attempt at Butter

2011-02-20T20:18:00.000-08:00

Ok, I know my blogs on spreadable butter are endless but a friend gave me another recipe to try. If you can get past the "ick" factor it's actually pretty good! Here's the recipe:

1 lb shortening (I used butter flavor Crisco)
1/2 tsp salt
1 2/3 evap milk OR sweetened condensed milk

Whip the shortening and the salt until light. Add the evap milk a little at a time and blend.

I like it with the sweetened condensed milk better. It more closely resembled sweet cream butter, but my kids preferred the evap milk.

I know it's hard to get past the thought of eating Crisco, but if you can, the actual taste and consistency was pretty good. My biggest worry was that it would not melt. That's my hubby's biggest criteria. If it doesn't melt, he won't even try it. I put it on toast though and it melted right in just like butter.

Anyway, it's not the perfect solution yet, but it's one more idea. Plus, it's made of stuff I already store and it is shelf stable which is a plus.

Canning Hamburger

2011-02-06T15:39:00.001-08:00

Ok I finally did it. I set some time aside and canned hamburger. I've been putting it off because I just couldn't imagine wanting to spend the time canning it when I can just throw it in the freezer. Well how WRONG I was! I'll tell you why later, but first let's get to the process.

First I fried up a bunch of ground beef from Costco. I'm not sure how much I started with but it was lean ground beef. You do not want to can high fat ground beef. I drained the meat well before putting it in the jars. You can cook this up with onions and other seasonings and can it like that. I did it plain just because then I can use it however I want later. Next time though I think I will fry it up with onions. I almost never use ground beef without onions.

Next I took sterile quart canning jars and I put one beef bouillon cube in the bottom. Some people use just water, some people use beef broth, but this is just the way I did it.

Next I added ground beef. I filled up the jars but did not pack them tightly. I think I might try packing in a little more next time because my jars didn't seem to hold as much meat as other people's. Once the meat was in, I filled the jars up with boiling water, leaving 1 inch of head room. Then I carefully wiped the rims and put the lids on.
Now I had read some people put raw hamburger in the jars since it cooks as it cans. I decided to try one jar like that. I packed it full of raw hamburger and then put a tsp or so or beef broth flavoring on top. There is no need to add liquid to these jars so I just put the lid on.

Next I placed them in my pressure cooker. I can fit 7 quart jars in my canner. This is the first time I have used a pressure cooker and I was a little nervous. I took my gauge into my local county extension office to get it calibrated but I have heard horror stories about pressure canners exploding so I made all my kids stay out of the kitchen. :)
When canning hamburger it needs to cook at 11 pounds of pressure for 90 minutes. If you are doing pints then it's 11lbs for 75 minutes. I had to pretty much stand next to the pressure cooker for 90 minutes as the pressure didn't stay completely steady the whole time and I had to make minor adjustments to the heat. This was the only really time consuming part.
After the 90 minutes are up you turn off the heat, however, it does take a while for the pressure in your canner to subside. You just have to wait, although you don't need to babysit it anymore. Once the pressure is gone, you can remove the lid and carefully remove your jars. They should sit on your counter for 24 hours to cool. You can see it the picture the difference between the precooked meat (on the right) and the raw meat (on the left). The precooked meat looked MUCH more appetizing and had a lot less fat in it. Still I was trying to reserve judgement until I tried it.

The next morning I checked on my jars and you can see that the grease had coagulated in a ring. The raw meat jar looked truly disgusting. I also wasn't sure it has sealed properly so I put it in the fridge to use right away. All of my other jars looked great!
Just FYI, I decided to do another batch of pint jars and to actually rinse the meat to see if I could get rid of that ring of fat. I suppose it doesn't really matter but it just didn't look very yummy. It worked since they had virtually no white ring but again, not sure it mattered other than aesthetically, and it might even have been a bad thing as some of the flavor no doubt washed away as well.

Ok, so, we did try to eat the jar that began as raw meat, and I say try because I never did manage to even get it out of the jar. It was a like a rock solid little meat loaf in there. After gouging at it with all sorts of implements with little success of dislodging the meat, I gave up and threw it in the trash, jar and all. Guess I won't do it that way again. It could have been extra hard because I had it in the fridge but it looked so revolting to begin with that I'm not even going to try it that way again.

I have also used some of the other meat. It's SO terrific! I couldn't tell the difference between that and meat cooked up fresh. Plus the convenience of just grabbing a jar, draining it, and fixing dinner was indescribable. I'm forever forgetting to take meat out of the freezer in the morning so this is a huge blessing to me. Plus if we ever lost power for very long, I would lose all of my meat in the freezer. Canned meat will last at least a year. Longer if stored correctly.

One other note. Most people say you can fit 1lb of hamburger into a pint jar, and 2lbs into a quart jar. I didn't get nearly that much into a jar. In fact I would say it was about half that. Maybe it's because I didn't pack it tight enough, or maybe they were talking about precooked weight, but just wanted to let you know that my experience was different.

I'm not going to can all my meat. After all, you can't use it to make hamburgers :) but I'm going to keep enough for my family for 3 months. I haven't canned any of my hubby's elk yet. I'm waiting for a month to go by, then I'm going to eat some more of this meat and make sure that the taste stands up over time. I'm hopeful though.

Give it a try if you are at all interested. It's just one more tool in your preparedness box!

15 Minutes of Fame

2011-01-30T13:51:00.000-08:00

You remember that my favorite food storage website was collecting food storage only recipes? Well I submitted like 7 hoping they would choose at least one so I could qualify for a PDF of all the recipes. Good news! This week they are featuring one of the recipes that I sent in! For this week it's right there on their homepage. After this week I think it will show up on this page: Wheat Applesauce Cake This is likely to be my one and only shot at 15 minutes of fame so go check it out.

Also, I added another page to my blog today that includes a list of supplies you might not realize you should be storing, or have on hand, in case of desperate times so check that out too.

Finally, I spent a couple of days this week canning hamburger. It was SO awesome! I took lots of pictures so next week I will post all about it and how to do it. Plus, my hubby went elk hunting again and bagged a big one. He brought home at least 100 pounds of meat. We did manage to squeeze it all into our outdoor freezer but I'm going to spend this week canning a lot of the hamburger from that too. Can't wait to share with you - once you try it, you'll be addicted!

My Favorite Food Storage Books

2011-01-23T16:24:00.001-08:00

Added a new static page today that lists all of my favorite food storage books and why I like them. Hopefully you will find them as useful as I have. You can find the link near the top of my blog.

New Handout Pages

2011-01-16T16:48:00.000-08:00

So I taught a class this week (again) on living off food storage. It was the first time I taught a class to a non-food storage group though, and it was to a group of people who actually know me so it was a little more nerve racking than usual. I had a LOT of fun though! I was thinking this was the last time I was going to teach this class as I was getting a little tired of doing it over and over but after class someone asked me to come teach another one in her ward. I happily agreed. I guess this is a subject I just don't get tired of.

I have several handouts that I give out to my class that I realized I have never posted on my blog. Blogger now lets you create static pages to your blog so I decided to create a few, one page per handout. I just published the first one, it's entitled "What You Are Not Storing But Should Be" You will always find the link to it at the top of my blog. I'm going to add one more page each week until I have them all up. Hopefully that will be useful to people.

I'm considering just starting a website. That has actually been a goal of mine but I just can't imagine where I will find the time. Still, it's a worthwhile goal. I would like one that answers all the basic question of food storage and that no matter what stage of preparation you are in, you would be able to find the info you need without getting overwhelmed. I already have it all mapped out in my brain, I've just got to figure out when I can set aside a large chunk of time to do it. You all will definitely be the first to know!

100 FREE Food Storage Recipes!

2011-01-09T16:59:00.000-08:00

Best News EVER!! Just found out my favorite food storage website is having a contest. They are collecting recipes made from food storage only, or from shelf stable foods only. They will then publish the best 100 recipes submitted. THEN (and here's the best part) if you submit one of the winners, they will send you a copy off all 100 recipes for FREE!!

One moment while I do the happy dance :)

Having lived off food storage last year I know how hard it is to come across recipes that are good, that contain only food storage items. I have quite a few but I'm ALWAYS on the hunt for more. You can bet I've already submitted quite a few of my best. Now keeping my fingers crossed at least one of them makes the cut and I'll get a copy of all 100 they choose. For me, a good food storage recipe is better than gold.

So, I want to encourage all of you to go submit your recipes now before the contest ends. It's possible that you have some you haven't even thought of. Maybe you can even adapt one of your family favorite recipes. Wouldn't it be so great to get 100 ready made recipes to try and use? Click here to submit your recipes.

Let me know how many of you make the cut. I would LOVE to know which recipes are yours!

A Hunting We Will Go......

2011-01-04T10:16:00.000-08:00

So my husband went Elk hunting for the first time last week. Being from California we haven't had much chance to hunt but I really consider hunting skills the ultimate in food storage preparedness.

Anyway, pound for pound it was WAY more expensive than just buying meat in the store but I consider the experience well worth the cost. I told my husband, "You slay it and butcher it, and I'll cook it." Seems like a good trade off for me. :)

They bagged an Elk the first day so I had elk meat for the first time on Sunday night. It was really good! I could barely tell the difference from beef. It was a great feeling to sit at the table and eat pears that we had canned and meat that we had pulled off a mountain side. Funny how those kinds of things make us feel so extraordinary today, when 200 years ago, that was the norm.

My hubby is now on a hunting kick. He's going back out to Utah for more Elk in a couple of weeks, and then fowl hunting here in Cali in a few of months. As far as self sufficiency goes, it's hard to put a price on knowing how to hunt and prepare your own meat. I'm glad he's finally found a way that he enjoys contributing to our quest to be ever more self sufficient. Almost inspires me to learn how to sew. Almost.

I cooked up 12 pounds of hamburger last week and going back to Costco for more next week so I can can it. That will be a first for me but everyone says that there is nothing better than precooked, home canned meat. I can imagine it is very convenient when you are trying to make dinner.

Food Storage Sale!

2010-11-24T13:16:00.001-08:00

My favorite food storage website is having a black friday/cyber Monday sale on my favorite wheat grinders, can organizers, sun oven, and more. If you are looking to get one of these items, they RARELY go on sale so check them out.

They also are having a sale at Emergency Essentials during the same time period. It's a GREAT time to give your family the gift of preparedness.

Spreadable Powdered Butter - FINALLY!

2010-11-21T20:12:00.000-08:00

I know I have fallen off the radar. Sorry. But great news! On the advice of some friends, I tried out a new brand of powdered butter, and got a new food storage book. Both are MUST HAVES!

The butter powder is from Shelf Reliance. They even sell it in a small mylar bag if you want to just try it out first. That is what I bought and I put it on my bagel for breakfast this morning. For me, that is the ultimate test. If I can eat it on toast, then it will definitely be fine for everything else. It was far and away the best that I have tried so far. Definitely edible on toast, however, I did not follow the package directions when make it. Rather, I mix it like this to make spreadable butter:

1 TBLS butter powder
1 scant tsp water
1 scant tsp veggie oil
pinch of salt or sugar (depending on which you prefer)

I actually tried one piece of toast made with the salt, and one made with the sugar. The difference was very slight but I personally did prefer the sugar.

The new book that I love is "The Everyday Gourmet Cooking with Long Term food Storage" by Shari Haag. It's not easy to find but there are places online you can get it. Believe me it's worth it. Lots of great recipes that use only food storage items.

I finally got my pressure canner gauge calibrated so that I can try canning meat. Yea! Guess I'll have to make a giant meat purchase at Costco next month :)

A Challenge for You

2010-09-19T16:58:00.000-07:00

I tried a new kind of milk this week. It's GREAT! Definitely my favorite so far. And unlike Morning Moos, it's real milk, and not milk substitute. It's called Country Cream by Grandma's Country Foods. So far this is the winner to replace all the milk I have stored from the cannery. Shipping is kind of pricey but I hear that it is also available at Macey's grocery stores in Utah Valley. I'll have to have my sister check it out for me.

I've been trying a lot of new things lately. I have a new system. (I LOVE new systems). I created a folder to help me organize new recipes that I want to try. I have divided the recipes into categories:

1. Crockpot
2. Dutch Oven
3. Food Storage
4. Pantry Only
5. Regular recipes

Now when I create my menu list each week I choose at least one new recipe from each section to try. The food storage recipes are recipes that use only my long term stored items. The Pantry Only section contains recipes that are for my 3 month supply which contain mostly canned good from the grocery store that can be eaten without adding any fresh, frozen, or dairy items. These are valuable recipes because it's hard to come across good, edible meals that do not need added fresh meat, produce, or dairy. When I find good ones I will post them in my recipe section and tag them "Pantry Recipe" I use these recipes for my 3 month supply, not my year supply since they are mostly made up of canned grocery items which expire after only a year or two.

So far this new system is working great. Plus, it makes the drudgery of deciding what to eat each week much easier since I only have to come up with 1 or 2 dinners outside of my list of new things to try.

I also have 3 older kids (ages 11-15) and they each cook one night a week. It's good experience for them to get a new recipe on their night, especially if it's a food storage one, and gain their own experience.

Tonight we made our dutch oven meal which turned out pretty good. I'm trying to get the hang of dutch oven cooking. I found some dutch oven liners which make it much better because you don't have to clean a big mess out of the pot. Dutch oven cooking is not my favorite yet but I think as I do it I will like it better and it won't seem so scary. The ultimate goal of course, is to be able to cook my food storage meals in it.

So, what does all this have to do with you? Well I want to issue a small challenge to all my readers. Pick one night a week and try out food storage only recipes. It's not too big of a commitment but if you do it faithfully, by the end of the year you will have tried out 52 recipes! Begin a collection of your favorites for your own family's food storage recipe book. You will be amazed at how good it will make you feel, and how much less scary food storage will seem. Let me know how it goes!

What is the best way to store food?

2010-09-05T14:22:00.000-07:00

I know you all think I dropped off the face of the earth. SORRY!! School started, plus soccer practice for 3 kids, plus my husband had surgery, and on and on. I haven't even had time to blog.

Well hubby goes back to work tomorrow and we survived the first couple of weeks of school so I'm hoping things will get back to normal ~ at least my crazy version of normal :)

Two weeks ago I taught my first class on Living off Food Storage. I thought it went pretty well and hopefully I left the impression of being a relatively sane person despite some of the crazy things I do. Some of my blog followers were there which actually made the whole thing SO much more fun! I have 2 more classes scheduled so far so hopefully there will be a lot of people inspired to do something with their food storage. :)

I had a couple of things I could blog about but I felt like I should talk about this one first. There are, in the world, basically 2 ideas about storing food for a year. One, the "old fashioned" way with #10 cans of whole foods like wheat, beans, rice, etc. The other is commonly called "storing what you eat" meaning storing regular grocery foods that you use everyday.

Both methods have their pros and cons and I don't think we can say either one is the "right" way because any way you store up food is going to bless your family, but I think we should consider carefully before we choose what is right for our own families. I am no expert but I have, obviously, chosen to store whole foods and I will tell you why.

1. If you ever had to actually live off your food storage alone, have you thought of what it would do to your health to eat only store bought food out of a can for an entire year? Of course with all those preservatives, you might live longer ;)

2. If you had to leave your home with your food storage, it would be much harder to move thousands of little cans, than fewer larger ones.

3. Store bought cans and foods have a much shorter shelf life and must be vigorously rotated.

4. If you are truly living off food storage alone, remember that you can not supplement canned goods with fresh produce, or cheese, or dairy. Everything you make has to come from a can. Most people going with the "store what you eat" method forget about that.

4. And finally, have you ever thought about why we might all have to live off our food storage in mass? I can think of a lot of scenarios (plague, famine, widespread destructions, total economic collapse, etc) and none of them make me think that on day 366 we will get to go back to the grocery store. It seems much more likely we will be growing our own food like wheat, beans, rice, etc. I would just rather already know how to use these foods because I had stored them, and my body is used to eating them.

That being said, there is one caveat. If you are going to store whole foods in bulk then please, please, please, learn how to use it. If you aren't going to learn how to cook with it, then it is better to store the store bought cans. They will at least preserve our family's lives for a year. After that, come over and I will teach you how to use the other foods :)

Now in fairness, I do actually use somewhat of a hybrid method of storage. I have a 3 month supply that is separate from my year supply. MOST of my 3 month supply is store bought canned items that I eat regularly with just a few bulk items mixed in. It is easier to rotate these cans when there is only 3 months worth, and in an emergency scenario, they provide quick meals and comfort foods. When we set out to live off food storage, my 3 month supply was the first to get used up because it was food I was familiar with and it was convenient. However, I couldn't imagine living off it for a year.

I have a list of books that I love that help with using your food storage. Some I have shared before but I will list them all here anyway:

For cooking whole foods from scratch:
1. "A Bite of Independence Through Self Sufficiency" by Marlynn Phipps, Jan Woolley, and Venecia & Jenny Phipps - Used copies only or purchase e-book
2. "Dinner is in the Jar" by Kathy Clark
3. "Country Beans" by Rita Bingham
4. "The Essential food Storage Cookbook" by Tami Girsberger and Carol Peterson
5. "Mix a Meal Cookbook" by Deanna Bean & Lorna Shute

For cooking with pantry items only:
1. 100-day Pantry: 100 Quick and Easy Gourmet Meals Jan Jackson
2. It's in the Bag a New Approach to Food Storage Michelle and Trent Snow

Anyway, that is my 2 cents, although it might not be worth even that much! LOL However you decide to store food, it will bless your life to have it. When people feel safe and secure they are better able to function in their everyday lives and they are happier.

Next week I am going to blog about easy ways you can begin using your food storage now and teaching yourself, and your family, how to use what you have stored.

You might be a Hoarder if.............

2010-08-01T13:20:00.000-07:00

Have you ever seen that show Hoarders? It's awful. People living in trash up to the window panes. I've watched it a few times out of sheer horror. Although, I'm not going to lie, I sat a couple of my kids down in front of it with me to give them a little motivation to clean their rooms :)

Anyway, my first trip back to the grocery store gave me a little insight into those people who hoard. I couldn't believe all the FOOD. Everywhere! I had forgotten how much food was available in how many varieties, and most of it in convenience packages. Wow.

I just went from one aisle to the other stocking up my cart. I was like a kid in a candy store. It's a good thing no one was with me, they would have been really embarrassed. I think I might even have hugged a couple of boxes of Eggos.......

By the time I had finished with the grocery store and Costco my van was packed, and I mean PACKED! When I got home I realized just how small my fridge is :) I could barely shut the door, and that is when it occurred to me I could easily become a food hoarder if I'm not careful. I now have this overwhelming desire to stock up on fresh foods, as if tomorrow I won't be able to get it. I think I bought enough cheese, fruits, eggs, yogurts, and vegetables to feed the US army for at least 2 weeks.

So I decided to look up the definition of hoarder and guess what? It's too late - I already AM a hoarder! LOL

HOARD:

–noun
1. A supply or accumulation that is hidden or carefully guarded for preservation, future use, etc.

–verb
2. To accumulate for preservation, future use, etc., in a hidden or carefully guarded place: to hoard food during a shortage.

So I've decided to just embrace that side of myself and try to hoard in moderation :)

One thing living off food storage has done for us is give us an appetite for whole, fresh foods. I think we have eaten pretty much nothing but fresh fruits, veggies, and dairy since we quit food storage. One of our first meals was a huge fruit salad and twice baked potatoes. My 4 year, who doesn't quite get that we aren't on food storage anymore, takes one bite and says, "Now this is a great 'whesipie' mom!" So cute - he couldn't even quite pronounce the word recipe.

Other good news, I've been finding the pieces to build a cheese press and found the PERFECT cutting board for the base at Wal-mart (I have a real love/hate relationship with that store). It's perfect because you can see it has a drain off one side which you need as you squeeze the whey out of the curds. I have to order a couple of parts this week and then put my husband to work on it.

Speaking of my husband, he decided this week that rather than pay $269 for a brake job on my van, he would just do it himself. No big deal since he usually changes our brakes. However, this van is new and it took him much longer than he anticipated. He didn't finish until 10pm and he was really tired when he was finally ready to take the van out for a test run.

Well, he forgot to pump the brakes first so the brakes didn't work at all, and he crashed my van right into the back of his brand new truck. Major body damage to both our vehicles. I was just laughing so hard!(although he didn't think it was very funny).

Now, I'm not saying this is his comeuppance for making us quit food storage but............ :)

Hubby pulls the plug :(

2010-07-25T15:45:00.001-07:00

Just got back from the most amazing vacation EVER! We drove our 6 kids all the way across the country to visit Nauvoo, Illinois. Not a big draw unless you are LDS, but for those out there that share my faith, it's one of the most amazing places I have ever been.

All I can say after having been there is that we truly stand on the shoulders of giants. Even now, looking back, I can barely comprehend the things that I saw, and felt, and learned. If you have the chance, you must go. And if you don't have the chance, then make the chance. It's worth the sacrifice.

Now on to much sadder news. My husband pulled the plug on my little one year experiment. To be fair, I never did get him to agree to a full year. He would only commit to 6 months so I took that and then hoped I would be able to convince him later to keep going. Well, our 6 months ended the end of June and no amount of pleading, coercion, or bribery (you know what I'm talking about ladies) :) would convince him to go on any further.

It's not that it's been so awful, we are actually pretty used to it by now, it's just that he is tired of the inconvenience and eating the same type of food all the time.

I do, of course, have plans to continue in my own way with rotating my food storage, learning to make cheese, and I bought a dutch oven that I am going to cook in once a week until I can use it proficiently with food storage. But, as for the day to day of food storage living, that era will sadly come to a close for me. For now. :)

I will continue to update my blog with the new things that I learn on the side and bits of advice but I feel that I must leave my witness of the extreme importance of preparedness and self sufficiency. These are not just concepts for nutty Mormons, or crazy conspiracy theorists. They are sound principles for us all to live by.

How different would our country be today if all had lived by the rule of self sufficiency and preparedness? What if we all had food put away? All had money in our savings like we know we should? None had bought beyond their means and sold their future security away on credit?

Better yet - What if we all start now?

Preparedness is contagious. We can all do something to get more self sufficient.

People ask me all the time why I took on such an insane project as living off my food storage. I ask them, "Why are you storing food?" and they usually answer, "In case I need it."
"Do you know how to use it?"
"Uh. No."
"So how insane is it to be storing food you think you might have to use, but admit you don't know how to use?"

Did I take it to the extreme? Probably. Those of you that know me wouldn't be surprised by that though. :) But I have the security I was seeking. I know what to store for my family and how much. More importantly, I know how to use it.

I have created several documents over the last 6 months, of the things that I have learned, and things people should know when storing and using food storage. I'm teaching a class in a few weeks where I'm going to pull all those together so that they are useful to people and then I will post them here as well.

Thanks for all of your support so far. My biggest regret in not continuing on 100% eating food storage is that I have let down the people that have been following my blog. Hopefully we will continue to learn from each other and you will find what I have learned somewhat useful to you.

Be back soon!

Milk Taste Test

2010-06-27T13:38:00.000-07:00

I decided to find out once and for all which powdered milk my family likes best. I didn't realize how important this was until we started living off food storage. I thought (naively) that if there was nothing else to drink, they would drink it. Wrong. Before we started food storage, my family was drinking 5 gallons of milk a week. On powdered milk it dropped down to less than one gallon per week, and most of that was used in cooking rather than for drinking. So I learned 2 important lessons:

1. People will not eat or drink something just because that's all there is.
2. Don't count on powdered milk for giving your family their needed calcium intake.

But I digress. I have stored only real powdered milk. I purposely stayed away from milk substitutes since they don't have the same nutritional value as real milk. I figured my family would need those nutrients if they were actually living off food storage. What I failed to realize was, it doesn't matter how nutritional the milk is if no one will drink it. :)

So I planned a blind taste test to see which milk my family liked best. I even used store bought milk as one of the testers just to see what would happen :) Obviously I couldn't try every brand out there but I tried to pick some of the more popular ones. They included:

1. Morning Moo's
2. Emergency Essentials
3. Church cannery milk
4. Thrive
5. Store bought milk

I also tried 3 brands of chocolate milk which is one way to get your family to actually drink milk:

1. Honeyville Grain
2. Thrive
3. Morning Moo's

The results were interesting. First of all we had 8 taste testers in my family but didn't count the votes of the 3 year old since he denounced all the cups of white milk as "Yucky!!" and declared all of the chocolate milks "Yummy!" :)

Everyone picked their #1 and #2 favorites. Here are the taste test results in order of number of votes received either as #1 or #2:

1. Morning Moo's - 5 votes
2. Emergency Essentials - 3 votes
3. Thrive - 3 votes
4. Store bought milk - 2 votes
5. Church Cannery - 1 vote

So guess which milk I have stored 400 POUNDS of?

Yep.

The cannery. :(

The good news is, it doesn't matter when baking what you use, it's only when drinking it straight that it becomes a problem. So, my plan is to replace the cannery milk with Morning Moo's as we use it up. I will still keep plenty of cannery milk in my storage because it is real powdered milk, rather than a milk substitute, so I still want it for baking. But for drinking, you have to go with the milk your family will actually drink.

Isn't it interesting that the store bought milk only got 2 votes? Guess that's what happens when you are living off food storage. Your idea of what is normal tasting begins to shift.

For the chocolate milk we just voted on our favorite:

1. Honeyville Grain - 3 votes
2. Thrive - 3 votes
3. Morning moos - 1 vote

I got shot down on this one since my favorite was actually the Morning Moos. Oh well, guess we'll have to go with majority rules on this one. I don't drink much chocolate milk anyway.

So you can buy Morning Moo's online but I find that Costco often carries it as well. My Costco was having a blow out sale on it just before we started living on food storage so I bought a whole 5 gallon bucket.

I can't say if that is the milk your family will like best (although I found another blog that did a similar test to mine and came out with almost exactly the same results), but it can at least give you a starting point.

One lesson I have learned from all of this is to NEVER, EVER store food you have not tried. I know it's so tempting. Food storage can be expensive and you don't want to waste a whole can just trying it out, but you could be really sorry if you don't. Some of the food I was storing turned out to be completely inedible (like Honeyville Grain Butter) and I had to throw it all in the trash. Now THAT is expensive.

Also, don't believe the myth that if a person is hungry enough, they will eat it. It's absolutely not true. Just ask my 3 year old. :)

Finally just a heads up that I will be taking a long anticipated trip to Nauvoo and will not be able to blog the next few weeks. I'm thinking if I get really lucky though, I might just come across an old fashioned butter churner, or cheese press while I'm there!

Food Storage Utopia

2010-06-20T15:49:00.000-07:00

I spent all of last week in Utah (AKA Food Storage Utopia). Man, people there just don't know how lucky they are. I visited all of my favorite places (except Honeyville Grain).

First I went to Emergency Essentials in Orem. I bought their plunger for hand washing clothes, some powdered milk, and some gamma lids. Then my sister tells me, "Oh they sell those lids at Walmart."

WHAT the heck?!! Walmart sells gamma lids in Utah?

It takes me a minute to digest that kind of information. (They didn't have David Archuleta's new book though. Weird.)

Then I went to the holy grail of preparedness stores - Smith and Edwards in Ogden. If you haven't been there, you are REALLY missing out. I bought my own meat grinder since I had borrowed a friend's to make my wheat meat, got another kind of powdered milk to try, and bought my first dutch oven. I'm SUPER excited about that. My next venture is to learn how to cook my food storage in a dutch oven. You just never know when you might have to function without electricity. A dutch oven would be essential IMHO.

Finally, I went hunting for Rennet so I can make cheese. That was a bit tougher. I had read online that you could just go into any grocery store in Utah and get it. That turned out to be a bit of an exaggeration. (Kind of like people who say that everyone in California lives on the beach, or everyone in America is rich and beautiful :) ) I went to quite a few grocery stores. Nada. Finally tried The Good Earth store and.... SCORE! Now I can make cheese. Just have to get my hubby to build me a cheese press this week. BTW, did you know that you can wax store bought cheese and keep it, unrefrigerated, for years? I'll have to try that too.

So much to do - so little time........ sigh

Today I am making 5 different brands of powdered milk and I'm going to do a blind taste test with my family. Whichever they like best is the brand we are going to store to drink. I'll let you know how it goes next week!

Finally I want to give a GIANT shout out to my favorite food storage website in the world - Food Storage Made Easy. I have been with them since they began as a small blog and I was blessed to find out that they featured my blog on their Facebook page last week.

Funny story actually.

My sister-in-law called me up and says, "So you are famous now?" I said, "What are you talking about?" She told me a link to my blog was on the Food storage made easy Facebook page. I couldn't believe it - and immediately regretted that my blog isn't prettier :)

Anyway, just want to say thanks and welcome all my new followers from there! You are awesome and I'm so happy we have this common interest.

Wheat Meat (Don't be scared)

2010-06-13T14:02:00.000-07:00

Ok I know the very name wheat meat can make a person cringe. That is what I thought too but hopefully you will be as surprised as I was by the reality. It was really good! I'm not saying all wheat meat is good, but this recipe definitely was. This is going to be a long post so please bear with me. :)

I've been wanting to try wheat meat for some time because the reality is, no matter how much meat you store, you will eventually run out. I was HIGHLY skeptical of wheat meat but I knew I had to at least try it. Plus, my new favorite food storage book (A Bite of Independence Through Self-Sufficiency)has a whole chapter raving about it and since I pretty much trust that book with my life now.....

There were different recipes depending on what you wanted to make: chicken, ground beef, hamburgers, hot dogs, etc. I decided to make meatballs for our spaghetti, and hamburger patties for dinner later in the week. That is all I've tried so far so those are the recipes I'll post on my recipe link.

Let me just say that IT..............WAS..................AWESOME! First I made the meatballs and served them with spaghetti. You seriously could NOT tell it wasn't real meat. It looked like meat, tasted like meat, had the consistency of meat. And the ultimate test - my kids gobbled them up!

Two days later we had our "hamburgers." I didn't tell anyone that they were not real. I even barbecued them on our grill! I accidentally made the patties bigger than the buns so I had to cut off the edges, leaving a lot of pieces of "meat" on the serving platter.

Not one of my kids realized that the burgers weren't real. They gobbled them down and then asked if they could have the leftover "meat" on the platter. I just smiled and said, "Sure." They gobbled that down too, leaving only scraps.

My husband did catch on. He thought they were real burgers until he bit into one and then he realized they were not real meat BUT he still liked them and ate the whole thing. This could be because he eats more real food than the rest of us since he works at the Fire Station several times a week and eats there.

We also had some friends come over later in the evening and when we told them what we had for dinner (people CONSTANTLY ask me what we've eaten that day - probably just morbid curiosity) they wanted to try some. I was reticent since all there was left was the little scraps that had long since grown cold. Still they tried it, and THEY LIKED IT TOO! They couldn't believe it was made out of wheat. In fact one of them said, "Hey, it tastes like chicken!" LOL

One side benefit I was not aware of, is that a byproduct of making wheat meat is bran. I made approximately 2 lbs of wheat meat and ended up with about 2 cups of bran left over. So, I made bran muffins which my kids LOVED. Out of 2 dozen I could barely keep one aside so that my husband could try it when he got back from work.

I'll post the recipe for making the wheat meat but here are a few basics. Wheat meat is made entirely from wheat. The bran and starch is washed out of the wheat and you are left with the gluten. Gluten loves to take on the taste of what is around it but it also absorbs liquid so you want to be careful not to add it to your dishes too early. It needs to be added last or it will take on too much moisture and lose it's meat-like texture.

For my recipe I used 10 cups of freshly ground wheat flour and it made approximately 2 lbs of "meat" and 2 cups of bran. Once you have your gluten prepared (don't worry - it's SO easy!) then you bake it. It looks like large rolls. I then ran the rolls through a meat grinder. You can use a food processor as well but the consistency won't be quite the same as meat. The key here is to trick your brain into thinking what you are eating is really meat so you want the consistency and taste to be as close as possible.

Anyway, I ground up the rolls into ground "meat" (man I'm getting tired of using quotations marks! :) ) and then I added seasoning to give it the flavor of what I was making, which was meatballs and hamburger patties. I then shaped them how I wanted and baked them one more time. It is VERY important not to over bake. Better to bake it a little too short, than a little too long. Also, this recipe calls for eggs to be used to bind the wheat into patties. I didn't try it with powdered eggs because I store fresh eggs for stuff like this. I don't know if it would work with powdered but I do know it will work if you use just the whites of the eggs and not the yolks.

I served the meatballs right away while they were still warm in the spaghetti. The hamburgers patties I kept in the fridge for a couple of days. I threw them on the grill just long enough to reheat them. Both were a hit with my family. Going to try to make chicken next. It's a different process but supposedly I can even use it to make chicken nuggets! What 3 year old wouldn't be happy about that?

Finally, on a nutritional note. Wheat meat contains NO cholesterol, and has 1/3 fewer calories than hamburger. In fact the only thing keeping wheat meat from being considered a complete protein is that is lacks the amino acid Lysine, which can be resolved by using eggs to prepare it. Plus I'm sure you've already guess how much cheaper it is than meat. Of course we aren't all going to give up meat but if you ever do have to, you can at least feel good about the nutrition, and economical value, of wheat meat.

Just For Fun ............ Yogurt and Butter

2010-05-23T13:46:00.000-07:00

This week I had a little fun doing things I have wanted to for awhile. I made yogurt and butter. Let me just say that you can't make these without real dairy products. At least you can't make versions of them you would actually want to eat. So this wasn't strictly a food storage endeavor, but it was definitely informative and fun.

First the yogurt. I LOVE vanilla yogurt. It's one of my favorite snacks, and my new favorite food storage book had a recipe so I tried that first. I bought some plain yogurt at the store that had live cultures and no additives. That is your starter bacteria that you need. You can buy it in other forms but this was easiest for me.

Then I gathered the other ingredients which included whole milk AND powdered milk (the whole recipe is under my recipe link.) It was SUPER easy to make and I let it "cure" in my wonder oven. I actually forgot about it in there so I left it a little too long, making it more tart than it would have been otherwise, but it was SO good. My kids gobbled it up. Plus for the next 2 days I took the jar and spoons around with me everywhere and forced my friends and family to taste test it. Weird. I know. But I was so proud, and it REALLY was good. :) One batch made a big and little jar as you can see in the picture. For more pictures and details, check out the recipe link.

Next I made butter. Yep. I MADE butter. Funny how something all women did 100 years ago, makes us feel like such a super woman now - LOL! Let me just start off saying that you CAN NOT make butter without cream. And you can't store cream, so unless you have a cow, or a goat, you wouldn't be able to do this without going to the store. And you can't use just any cream. It can not be ultra-pasteurized cream which is what most stores sell. It has to be just regular pastuerized. I was finally able to track down some regular pasteurized manufacturing cream at Smart & Final. I hear that they sell it at Whole Foods as well but I didn't check.

I almost want to just leave it at that and let you all be awed with my homemaking prowess, because you won't be nearly as impressed when you see how easy it was. :) Anyway, I let the cream come to room temperature. Then I poured it into my Bosch with my whipping beaters and started whipping it.

After about 5 minutes it started to turn into whipped cream with soft peaks.

A minute later I had stiff peaks forming.

Then about 2 minutes after that, the solids suddenly congealed into butter and separated from the buttermilk. That's right. Buttermilk ACTUALLY comes from butter! Who knew?

Because I used sweet cream, this buttermilk is not sour like the kind you buy in the store, although you could use lemon juice to sour it. 100 years ago they would let the cream sour before making butter which would create a sour buttermilk by product. These days we seem to prefer sweet cream butter so the milk by product is also sweet. Don't throw it out. It is excellent for baking with and using in your recipes.

After separating the butter from the buttermilk you need to "wash" the butter. This is to get all the buttermilk out of the butter, otherwise it will go rancid very quickly. Simply put the butter into a bowl and fill with COLD water. Then knead the butter until the water turns cloudy. Empty the water, refill, and repeat. Do this until the water remains clear. I had to do it 4 or 5 times.

Then I put the butter back in my mixer and added salt. You don't have to add salt but it tastes very bland without it. If you accidentally over salt it (like I did), just rewash it. Anyway, I whipped the salt in and then I used an old one pound butter container I had and put my butter in there. I had more leftover so I added garlic and parsley to it and made a container of garlic butter for rolls or bread.

So I started out with a 1/2 gallon of cream and I ended up with about 1/4 gallon of buttermilk and about 2 pounds of butter. The cream cost me $6.50 so it was more expensive to make the butter than to buy it, but it was SO much fun! And I feel good that I know how, and I know how easy it is.

BTW, you do not have to keep butter in the fridge. You do need to keep it in an airtight container. As long as air does not get to it as it sits, it will stay good for a fair length of time on your counter.

Making yogurt and butter and living off food storage this many months has given me a greater understanding of how invaluable cows are. We scoff at other countries that worship cows, or how they were given as wedding presents centuries ago, but I can tell you, cows are worth more than their weight in gold. When you have a cow, you have beef, milk, yogurt, cheese, sour cream, and more. Trust me when I tell you, these items are irreplaceable when you are trying to produce food for your family. If I'm ever given the chance to take just one thing with me and live off the land, it would be a cow.

And yes, I can hear you all laughing at me as you read this :)

This and That....

2010-05-16T15:18:00.000-07:00

I experimented with quite a few things the last couple of weeks, but only a couple turned out. I made popped wheat, which tastes kind of like popcorn, but my little kids wouldn't eat it. I'm going to try making it a different way this week and see if it's better.

I also tried making yogurt - two different recipes - both were disgusting. I have several more to try this week though.

I also made an applesauce wheat cake. That was yummy! The texture is a little different since it's whole wheat, but the flavor was good, and it was very moist. It calls for spooning some applesauce on top which is important because the cake is a little on the sweet side but when you add the applesauce on top it gives it the tang that it needs.

Plus I made Peanutbutter Chews. I can't find the pictures, I think I accidentally deleted them. These were a big hit with the kids though and were great for satisfying a sweet tooth. I'm not going to pretend that they are the least bit healthy, totally NOT, but, then again, what are you gonna do when you have that craving for something sweet and your living on food storage? :) Anyway, the recipe for both of these is on my recipe link.

Lastly, I found a new book that I'm SUPER excited about! Oddly enough, it came from a friend who has some pretty strong feelings against food storage. She heard what I was doing though and gave me a stack of books. In them was a little gem called, "A Bite of Independence Through Self-sufficiency" Her mom paid .75 cents for it at a thrift store and, as far as I can tell, it is out of print. I could only find expensive used copies of it online. Since I think it's out of print I'm going to post the recipes that I make from there on my blog. This week I am going to try out the yogurt recipes from there and maybe even some cheese if I have time. Can't wait! I'm pretty sure this little .75 cent wonder is going to be my #1 must have food storage accessory.

Magic Mix

2010-05-02T14:44:00.000-07:00

I'm back to experimenting with new recipes so I expect to be back to regular blog entries. This week I made pudding pops. Nothing spectacularly innovative but my kids loved them and they were all food storage of course.

The one unique thing about them was I used Magic Mix. If you are not familiar with it, it's a base mix that you can use even in your regular life to make so many things like pudding, white sauce, cheese sauce, creamed soups, etc. The wonderful thing about it is, you can make it up and then just keep it in your fridge up to two months and it will save you time when you are cooking. So far I've used it to make the best chocolate pudding you'll ever eat, and pudding pops.

I'm going to post a bunch of Magic Mix recipes on my recipe blog plus the recipe for Magic Mix itself. Try it out now, you can easily use it even if you are not currently using your food storage. You will love it.

Another Butter Option

2010-04-25T16:38:00.000-07:00

Sorry I have not posted in several weeks. Truth is, I'm in a bit of a rut. Just cooking the same foods and doing the same things so there hasn't been much to blog about. Today I am REALLY excited though! I know that I obsess too much about spreadable butter but trying to live without it has made me realize how much we use it.

I finally got around to going to an Indian market this week and I bought Ghee, which is just clarified butter. They sell it in all kinds of sizes so I just bought a small one to try it out. It doesn't last a super long time (expires in about a year) but it does NOT need to be refrigerated, even after being opened. YIPPEE!!

The day after I bought it I tried it on toast. It tasted just like the butter that I used to can myself. Completely edible, even on toast. It does have an extremely low melting point so it tends to turn to liquid even just sitting on my counter in mild temperatures. You can keep it in the fridge which keeps it in a solid state, but it isn't necessary to refrigerate it.

Another option that I think I have already mentioned is the Red Feather canned butter from Australia. It's about the same price and, remarkably, is literally butter spread in a can. I've tried it and it taste great, just like butter spread you would buy from the store. The upside to this product is that is has a very long shelf life (15+ years) BUT, once it is opened, it must be refrigerated. Could be a big problem since the chances of us having to live off food storage and STILL having electricity seem small.

Anyway, I'm super excited about finding Ghee. There's no way I can store a whole year's worth because my family eats so much butter, and Ghee expires in just one year. That means we would have to use it exclusively in order to rotate it and it's far too expensive for that. My 8oz jar was $3.95. I will have to just store enough that we will be able to have butter when we really need it, but still I can't tell you how excited about this I am. If you could see me right now I'm doing the happy dance!

Food Storage Inventory

2010-04-04T19:22:00.000-07:00

Many people have asked me for an inventory list of the food that I have in my food storage. I made a PDF document but wasn't sure how to post it here. I think I figured it out and you should be able to access it through this link: Food Storage Inventory or if that doesn't work try this Google Docs one: Food Storage Inventory.

It's just a simplified list of the food items that I store. My actual inventory sheet has a lot more information on it. This is the sheet I use to track my food storage. In addition to what you see on the link above, my original document also has a column that tells me where in the house each item is stored, when it expires, and the cheapest place to by it. At the bottom of the food list, I also have a list of non-food items that I store, or need to store, such as toiletries, cooking supplies, etc.

Just a side note. I store freeze dried meats but there are lots of ways to store meat. All of them have their advantages:

Freeze dried is light weight, lasts for years, and is easy to store. However, it is very expensive, and once you open the can, you need to use the whole thing that day or the next.

Canned meat is ready to eat, tastes good, and stores easily but it is heavy, expires more quickly, and is still relatively expensive.

Canning your own meat tastes best and is probably the cheapest and healthiest option but the glass jars are hard to store, canning meat is time consuming, and it expires after about a year.

If you want to have meat stored, just choose the way that works best for your family.

Anyway, I know that there are lots of terrific programs and websites out there that help you track your food storage. Whatever works for you - use it. The big thing to remember though, is to keep a hard copy. The last thing you want is to not have access to your inventory in the event of a power failure or computer failure; particularly a long term failure.

Good Food Storage book

2010-03-28T16:47:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted a lot of recipes lately. That is because I have been systematically trying every recipe out of my new book Dinner is in the Jar. Because almost all of the recipes from the book have been good, it would surely break copyright laws for me to post them all on my site.

If you are looking for a bunch of good recipes you should definitely purchase this book. The author has a very good grip on the use of spices and, even though the rest of the ingredients are fairly plain, most of the recipes are pretty tasty. Plus they give you a list of items you need to store to make all of these recipes.

The author promotes this book of recipes as a great way to store your 3 month supply. However, I will probably use these recipes with my long term storage instead of my 3 month supply. Your 3 month supply is meant to be rotated in with your regular meals and, although these recipes are good compared to other things we have eaten lately, they are not going to be something you want rotate into your regular menus I don't think. They are, however, FABULOUS "convenience" food when added into your year's supply.

On another note. I decided to stop torturing my family with powdered milk and powdered butter. I don't think that there is anything more I can learn from continuing to force them to drink powdered milk and use reconstituted butter. I am still using them in my recipes but I bought some fresh stuff this week for them to eat. It was pretty funny actually. My husband opened the fridge, looks suspiciously at the gallon of milk in the door and says, "Is this....real milk?" I said yes. He grabs it immediately as if it will disappear, says, "Oh YES!!" and poured himself a giant glass.

I am still purchasing different brands of powdered milk and butter so that I can find the best tasting ones and store them. Ordering 2 more kinds this week.

Freezing Foods

2010-03-21T14:14:00.000-07:00

We really should be keeping two types of food storage. First, foods that we use in our day to day cooking, and then long term food storage as well. I usually refer to the two different stores as my 3 months storage, and my year's supply.

My year's supply is made up completely of shelf stable foods that are in #10 cans or buckets and can last for years. My 3 month supply is made up of canned goods from the store, pre-packaged foods, and items that I have frozen.

After living off this stuff for 3 months now, I just want to put a plug in for freezing food. It's not ideal for long term storage, and of course they lose all value if we are not able to stay at home, with the electricity on, but it's great for being able to store foods you otherwise would not be able to.

First off I freeze my bread dough. I make enough for 6 loaves once a week, bake 2 right away and freeze the rest in individual loaves. The key to this I have found, is letting the dough you are going to freeze, rise in the fridge. So I put the dough for the loaves I'm going to freeze in a large bowl and cover with a towel, then I put it in the fridge to rise at least an hour. Then I punch it down, divide into separate loaves and roll them up in greased saran wrap, and put them in the freezer. Even at that, they will continue to rise in the freezer. If they happen to grow larger than your loaf pan, it's ok, it softens quickly and you can reshape for your pan. Just let frozen dough rise until double and bake as usual. Of course you can just bake all your loaves at once and then freeze but I don't have that many loaf pans, and I just LOVE the smell of fresh baked bread several times a week in my house.

Cheese is another GREAT item to freeze. I was already freezing sliced cheese by buying it in bulk from Costco and then putting it in my freezer. If you defrost it in the fridge, the texture stays virtually the same. You can freeze blocks of cheese as well; however, it will become crumbly if you try to grate cheese that has been frozen. To avoid that, I buy grated cheese in a bag and put that in the freezer. Again, defrost in the fridge. I know that pre-grated cheese costs a little more but believe me, if you have to live without cheese, no cost will seem too great :) You might be able to grate your own blocks of cheese and then freeze it. I haven't tried that but I would be a little worried that it might turn into a giant clump of cheese and not stay separated like the store bought cheese does.

One other great thing to freeze is eggs. You can live off powdered eggs (believe me, I know) but there is just no subsitute when you are craving a fried egg, so you might want to consider freezing some eggs. My friend told me how to do it. I borrowed her rubber muffin tins, sprayed them with pam, broke one egg into each, scrambled up the yolk, and then put them in the freezer.

After they were frozen, I just popped them out and used my foodsaver to vacuum out the air and store them in the freezer.

I also store some with the yolks unbroken so I can have fried eggs :) As you can see from the picture they defrost beautifully.

One thing though, while the yolk was somewhat runny it also remained a little firm. The taste was the same but it might not work out well if you were putting them raw into a baking recipe so it's a good idea to store some with the yolk broken up before freezing it.

As you are aware, many items can be frozen, especially if you have a food vacuum and the freezer space. Like anything, you can build up a supply a little at a time. We were doing that before with meat from Costco, and 3 months into eating our food storage, we even still have a little meat in our freezer. We save it for fast Sundays so we don't have it often but I can't begin to put into words the morale booster it is to have a treat like that, even once a month.

I'm putting up a recipe up for Frozen Fruit Cocktail. I used to make this every summer in my former life :)

I make a huge batch when peaches come into season, put them in the freezer, and have fruit salad all year round. Plus you always have an excellent side dish that is ready at a moments notice. It is SUPER yummy!

Typical Week

2010-03-14T15:18:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to think what other people might wonder about living off food storage. It's hard for me to think if there is anything I should post about beyond recipes that are edible. I was thinking today though that you might be interested in the ins and outs of a typical week living off food storage so here it is.

I guess the biggest issue is how much time I spend in the kitchen. Hours everyday. In many ways I'm at a disadvantage over what the pioneers had because women then typically had no responsibilities outside the home. They spent all day cooking and cleaning. No soccer practice, part time (or full time) jobs, PTA meetings, play practice, shuttling kids between 3 different schools, etc. Plus their daughters were home much of the time working right beside them. HOWEVER, they also didn't have electric appliances, dishwashers, washing machines, etc. If you add all the pluses and minuses up, I probably come out a little ahead, even though I feel like I have to be super human to get all this stuff done. :)

So, like I said, I spend the bulk of my time cooking. 3 months into it, I'm in a pretty good rhythm. At the beginning of each week I make a meal plan on a spread sheet that shows what we are eating that week for breakfast, lunch, snacks, and dinner each day. Then I also make up a separate list of what I have to do each day so that I don't forget something, like taking out beans to soak the night before. So here is a typical week of using food storage. I won't bore you with all the other things I have to get done in a week, this list only includes what I have to get done with food. Note that on the weekends I get the bulk of the cooking for breakfasts and snacks during the week done. I also put the approximate time each thing takes if it takes 30 minutes or longer. I just picked a random, typical week:

Weekends
1. Make 50 waffles (or pancakes) and put in the freezer for breakfasts. [1 hour]
2. Make 6 loaves of bread. Bake 2 and put the rest of the dough in the freezer in loaves to bake later in the week. [3 hours]
3. Make one gallon of milk (my family used to dring 5 gallons of milk a week. With powdered milk we don't even use up 1 a week, so if you are thinking that is how your kids will get their calcium and vitamin D, you might need another plan)
4. Make a gallon of juice from the cannery (This my kids LOVE and go through several gallons a week).
5. Make cold cereal for the kids to eat during the week. [2 hours]
6. Make granola for the kids to snack on after school or eat for breakfast. [1 hour]
7. Make spreadable butter from powdered butter.
8. Make cookies (peanut butter, sugar, or no bake chocolate cookies)[1 hour]
9. Plus make dinners those days.[2 hours]

Monday
1. Put frozen waffles in the toaster for kid's breakfast. Serve with butter and syrup.
2. Pack kids lunches with PB and J, dried apples, and cookie.
3. Put beans in the crockpot to cook for dinner.
4. Make kids popcorn (or popped wheat) for snacks after school. [30 minutes]
5. Make cornbread for dinner. [30 minutes]
6. Make meatless chili using cooked beans. [1 hour]
7. Make apple crisp for Family Home Evening. [1 hour]

Tuesday
1. Make oatmeal for the kids for breakfast.
2. Pack lunches with Tuna, granola, and cookie.
3. Make more juice.
4. Make chips for dinner and lunch tomorrow. [2 hours]
5. Make pretzels for kids snacks (double the recipe and freeze half for another day) [2 hours]
6. Make Tortilla soup with the chips for dinner. [1 hour]

Wednesday
1. Cold cereal for breakfast.
2. Pack lunches with PB and Honey, chips from yesterday, and cookie.
3. Defrost and bake 2 loaves frozen bread dough. [All day to defrost and 30 minutes to bake]
4. Make chocolate milk.
5. Make granola bars for kids snacks. [1 hour]
6. Make garlic crescents for dinner. [1 hour]
7. Make meatless spaghetti. [30 minutes]

Thursday
1. Toast and chocolate milk for breakfast.
2. Pack PB and J, dried apples, and granola bar for kid's lunch.
3. Make more juice.
4. Make brownies for lunches. [30 minutes]
4. Make wheat thins for kids snack. [1 hour]
5. Make tortillas for dinner. [1 hour]
6. Make bean burritos with rice for dinner. [1 hour]

Friday
1. Frozen pancakes and syrup for breakfast.
2. Pack Tuna, granola, brownie for lunches.
3. Defrost and bake last 2 loaves of frozen bread. [30 minutes]
4. Defrost pretzel dough and make pretzels for snacks. [30 minutes]
5. Macaroni and Cheese for dinner with reconstituted veggies on the side. [1 hour]

Then we start all over again. Despite all the time that it takes, it feels so good when I see my family eating things that I worked to make from nothing but food storage. The reality is, it's very empowering to feel completely self sufficient, relying on no man to feed my family. It's been difficult but SO worth it.

If the day comes that we ever have to live completely on food storage you can expect to spend most of your time feeding and caring for the needs of your family. Rather than thinking of this as a burden, I have come to realize that it is service in it's highest natural form. Seeing to the physical and spiritual nourishment of my family is my highest calling and most treasured job at this time in my life. Interestingly, I have food storage to thank for making that so crystal clear to me once again.

Epiphany

2010-03-07T14:55:00.000-08:00

I had a moment of clarity this week. I was laying in bed going through my head what food storage items I need to replace at Costco this month, when all of the sudden it hit me. I could go a whole year, never set foot in a store, and feed my family comfortably.

And it was more than just thinking that I had the food, it was that I have it AND I know how to use it. I know already what my kids will eat, what I can make on a day to day basis, and that I can take care of my family's nutritional needs completely independent of the outside world for a whole year.

I felt............. safe.

It was a defining moment for me. It was the moment I have been looking for since I started this. In that instant, food storage went from being overwhelming, mysterious, and a little bit scary, to being my promise of security and independence.

Thumbs Up Pretzels

2010-03-02T20:33:00.000-08:00

We have another winner!! I try new recipes almost everyday and every once in awhile we hit the jackpot. This week we actually had several recipes that we tried and liked including an apple crisp dessert, Mormon baked beans (no really, that's the name), homemade cold cereal, and a homemade instant oatmeal mix. I'm posting all the recipes under my recipe link.

The biggest winner by far though was the soft pretzels we made today. They were VERY close to the ones that you get from the mall even though they were freakishly easy to make and had only a handful of ingredients. I made a double batch and they disappeared instantly, and my kids are begging me to make them again tomorrow. Gotta love that!

You can see from the picture why I'm calling them the "Thumbs Up Pretzels"

Are we done yet?

2010-02-28T12:40:00.000-08:00

When I started this whole adventure a wise friend predicted the following would happen:

1. At first it will be hard because it is so new
2. Then it will be hard because it is so old
3. Then you will wonder why you ever felt the way you did in #1 and #2.

So far she has turned out to be 100% correct. I'm now at #2 and I'm REALLY sick of eating food storage. We are still trying out new recipes everyday so that is at least interesting but it's so much work with so little pay off.

I really miss being too tired to make dinner and just grabbing a pizza. I miss all of our family's favorite recipes. I miss snack foods. I miss super yummy food. I miss feeling like a normal person. I think I even miss grocery shopping.

I keep reminding myself why I started this so I can endure to the end. I'm learning a LOT and I know that I haven't learned all of the things that I set out to learn yet. I know that I will keep going but I just needed to complain a little bit. I just have to make it past #2 and get to the part where it's just normal and I don't even think about it anymore. Any ideas on when that will be?

A Word about Wonder Ovens

2010-02-21T17:43:00.001-08:00

We have been counseled to store a year's worth of food and fuel where possible. The food I have but fuel is a whole other issue. I quickly realized that it was logistically impossible to store a year's worth of any kind of fuel for a family as large as mine. Especially considering the types of food we store, long grain rice, dry beans, etc. Items that have to boil for hours to be edible. I was looking at mountains of propane, or charcoal, or whatever. Just not feasible.

Then I discovered the Wonder Oven.

The concept is not new, people in poor countries have been using something similar for a long time but now they are being re-purposed for food storage. It's basically an insulating crock-pot consisting of an 18 gallon Rubbermaid, 2 special pillows, and a pot. Together with a one burner stove, it dramatically reduces how much fuel you need to cook your food. You can easily store enough fuel for a year.

How it works is you heat up the food item you want to cook to boiling on your one burner stove, or over a fire, and then boil a short time. Transfer the boiling pot to your wonder oven with the insulating pillows completely surrounding the pot inside the Rubbermaid. Leave unopened the specified amount of time and Ta-Da! Perfectly cooked food using only a few minutes worth of fuel!

I know it sounds like it won't work. That is what I thought the first time I heard of it. But it does work, and it works well. In fact once I got a wonder oven I got mad at how much energy I waste using my regular oven. :)

I mostly bake bread in my wonder oven, but you can do anything in them, even beans. In fact you can boil dry beans, put them in your wonder oven in the morning, and they are ready to eat by evening, no soaking, or cooking on the stove top for hours.

Wonder ovens can be bought or made. I made mine, and one for all my siblings as well. :) You can find the patterns for the pillows online, plus sewing instructions. The pillows are filled with polystyrene pellets, like the ones you find in bean bags. That is what insulates the pot and keeps in the heat for cooking. It is amazing how well it works. Put the boiling pot in in the morning and you will still need pot holders hours later just to get the pot out.

If you would rather just purchase a wonder oven, I have a friend that loved them so much she decided to start making them and sell them. She has a website you can check out. There you will find lots more information, helpful tips, and recipes.

I really feel like this was an answer to my prayer about storing fuel. Of course don't wait until you have to live off food storage to use it. I use mine frequently, especially during the summer. It allows me to bake bread, and cook food without heating up the house. That is almost a miracle in and of itself. It's also useful during a power outage. Take the time to check them out.

Here are some pictures of me using the wonder oven to bake bread.

Make your favorite bread recipe as usual and let rise until double.

Then punch down and divide into 3 equal parts (I use a small scale to make sure they are equal weight). Place into greased large V-8 cans and put in your pot with warm water. Water should come about half way up the can and your pot should be as small as possible while still allowing the lid to close snugly.

Let rise in the pot with the lid on until dough is about 1 inch from the top of the cans. Remove cans from pot and cover with tinfoil.

Secure tinfoil to can with tape or rubber band and place back in pot of water on the stove. Bring to a boil and boil for 10 minutes.

Immediately remove from heat but DO NOT remove the lid. Quickly transfer entire pot to wonder oven. Place on bottom pillow and cover with the top pillow. Do not disturb for at least 2 hours. You can leave it as long as you want. Food will not burn or over bake. Feel free to run errands while your bread is baking!

After at least 2 hours remove bread from wonder oven. Slide out of can. You will notice right away that this bread does not have a crust. My kids LOVE it!

Cut into slices and you have nice round bread that is the perfect size for sandwiches!

Here is a YouTube video of how to use a Wonder Oven from the lady that introduced me to it: WonderOven Teaser.

Apple Fritters

2010-02-19T10:28:00.000-08:00

Tried this recipe this week and it was fantastic! Very authentic in taste although quite a bit smaller than store bought ones. I got this recipe from another great blog (But Mama I'm Hungry) and just adapted it to my food storage. I am finding that I have a lot more luck with recipes when I find good recipes and then adapt them, rather than trying to find straight food storage recipes which tend to be bland and monotonous.

Here's a picture of my son REALLY enjoying the fruits of my labors. Try them out yourself!

Corn Bread to Die For

2010-02-14T13:38:00.001-08:00

Ok, let me just start off by saying, "I HATE cornbread" Seriously. It's dry and bland unless drowned in butter and honey. I don't even store cornmeal because I couldn't think of what I would make with it besides cornbread and corn tortillas (don't like those either). But my friend mentioned to me the other day that you can grind popcorn to make cornmeal and it makes much tastier cornbread.

I do store popcorn for snacking on so I decided to give it a try this week. We were having Mountain House freeze dried chicken stew for dinner and cornbread sounded like the perfect side dish, so I went looking for a cornbread recipe that looked like it wouldn't be totally awful. I found one that looked promising so I ground up some popcorn in my wheat grinder (seriously, you can do that), made cornmeal, and followed the recipe.

OH............ MY.............. GOSH!!! It was SO good! Seriously, I could LIVE off of this stuff.
I don't know if it was the recipe, or the fresh ground cornmeal, but I will never make cornbread any other way. Which is funny because before I would have said, "I will never make cornbread" Not anymore. YUMMY!!

Blender Pancakes

2010-02-09T22:20:00.000-08:00

I got home late and only had 30 minutes to make dinner. Normally that would have meant hitting Papa Murphey's on the way home. These days it's cause for panic. Food storage is not 30 minute meal material! I decided to try blender pancakes. I know it's a well known recipe but it was the first time that I have tried them. They were really good! My kids at them up and they were quick and easy. Plus, it's a use for wheat without having to grind it - a definite plus! I put the recipe on the recipe link

How is your food storage organized?

2010-02-07T14:39:00.000-08:00

Ok, so people ask me all the time how I organize my food storage so I'm posting a not-so-brief overview. Let me just start with a disclaimer about myself though. I am a highly organized person. Seriously. Almost to the point of it being a clinical sickness. I literally have lists of my lists. However, I think that the system I have is very user friendly and could be adapted and used by anyone.

First of all, I don't know if any of you have ever seen a year's worth of food for 8 people but it is a TREMENDOUS amount of food, and I do not live in a large house, nor do I have a basement, attic, large closets, or even a walk in pantry. I realized early on that I would have to make some sacrifices to get that much food into the house.

For example, my kids don't have beds. Their beds are a mattress on top of food storage boxes. They are literally sleeping on food storage. You can't see the boxes with the dust ruffle but it's there. That was hard for me. We all want the perfect Martha Stewart home but I quickly realized I couldn't have that and food storage. In fact one day my mother-in-law (who's not LDS) discovered the kids were sleeping on boxes and demanded to know why. Try explaining THAT without sounding like a crazed, religious, hoarder!! LOL

Don't get me wrong, if you come into my house, you won't be able to see the food, but it's EVERYWHERE, and it has defintely limited my decorating choices. When it came down to it though, it's not a hard choice whether to follow the prophet, or Martha Stewart :) And there are SO many creative ideas out there on how to hide your food storage, even in small areas. Here is a link to one of my favorites: Hidden Can Rotator Please don't let a perceived lack of space hinder you. When people tell me they don't have room, most of the time it's not a space issue, but rather a priority issue.

So now I have food masquerading as beds, in the coat closet, in the garage, even in the bathtub, which can make it difficult to keep track of and rotate, so the first thing I did was make up a spreadsheet. This spreadsheet tells me exactly what I have stored, where in the house it is located, and when it is set to expire, plus the cheapest place to buy it so I know where to go when I need to replace it. That is important. Know what you have, where it is, and when it will expire.

Living off food storage presented a unique problem because I am now needing to get into food I normally wouldn't. I don't rotate items that last 20 years or more so those are the foods I was keeping under the beds. Now that I need to get into those foods it's a real bummer to have to lift up the mattress, find the right box, and dig a can out. Then I have to do it all over again every time we empty a can. WAY too much work. So I asked my husband to build me some shelves out in the garage that were just long enough to hold 5 cans. That way, when I open a box I can take all 6 cans out, put one can in my pantry, and the other 5 on the shelves for easy future access.

Typically you do NOT want to store food in the garage since the heat will cause it to spoil much faster but since I am using these cans up so quickly, they are ok out there. There are some items you can store in the garage that can take the heat like sugar, honey, wheat (although it can make it unsproutable), jam, vinegar, and of course, all your non-food items.

I also have my 3 month's supply foods that we rotate regularly in the master bathtub. Normally I would not store food in a bathtub but the brilliant builders of our home built a tub that actually holds more water than my hot water heater, making it impossible to use the tub, and there is no way I could let all that space go to waste, so I bought one of those fancy can rotators. We bought ours from Costco.com which was somewhat cheaper (this is what I spent my christmas bonus money on) but if you are particularly handy, you can make them like this guy did: Homemade Can Rotator Or you can purchase some relatively inexpensive can rotators that go on your pantry shelves like these.

Finally, my absolute FAVORITE tool for tracking and rotating food storage is an idea that came from someone else. Inside my pantry I have taped small envelopes, each one labeled with a different food storage item. Whenever I open a new can of food, I take one strip of paper and put it in the envelope for that food item. SO easy and simple, and convenient since it's right there where my food is!

Now I can see at a glance exactly what needs to be replaced when I go to the store, or the cannery. If you don't have a convenient place for the envelopes in your pantry, you can also mount them on a large poster board and put it anywhere in your house that is near your food storage.

And last of all, because living off food storage is so different from what we are used to, my family sometimes has a hard time coming up with ideas of what they can eat for breakfast, pack for lunch, or just snack on. So I created lists that I posted inside my pantry cupboard doors with ideas for them for these meals. Plus I arranged my pantry by meals so one shelf is all breakfast foods, one shelf is all lunch foods, one shelf is snack and dessert foods, etc. Normally this is not how my pantry is arranged but it was necessary for the duration of this food storage experiment so my kids don't starve to death. It's a different feeling to open your pantry and have nothing but #10 cans staring back at you. :)

Hopefully you can get something useful out of all of this gibberish. I guess if there is any advice I consistently give to people it is this: Just start small. If you think of all the things you need to do and have, you will quickly get overwhelmed. Don't do that to yourself. Just start where you are and do a little each week. I go to the cannery once a month (date night!!), and check out the canner once a month to can at home. And each week when I make my Walmart list, I add a couple of extra things to the list for storage. You will be amazed how quickly you will be able to gather what you need. We got our whole year's supply doing that.

I am a FIRM believer that the Lord wants us to succeed in the endeavor to follow the Prophet and become self reliant. If we put the smallest effort forward, He will double the returns. That's better than any 401k! :)

Granola Bar Heaven

2010-02-06T21:58:00.000-08:00

I have made this recipe several times and just love it! It came from my Bishop's wife originally so I have to give her credit because it has become one of our favorite snacks. The full recipe is posted on my recipe site and there are several variations you can try. Better than the store bought ones for sure.

Flour tortillas

2010-02-02T16:17:00.001-08:00

Ok I am SO playing catch up with my life. I usually post a new blog every Sunday but I've been so busy this week and I can't even sit down and post a couple of pictures. Of course I would be less busy if I wasn't COOKING all the time. A quick run through the drive-thru would save me a lot of time! LOL

So I made homemade four tortillas for dinner last night. They were really yummy! I have tortilla flour actually canned in #10 cans that I have used previously but they are white corn tortillas which I do not prefer over flour tortillas so I decided to try to make some from scratch. I added some homemade refried beans and reconstituted sour cream powder. They were delicious so I'm posting the recipe. I think I will use some of my white corn flour to make chips. I'll let you know how that goes.

On a side note, I've blown through most of the recipes I had found to try. (There are a very limited number of recipes that only use food storage) but my friend sent me a link to a book that I bought from a lady who makes up food storage meals in a jar. I bought the book online and I'm REALLY excited to try out some of her recipes. She's one of the few people that also seems to realize if we were all forced to live off food storage, there is very little chance we would be able to supplement off store bought items. The book is called "Dinner is in the Jar" I'll let you know how it is when it gets here.

After that, I have to get really serious and start coming up with my own recipes. That could get really ugly :)

Super Cereal Success!!!

2010-01-27T21:01:00.000-08:00

Came across my favorite food storage recipe so far! It's actually a granola recipe, and my family loves to snack on it, but it also makes a super yummy cold cereal if you put it in a bowl with milk. I'm posting the recipe on my recipe blog but this is what it looks like when it comes out of the oven. Then you just break it up into smaller pieces and snack away!!

More Food Success - and failures!

2010-01-24T17:23:00.000-08:00

Ok, I know I was going to post about organizing and rotating but I just didn't get around to taking the pictures I needed so I will do it next time. This week was BUSY! I spent all day on Saturday canning in my garage. I did 250 lbs of sugar, some 13 bean soup, and misc beans for my mom. What was funny was I had to go to Costco to get the sugar, and WinCo to get the beans. I was in a total panic the whole time that someone would see me at the grocery store and think I was cheating! My mom says I'm developing a complex and she might be right. I kept looking over my shoulder the whole time I was at the store.

So I made some recipes this week that are keepers. First off I tried a different graham cracker recipe that I like even better, AND they look even more like the store bought ones. They are better for you too since they contain both wheat and bean flour creating a complete protein to snack on. I'll post the recipe on my other blog under "Graham Crackers - Take Two"

I had another success with Wheat Thins! We LOVED this recipe and the best thing is you could make it with different spices and completely change the flavor of your wheat thins. I made our first batch using garlic salt but this week I'm going to also try cheese flavored, taco flavored, and cinnamon flavored (this might even work as a cereal - like Golden Grahams - I'll let you know). Again I added the recipe on my recipe site.

Speaking of cereal. I made Grape Nuts type cereal that was very easy and was pretty good. My 5 year old likes it a lot. I keep trying cereal recipes because I need quick and easy breakfasts since we all have to be up and out the door so early.

I also had some spectacular failures. I've made 2 versions of mac and cheese so far and they were too disgusting to even choke down. I also can't make edible spreadable butter. I tried adding butter flavoring but it ended up tasting like disgusting popcorn flavored butter. ICK! Not sure where to go from here but I won't rest until I have butter for my toast!

Recipes

2010-01-17T20:21:00.000-08:00

Ok so I've been wrestling with how to give you access to my food storage recipes without cluttering up my blog. The best solution I can come up with (since Blogspot doesn't allow for multiple pages) is to create another blog and then link to it. So, on the right of this page you will see a link to "My Year Living on Food Storage - Recipes" You can click on there and it will take you to my blog that lists only recipes. I believe you will be able to sort them by searching for a certain category like "Main Dish" or "Crockpot" etc. since I have them tagged.

Now you have to remember that I am picking out recipes that taste good for food storage recipes. They are not good compared to the tri tip you had last night, or tomorrow's creamy enchiladas. Believe me, if you were living off food storage, the word delicious would take on a whole different meaning. :)

So I had a VERY productive weekend and I'm feeling much better about my ability to be able to do this. I find that I literally have to be cooking all the time to keep my family fed 3 meals a day so I spent all weekend in the kitchen. Here are a few of my triumphs this week:

I made super yummy granola bars! No recipe for this one yet because the base was a Christmas gift to us from the Bishop's family, I just added the rest of the ingredients since it was all food storage items. :) I have several recipes for food storage granola bars though and when I narrow it down to the best one I will be sure to post it.

My biggest triumph was making spreadable butter out of powdered butter! After one false start a friend suggested that I mix in some butter flavored Crisco (which I store) for flavoring. Worked like a charm! Ok, it doesn't taste like store bought butter but when you've been going without butter for awhile believe me, you'll take anything that is edible. Yea for eating toast for breakfast again!

Speaking of breakfast, my kids were raised on 2 Eggos a day so breakfast has been hard for them. So today I broke out the waffle iron and made a mountain of waffles. I bagged them up for the freezer so that my kids will have them for breakfast this week. Actually this many waffles won't last my family anywhere near a week. Oh well, they'll have waffles for a few days. :)

I also used powdered eggs for the first time (in my waffle batter) made chocolate milk, re-organized my pantry, set up a can rotater, got my husband to build shelves for more food storage rotation in the garage, baked bread, and last, but not least, made hamburgers for dinner.

First I made homemade hamburger buns. SO yummy! I posted the recipe for that one on my other blog. Here's a picture to show them off since I'm so proud. :)

Then I used one pound of our precious little frozen meat left, and mixed in some mashed black beans and cooked wheat to extend it to be enough for 8 people. Actually I used a meatless hamburger recipe but added a pound of meat with a little BBQ sauce. Fried them up and then used up the very last of our produce left in the fridge. And served them up on my homemade buns.

My kids thought they were in heaven. So did I.

So, all in all, very productive week.

Now, lots of people have been asking me how I organize and track my food storage so that will be the subject of my next post. It's a pretty simple system I use but highly effective and user friendly. And of course, I have pictures. :)

Graham Crackers

2010-01-15T12:13:00.000-08:00

Ok so I have to figure out things I can make that the kids (and dad) can snack on and pack in school lunches, so today I decided to try out graham crackers. They were so perfect! They tasted just like the real thing so I'm posting the recipe and a few pictures:

1/2 c evap milk
1/2 c water
2 T lemon juice or vinegar
1 c brown sugar
1/2 c honey
1 c veg oil
2 t vanilla
2 eggs slightly beaten (or reconstituted powdered eggs)
1 t salt
1 t baking soda
6 c wheat flour
cinnamon and sugar (opt)

First I ground my wheat. My 3 year old LOVES the wheat grinder. Everytime he hears me turn it on he comes running. I asked him once why he liked it so much and he said, "Because it makes so much NOISE!" Here he is with his face practically in it watching the wheat grind.

So first you mix together the milk, water, and lemon juice in a small container and let sit. Meanwhile, in a separate bowl beat well brown sugar, honey, oil, vanilla, and eggs. Combine both milk and sugar mixture with the salt, baking soda, and wheat flour. It should look like this, slightly thinner than cookie dough like in my bowl here.

Now divide into 4 equal parts. Place each on separate greased and floured cookie sheets (if you only have one cookie sheet you can bake them one after another). Roll out VERY thin. As thin as you can get it without the cookie sheet showing through. My first batch was way to thick and I ended up with a graham cracker cake. Once it's rolled out, prick with a fork. Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar if you want. I did because let's face it, everything is better with cinnamon and sugar :)

Bake at 375 for about 15 minutes until they are just golden brown. Cut into strips right away. It will be soft still when you take it out but will get hard like graham crackers very quickly. Here's my finished product.

Even my picky 3 year old LOVED them. YEA!!

Powdered Milk

2010-01-14T20:33:00.000-08:00

Ok so funny story. I've just accepted that apparently everyone at church is aware of my year long project. I've stopped marveling when practically everyone there makes comments to me about how it's going, but today I really did get a shock. I walk into my hairdressers salon to get my hair done and she says to me, "Oh my gosh, how is your food storage thing going?" LOL! I guess there really will be no way to escape this path. Even my hairdresser is watching me.

So we have had some successes and some failures so far this week. I did manage to make cheese. It was DISGUSTING! I think I can find a better recipe though so I'll be trying that one again. We had two dinner recipes that were a hit. I know many of you want copies of recipes so I have to figure out how to make like a separate section for recipes so that the blog doesn't get super long. I don't know how to do this so I'm going to have to ask for help. Alisa - I know you're reading this. HELP!!

My family is really being super good sports so far. I have to tell you, even the recipes that we make and are keeping are not delicious. We keep them because they are edible. I can totally see why so fewer people were obese 100 years ago. There is no chance of stuffing your face just because the food is so good. You eat because you are hungry and as soon as you are not hungry, you stop eating. We are back to looking at food purely as fuel. I suppose that is a healthier relationship to have with food but it's hard. Last night a commercial for Chili's Restaurant came on and I thought I was going to die. Big saucy, cheesy dishes, brownie and ice cream smothered in hot fudge...... I can't go on.

One last funny thing. We are purely on powdered milk. I've tried all the tricks to make it taste good but nothing really works. I can make it taste better, but nothing makes it taste good. Anyway, my 5 year old comes up to me yesterday all excited and says, "Mom! When I plug my nose, I can't taste the milk at all!" I was laughing so hard. I took a picture of him eating his homemade cold cereal with powdered milk using his nose plugging trick.

First Week

2010-01-10T14:53:00.000-08:00

OK this is the first week that will be completely food storage. Ouch. It took me two hours to get a menu down for the week. The easiest meals are breakfasts, we have lots of options there. We have quite a few choices for dinners too but they require a LOT of forethought and work. Lunches are a nightmare. Where do you go beyond PB&J? Well I have some ideas, we'll have to see how they work out. I think for the purposes of this blog, I won't bore you with the things that I try that don't work (unless they fail spectacularly and the results might amuse my readers), so I will post recipes that do work in case you are interested. Some of the things I'm going to try this week that should be interesting:

Making cheese
Making cold cereal
Making graham crackers
Trying out "meatless" hamburgers

Really dairy is the biggest problem. I can live without all the meat but how do you get by without spreadable butter, cheese, and sour cream? I'm trying to think how much my neighbors would complain about a cow in the backyard.... :)

One final note. I have had a lot of people say to me, "Well if I had to use my food storage, I would be able to figure out how to use it and what to make." I would REALLY urge people to re-think that logic. Spontaneous knowledge doesn't happen no matter how desperate the circumstance. To make my point here is a challenge for you. Sit down with an inventory list of the food storage you actually have and try to make a list of what you can make with just those items you have stored. The results will shock you I guarantee.

The Official Rules

2010-01-03T13:10:00.000-08:00

Ok, as usual, life has thrown a wrench in my plans. We have had the flu in our house this week, and on top of that, my computer died a couple of days ago. Add that to our new year of eating starting and I have been VERY overwhelmed.

Today though, we are all healed, I have a new computer in the box ready to set up, and so I'm feeling much more positive. It seems lots of people have found out about this blog and our plans to live off food storage. Not sure how since I really haven't told anyone but nonetheless it's good as it will keep me accountable and on track. So, I have a list of rules for the coming year. These are the basics, I may add to them later but here they are:

1. I will not go to a grocery store or buy food other than to replace the food storage that we are eating.

2. I will use up all the food that we have in our house including long term food storage, freezer items, and 3 month storage items. I haven't stocked up on anything other than what I normally buy so it should be an accurate test of what would actually happen if we suddenly had to live off only what we have.

3. I will still be going to Wal-Mart for non-food items. I have essentials stored like toothpaste, deodorant, shampoo, etc. but I do not store other supplies that we will need to continue our day to day living like dish soap, beauty products, school items, etc. I promise not to sneak a Snickers bar while I'm there. :)

4. I will be planting a garden in the Spring. I always have a garden and I store garden seeds so it is reasonable I would be able to have a garden. We also have a few fruit trees that I will make use of in our backyard.

5. If I find that I am lacking some food item in my storage that I should be storing, I will purchase a year's worth of that item and put it in my storage now so that I can learn to use it.

6. We will still go to parties, ward functions, and dinner invites, but if you ask us to bring something, be prepared that it will be a food storage item!

7. We are going on an extensive vacation to Nauvoo this summer. It won't be possible to bring our food storage with us for that but I will try to shop in a manner consistent with what we are eating out of our food storage in order to maintain our goals.

8. I will post recipes, tips, and other things that I learn as I go along so that other people might benefit from this experience.

I think that's it. My whole goal with this "project" is to better learn what I should be storing, and how to use it. And hopefully somewhere along the way we will also increase our feeling of self reliance, and maybe even help others learn some things! Thanks for taking the time to read.

Last Trip to the Grocery Store

2009-12-30T11:56:00.000-08:00

I grocery shop every Wednesday. Today is Wednesday December 30, 2009 so it is officially my last trip to the grocery store for the next year. Can't say that I'm sad about that! Anyway, I'm taking "last meal" requests from my family. Everyone gets one last meal of their favorite dish. So this week we are having:

Chicken Enchiladas
French Dip
Stuffed Shells
Hamburgers
Tri-Tip
Chicken Adobo

This is going to be one whopping grocery bill - LOL. I'm going to have to avoid the temptation to stock up at the grocery store. It's going to be hard. I'm starting to feel overwhelmed by this whole project already.

On a related note, I got a Bosch for Christmas!! I'm SO excited! I had a KitchenAid that has been my trusted companion for the last 10 years but I can only make 2-3 loaves of bread at a time which means baking bread twice a week for my large family. With this Bosch I can make up to 8 loaves at once ~ Woo Hoo!! Now I can keep the extra loaves in the freezer until I need them.

Next Sunday I will post my official rules for the coming year....

Costco Trip

2009-12-13T15:43:00.000-08:00

So I made my monthly trip to Costco this week. Definitely didn't buy the usual though since I was buying in anticipation of going full food storage in January. That means no meat or other non-food storage items that we wouldn't have time to eat before January.

I did buy their 5 gallon bucket of powdered milk. I already have all my powdered milk but theirs was SO cheap ~ only $27! It makes 52 gallons of milk so that is like 51 cents per gallon! Can't beat that. Unfortunately it not real powdered milk, it's milk substitute, so while it tastes good, it lacks some of the nutrients. It will be great to use in baking though, and drinking occasionally.

I also bought some spices, chicken boullion in particular. I have realized already that I don't have enough spices stored. With such a limited number of ingredients to cook with, and most of them very bland, spices will be all that stands between us and food fatigue. Especially when I have little ones who would rather just not eat if they don't like it.

On a related note, I FINALLY got my kids to eat a 13 bean soup recipe. I've been experimenting with different recipes and my kids have hated them all so far. This week I decided to keep it simple so I just put 2 cups of my dry mix of 13 beans in my crockpot with 6 cups chicken broth and turned it on low for 6-8 hours. When the beans were soft, I served the soup with a sprinkle of garlic salt on it. It was a HUGE hit! My 5 and 7 year old literally licked the bowl clean and asked for more. My older kids just said, "Finally mom, a bean soup recipe that isn't gross." :) Apparently less is more. I should have just tried chicken broth to begin with instead of a bunch of complicated spices. Lesson learned.

Did you know?

2009-12-06T17:36:00.000-08:00

Only 3 more weeks until the big experiment begins and I'm getting pretty excited! My husband is grumbling less about it which is nice and I have found a lot of recipes, and a couple of cookbooks that are going to be very helpful. They are called "Cookin' With Home Storage" and "Country Beans" Both of them have lots of recipes that contain only food storage items, and lots of other helpful info. Like, did you know that you can mix some bean flour in with your regular wheat flour when making bread and it makes a complete protein? I've also run some pinto beans through my wheat grinder to make bean flour and made YUMMY refried beans with it, plus you can use bean flour to thicken sauces, and as a soup base. In fact I'm using bean flour tonight to make gravy for my pot roast. Very cool.

I also found an older Make a Mix book that is going to help solve one of my biggest obstacles to living off food storage - the time factor. I just don't have all day to be cooking meals. However, I have found TONS of recipes that you just make the dry mix ahead of time and then you can use the mix to throw dinner together at the last minute. Think soup mixes, bread mixes, and even seasoning mixes like taco seasoning, soup seasoning etc. Oh, and get THIS - did you know you can make almost everything from scratch? I have recipes for yeast, mayonnaise, cream of anything soup, dried onion soup mix.... Seriously. EVERYTHING. And (here's the best part) they require only the ingredients I have in my food storage! I know that you are all dying to know more. I will post recipes and stuff of these items as I use them. And of course, I'll let you know how they taste! OK, have to get going as I have maxed out my available allotment of exclamation points for one post.

Hope we don't get sick

2009-11-29T16:51:00.001-08:00

Ok I found lots of recipes and a few books that I think I can use this upcoming year. Looking over what I can actually make with just food storage though is pretty dismal. We hopefully will still be alive but I don't think we'll be particularly healthy, and I'm positive we won't be very happy. It just reinforces for me why I want to do this though. If I see that it is totally unliveable to eat this stuff then I know I need to store different things.

I am legitimately concerned about what might happen to suddenly change our diets so drastically. I mean, we eat wheat, in the bread that I make every week, but even that is a 50/50 recipe with white flour so we don't eat a lot of whole grains. I'm worried that we all might get sick with a sudden drastic change of diet. But again, this is why I'm doing this. If I ever have to live off food storage, it's likely to be a sudden event where we would have to go to food storage cold turkey. This experience will help me plan for that. Hopefully there won't be any tummy aches but if there are I will know that is one more thing I need to make sure is planned for with what I store.

BTW, my husband is SO not on board with my little plan. My kids are excited but I think it's because they don't really realize how their lives are about to change :) Last night we had Little Caesars. I can never eat convenient fast food now without thinking "What am I going to do next year in this situation?" So basically it was pizza with a side of guilt.

Feeling Better

2009-11-22T20:39:00.000-08:00

Ok, I'm a little less overwhelmed today. I did some research online and found several cookbooks that I think are going to help me with recipes and cooking the food I have stored. I also talked to my friend Megan and she gave me some recipes and some ideas. I plan to have a nice "cookbook" together by January so I will at least know what I am going to make out of this food!

I also need to figure out how I am going to rotate it. Right now I have food stored everywhere. In the garage, in closets, under beds.... seriously.... everywhere. Have you ever actually seen a years worth of food for 8 people? It's a LOT of food! Half the challenge is going to be figuring out how to get to it and rotate it. I think I have a plan though for some can dispensers my husband can build for me in the garage that will make it a lot easier. He doesn't know he's building them yet. Gonna have to wait for just the right moment to spring that on him. Preferably after he finishes the bathroom re-model he is right in the middle of. :)

Getting a little worried.

2009-11-20T15:03:00.000-08:00

Ok I'm starting to panic a little bit. I'm doing research and trying to find recipes that use just basic food storage items. They are few and far between. Most recipes just incorporate food storage items into your regular recipes. Yikes! My family may mutiny on me. LOL I have a few more things to get to complete my years supply so I'm trying to get that done before January. I need 400 lbs more of wheat, 70 lbs of white beans, 200 lbs of sugar, and some misc items. And I would REALLY like to purchase a Bosch Universal Mixer before January. I have a KitchenAid but I don't think it's up to the kind of abuse it's about to get in the next year.....

In the beginning....

2009-11-15T17:16:00.000-08:00

First off let me just put a disclaimer. I hate blogs. Love Facebook. Hate blogs. Don't have them - don't follow them. However, I realized there might be some people intersted in the journey I am about to embark on so I'm breaking my own vow to never have a blog :)

First a little about myself. Born and raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I tell you that because I happily define my life by my religion. Not surprisingly then I went to BYU, went on a mission, married a very handsome returned missionary, and am the mother of 6 rambunctious and opinionated children ranging in ages from 3 - 14.

I also have a years worth of food stored in my 1,900 square foot house. I would tell you how we manage that but it would require a whole other blog :) After gathering it all together - I even rotate most of it in with our regular cooking - I realized that if I ever had to truly live off of just my food storage, I would have NO idea what to do. Not good. I can't think of any happy circumstance that would cause me to have to live off food storage so I will most likely be dealing with a devastating circumstance AND trying to figure out how to feed my family on the food I have stored. How to solve this problem? Well why not practice living off of it for a year?

I know what you are thinking because I've already heard it from friends and family but people that know me will tell you that this is the kind of person I am. All or nothing. And very self reliant. I'm the last person wanting to have to ask for help so I figure one year of experience is going to make me way more than one year wiser.

My goal is three-fold. 1. Learn what I am not storing that I should be. 2. Learn what I am storing that I don't need to be. 3. Learn how to actually cook and live off what I have stored. I'm not trying to torture my family, this is a learning experience only. I'm going to set out the ground rules on this experiment in a later blog. Right now I have to go make dinner - roasted chicken, fresh green beans, and homemade rolls with cinnamon butter. Not even a hint of food storage in there! lol