Monthly Archives: August 2008

I hope that you were able to enjoy the recipes that I shared last posting. I thought that it would be fun to share a few more of my quick and easy, food storage friendly, recipes. I promised recipes with rice this time. My first recipe is another family favorite. After all, what would be the purpose of having recipes that your family doesn’t like?

First, cook up twice the amount of rice that you need to feed your family (you will use it tomorrow). 1 cup of rice to 2 cups of water, add a little salt to the water and boil on medium heat until water is gone (I usually cook three to four cups of rice at a time.)

While you are waiting for the rice to cook, make Rice with Refried Beans. Open one or two cans of refried beans, depending on how many people you are feeding, and warm up in a saucepan. Add just a little bit of water so that it isn’t so thick and season with granulated garlic, chili powder, cayenne pepper, powdered onion, black pepper, salt and cumin (you have to have the cumin – it just isn’t the same without it) to taste. When the rice is done put a good size serving in the bottom of a bowl, put another good size serving of the seasoned refried beans on top of that, top with shredded cheddar cheese, salsa and sour cream. This is a very hearty and healthy meal.

OK. It is the second night and you have all that left over rice. Life is so easy. Just make Refried Rice with Ham. Cube some ham (however much you want) and fry it up in a large frying pan. When it gets good and golden brown on the edges, add a little bit of olive oil and the cold leftover rice. Fry the rice and ham together and season to taste with black pepper. I add just a dab of butter at the end of the cooking process to add a little flavor, but it is not necessary.

Serve up with a side of corn and season the rice and ham with soy sauce. My family requests this one, but remember that it tastes best with day old rice.

If you don’t have any ham, don’t worry, just add a bag of frozen oriental vegetables and have Oriental Vegetables with Refried Rice. I like the oriental vegetable mix because I like the baby corn and snow peas. You can use any frozen vegetable mix you want. The only thing that I would do different from the ham and rice is that I would re-fry the rice up separately from the vegetables so that the vegetables don’t get all smooshed up. Flavor with a little bit of soy sauce.

I like soy sauce – no, I love soy sauce. My favorite is Kikkoman. I buy it by the five gallon bucket for only $35.00 (at least that was what it was the last time I bought it.) Soy sauce is not just for oriental cooking, it is a highly versatile seasoning. Try this recipe for Beef Soup as an example. I think that you will be surprised.

Take a very large pan and brown your stewing beef or beef chunks, add onions at this point and let them start to sweat. Add approximately 16 cups of water (in my pan that fills it ¾ of the pan). You really don’t need to measure, just make it approximate. Add about 1 cup of soy sauce (now you know why I buy it in five-gallon containers).

Add your cut up vegetables: celery, carrots, potatoes and whatever else you want. To make this recipe even faster, less than 10 minutes or about the time that it takes to heat the water, use canned meat and canned vegetables and dried onions.

Flavor your soup with garlic granules and black pepper. I also like to add a touch of cayenne pepper. You can also put in a touch of sage or Italian seasoning. It is all about the taste, just experiment with the flavors you like. If there is too much soy sauce, add a little water. Not flavorful enough? Add more soy sauce.

This recipe becomes a favorite of anyone who tries it. It is one of those “comfort” foods that people always talk about. If you have any leftover rice (of which you won’t) you can add it to the soup. No bouillon cubes here!

Now would be a good time to re-evaluate why you eat a certain way and why you buy certain types of foods. Do you buy things to eat because they are healthy and tasty for your family or do you buy food because they are convenient and easy? Do you cook from scratch or is opening a box your thing?

There is a really good book called “Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence” co-authored by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin. Basically the book talks about our relationship with purchasing convenience and how much it costs us. It talks about how advertisers convince us that we need “and deserve” convenience. Advertisers have convinced us that we just can’t do “it” as good as they can and that our families will be better off if we let them do it for us so that we have more time to what? Go to work to so that we can earn more money so that we can buy more convenience? How inconvenient, and so very expensive.

I know that everyone that works is going to say, “I just don’t have time to fix dinner and I’m too tired”. I know, I understand. I work full time, I just recently quit my second job. I clean a house every other week, write a newspaper article and help out in the community and I have a family. I understand what you are saying. I’m tired too. I just find it too costly to buy “convenience” as an every day way of life. I am not saying that I don’t ever stop off and get a pizza on the way home, but my family does consider fast food a rare and unexpected treat – not an everyday way of life.

In order to keep my sanity I have come up with my own “Fast Food” and I will share it with you. You probably have your own favorite quick fix meals, but remember they don’t all have to be casserole based and you can use your food storage items.

My first and favorite recipe is one that my friends Diane and Stanley Green shared with me. It is called Salsa Soup: Brown 1 lb. of hamburger and drain the excess oil. Add 1 pint of your favorite salsa and 1 quart of stewed tomatoes. Heat and eat. Really that is it. By the time it is warmed up, it is ready. I serve tortilla chips with it on the side and a bit of shredded cheddar cheese on the top with a dollop of sour cream (both are optional). This soup only gets better with age – think yummy homemade lunch the next day at work instead of the old tired sandwich or the expensive “buy on the run” meal.

This next recipe is actually a two-nighter planned meal. Have spaghetti the first night (that is easy enough) and cook twice the amount of spaghetti noodles. With the leftover spaghetti noodles you can make my family’s favorite meal – Spaghetti and Vegetables (a variation of some Chinese dish). Warm up the spaghetti by putting it in a colander and running hot water over it.

Meanwhile either steam or fry up some frozen oriental vegetables from a bag. After the vegetables are hot, toss the noodles and vegetables in a large hot pan (the one you cooked the vegetables in) with just a little bit of olive oil. Season with some granulated garlic, black pepper and lots soy sauce – to taste. You might use more soy sauce than you are used to, but it will make all the difference in the taste.

Warm everything up together so that the sugars will caramelize a little. You can also add a dab of butter at the end for taste or drizzle just a little bit of sesame oil on it. Throw a couple of shrimp in with it if you have them, but they are not necessary. Serve with soy sauce so that everyone can season it to taste. Remember you are using left over noodles – very EASY and TASTY!

Next time I will share with you how to make rice come alive. Remember that stuff in your food storage? No longer is it just a side dish.

We have discussed the Siege mentality and the Practical mentality and now we will look at the Provident mentality.

The Provident storer is a combination of the Siege and Practical with one big difference.  Instead of just storing what the Siege storer stores (i.e. wheat, dry milk, sugar, etc.) the Provident storer uses it. The Provident storer will also have a large garden and will bottle, freeze and dehydrate the foods they grow. They will raise animals, where they are able to, and will do their best to not rely on the grocery store.

When they go grocery shopping they buy in bulk, taking advantage of sales and only go down to the store once in awhile for fresh foods like milk and eggs (unless they have a cow and chickens). Some Provident storers will even make their own cheese (which, by the way, is A LOT OF FUN!)

A Provident storer will incorporate foods in their everyday diet that most people wouldn’t consider taking on like wheat and powdered milk. Which, if you started to incorporate these “gotta have, but don’t ever actually use” items into your diet, you would be surprised at how easy and tasty they can be, not to mention how much cheaper and healthier your diet would become.

I’m not advocating that everyone go back to the pioneer days of becoming self reliant, but I am saying that you can find a balance with your food storage and the way that you build it, use it and rotate it. I find that I am a Practical storer with tendencies of the Provident mentality.

I love trying to find different ways to use what I have stored. I know that wheat and whole grains and beans are healthy for us, but how do I use it? Well, I just jumped in. I started grinding and blending and going to classes to learn more about how to use everything that I knew was good for my family’s health. I also did it because I wanted to know that my family would enjoy the food that I had stored and that it wouldn’t make them sick.

To introduce wheat to your family, try using wheat flour instead of white flour when making the tortilla shell recipe that I shared with you. (3 cups flour, 1-tsp. salt, 1-tsp. baking powder, ¼ cup oil and 1 cup warm water.) We actually prefer the wheat tortilla shells to the white tortilla shells. The way that I started to incorporate powdered milk was to take a class on how to use powdered milk taught by Darlene Carlisle. What a fun class! Darlene gave us lots of wonderful recipes (that are available at the USU Ext. Service) and I will never be able to look at powdered milk the same.

After trying this pudding recipe you will be hooked and will want to sign up for her class the next time she teaches at the USU Extension Service in Provo.

Basic Pudding (or pie filling)

1 cup of sugar
2 eggs
5 Tbsp. flour (6 for pie)
2 Tbsp. butter
1 Tbsp. cornstarch (2 for pie)
2 tsp. vanilla
½ tsp. salt
2/3 cup non-instant powdered milk
3 1/2 cups of water (3 cups for pie)

Bring half of the water to a boil, take the other half of water and blend in a blender with the dry ingredients and the 2 eggs, add to the boiling water. After it comes back to a boil, cook for 1 minute stirring constantly. Stir in the 1 Tbsp. of butter and the 1-tsp. of vanilla.

Chocolate: add 4 Tbsp. of baking cocoa to dry ingredients.
Coconut: add 1 cup shredded coconut. Can use coconut flavoring instead of vanilla.
Banana Cream: use banana flavoring instead of vanilla.

This recipe is yummy and soooo very easy to make and a lot cheaper than if you bought it in a box or pre-made.

THIS is good food storage.

I like eating. I have found that most people do. I have also noticed that most people tend to eat several times a day – three main meals and snacks every now and then. I have also made the observation that people like to eat food that tastes good and looks good. That is why I am a big believer in being a Practical food storer. I store lots of the food that my family likes. Instead of shopping at the store everyday, like my Danish family, I come home and shop in my basement.

A few years back my bishop asked for volunteers to live off their food storage for a week as a preparedness experiment. When he made that announcement my kids snickered and said to me, “Yeah mom, lets see if we can live without going to the store for a WHOLE WEEK!” and then they chuckled some more.

At that time I would only go shopping once a month. I would buy the gallons of milk that I would need and place all but three in the freezer and then as I would use one up, I would take another one out of the freezer to start thawing out. I bought eggs by the large size crates, baked my own bread and would only buy things in cases or bags.

We decided as a family to accept the challenge but we decided to try two weeks.  Granted, not much of a challenge, but if we did run out of something I wanted to know why. During those two weeks we feasted on Salmon, ate homemade Key Lime Pie and enjoyed homemade chicken noodle soup. We did run out of cold cereal because we always ran out of cold cereal (I’m not a really a big cold cereal fan and so it is not high on my priority list).

Basically we did really well and wanted for nothing, but as some of our neighbors and I discussed the experience that the bishop had asked us to try, I felt really bad because some of them had to break down and go to the store. They found that they just couldn’t go without going to the store to supplement what they had on hand – and they had only tried to go one week without shopping.

You might think that being a Practical food storer would be expensive because you buy in bulk, but actually just the opposite is true – it is less expensive. I started a “$10.00 Will Do It Club” to show people that if they would just spend $10.00 on a case item that was on sale instead of buying a pizza or other fast food item each time they went shopping that they would be shocked and surprised at how fast their food storage would start to build.

At first they didn’t believe that $10.00 would really make that much of a difference, but I soon changed their mind. Every week I would choose items on sale that would equal $10.00 or less and go buy it for them and deliver it to their houses (yes they paid for it), and peoples storage started to grow.

The fun thing about it is that you can wait until a good sale comes on and buy then and get more for your money! One time I bought 100lbs. of chicken for only $19.00. You say, “Yeah, right”, but really, I did. An incredible sale came on for only .19¢ a pound and so I took advantage of it. The next week when it was back up to .79¢ a pound I had saved $60.00 AND I had chicken that I froze and bottled and it lasted my family for a very long time.

Food storage, if approached correctly and rotated as part of your daily eating experience will be the most economical, healthy and tasty way to save money and stay healthy and happy. Your food storage shouldn’t just be used during hard times, but during all times, good and bad. You question how much you need of something to last a year? Don’t worry you will figure it out over time. Buy two cases and see how long it lasts you and then buy more the next time you see a good sale. If two cases of “whatever” lasts you six months then buy four cases and see if it lasts for a year. I write on my sacks or boxes the date, cost and how much I bought (e.g. 1 of 4, 2 of 4, etc…) That way I get to know how much I need without making my inventory system too complicated.

Work out what works best for you. It isn’t as complicated as you want to make it.  Believe me.

Have you thought about what type of food storer you are? Remember, there are three types of storers: Siege, Practical and Provident. Today we are going to talk about the Siege storer.

I think that we all remember the “Y2K – Everything, as we know it, is going to shut down and leave us without the use of computers and we will revert to the Dark Ages” time. It was a time that, if you were in the emergency food storage business, you were going to make millions on people’s fear and lack of preparation. The selling of pre-boxed, pre-fixed food storage kits that would last a person for a year, were the rage. The cost was anywhere from $1,300.00 to $2,000.00 per person – for a family of four that was over $5,200.00 (with convenient monthly payments)!

I know that my food budget is smaller than most families, but that is MORE THAN DOUBLE my food budget for my family for the entire year! So technically, instead of buying the prepackaged kit, I could have gone out and bought two years worth of the food that I eat everyday. I had a friend that went through difficult financial times and they broke open their families “one year pre-packaged food kit” – it only lasted them for four months and no matter how creative she got while cooking this food, her family was not impressed.
The big selling points of these kits were that you could buy it, store it and never have to use it – except during an emergency or crisis.

For the Siege storer that is very appealing: 1) They don’t have to think about bad times, yet still feel confidant, 2) They don’t need to sit down and figure out what their family really uses in a year and 3) They have the false sense of security that they will be able to provide food for their family in an emergency.

Okay, the Siege storer will have food on hand, but will it be palatable? If they are buying just to store it and hopefully never use it (after all it was EXPENSIVE), it will go rancid; it needs to be rotated. Also, did you try the food to see if your family will eat it? If your family is in a high stress environment (the kind where you would be eating your emergency food), they need to be eating comfort food, food that they enjoy and know, not food that is foreign and sometimes just down right yucky to their taste buds. The food that you provide for your family should not cause them stress; it should give them comfort.

Other Siege storers might be tempted to store just the basics and not spend the money on the pre-fab food kits. Instead they will go out and buy: Grains (mostly wheat) – 300lbs*, Powdered milk – 75lbs*, Honey or Sugar – 60lbs*, Salt – 5lbs*, Shortening/Oil – 20lbs* and Legumes (a variety of dried beans) 60lbs*. (* – Approximate amounts for an adult, for a year.) Again, they will buy these items, enough for each family member, and then they will store it in their basement without giving it another thought. That is okay if that is all your family ever eats, but I suspect that most of you, especially those with the Siege mentality, are not grinding your wheat, drinking powdered milk or preparing and eating beans on a weekly basis. When you are forced to eat what you store, are your bodies going to be able to handle it? Will you get sick? It has been proven that after a time, people that are forced to eat what they do not enjoy will simply stop eating. Depression and lack of variety will do that.

In the book “Food Storage for the Clueless” the authors, Clark L. and Kathryn H. Kidd give an easy reminder of how to remember what you need to store as a Siege storer (i.e. Salt, Honey, Powdered Milk. Legumes and Wheat): “Siege Storage Has Produced Much Loud Weeping” (pg. 31). Stop weeping and start storing what you eat.

Don’t punish yourself and your family in an emergency with the food that you have stored. Instead, look at how you can have an effective, tasty, easy to maintain food storage that will not financially break you. You can store food for your family that will not only help them to survive, but to also thrive. I’ll be sharing ideas of how to do just that in my future articles – so stay tuned and work towards becoming, at the very least, a Practical storer.

If you went out and bought 3 or 4 cases of tuna and a table round and covered it with a pretty tablecloth to make an end table, you have made me proud! I hope that you took a second look at the different ways you can incorporate your food storage into small houses or apartments. For those of you who have plenty of space for food storage – did you get your water storage filled and put into place? Two gallons, per person, per day, for a two week period. Of course you did!

Let’s talk about attitudes, food storage attitudes. There is a wonderful food storage book that I would recommend, called “Food Storage for the Clueless” written by Clark L. and Kathryn H. Kidd (Bookcraft). They explain the three different types of attitudes about food storage in the most succinct and clear way I have ever seen. They put food storage attitudes into three different categories, explaining the three different personalities, the benefits and/or downfalls of each group.

Siege Storers: They use money outside of their regular food budget to buy in bulk those foods that they hope they’ll never have to use. Barrels of wheat, jugs of water and cartons of powdered milk fill their shelves, but they really don’t know how to use them. They are waiting for the end of the world to use their food storage.

Practical Storers: Eat what they store and therefore don’t spend extra money to buy food that will never get used. Their shelves are full of foods they like, because they buy a few extra cans or cases or boxes of those things each time they go to the store. Eventually, they will have a cache of tuna or peanut butter or frozen corn on hand that could readily be used in case of a winter storm or a break of employment.

Provident Storers: Spend less money on food and less time in the grocery store because they produce and preserve many of the foods they eat. There is no “emergency food” for these storers. Their regular diet includes their food storage. They can, garden, dry, dehydrate, freeze and culture their foods. Therefore they’ve learned to not rely so much on others for their food. (Page 12)

Think about the descriptions above. Which category do you fit in? Which one would you like to fit in? What changes are you going to have to make in order to feel comfortable with your choice when you go to use it? We’ll look at each personality type, one each for the next three weeks, and talk about the “GOOD the bad and the ugly” of each – giving you the information you need to choose which type of food storer you will become. I’m a Practical Storer with tendencies of being Provident.

Let’s start our food storage with something inexpensive (actually you will find that if you take it a “bite-at-a-time” your food storage won’t be as expensive as you might think). I want you to go buy SALT. Don’t buy it in the little cardboard cylinders Buy it in a 25lb. bag. You can find it with or without iodine (without for canning) and it only costs, on average, $2.79 a bag.

It is suggested that you have 8lbs. of salt for each adult, per year. At this time we only have three adults in our family and so we need no less than 24lbs. (When my children were small I counted them as adults because they were growing so fast.) I actually keep 50lbs. on hand because it is inexpensive, less than $6.00 for more than a years supply, and I could use it to preserve meats or bottle food in an emergency. It is also a good barter item. You can find 25lb. sacks at Macey’s, Sam’s Club, Costco and I am sure other places.

It is a good start, a really good start. (Hint – don’t store in a metal container, it will rust. A plastic 5-gallon container is best. This is from experience.)

A quick recipe using salt.

Tortillas

3 cups of flour
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking powder
¼ cup oil
1 cup of warm water

Mix ingredients together and knead until smooth. Cover with moist cloth and let rest for about 5-10 minutes. Cut dough into 12 balls and roll out, without flour, until round and thin. (They do not have to be perfect. They eat well in any shape.)

Cook on a dry, cast iron skillet, on medium high heat until it starts to bubble up, flip and take off heat when it starts to bubble up again. If you cook it in oil it will make it crispy, without oil it makes it soft and pliable. This is a good “kid-can-make” recipe.

Enjoy.

Ok. Enough with the earthquakes and kits. Those things are for immediacy during an extreme condition – and we must be ready for those types of experiences when they happen, but let’s go on now to life, everyday life.

When I lived in Denmark, the families that I lived with didn’t know about the concept of food storage (aaaghhh). Every morning my Danish father would go downtown to get the mail and breakfast at a Danish bakery (which by the way was PHENOMINAL) and my Danish mother would go shopping nearly everyday for what we were to eat that day. I was in a panic. What would happen if some tragedy occurred and they couldn’t get to the store?

When I lived at home, I never worried because we had two rooms in the basement dedicated to food storage: 1) the “freezer/wheat room” and 2) the “rest of the food storage” room. You would think that after going through WWI and WWII and the other catastrophes that Europe has experienced, that the people would store more food. But the families I knew didn’t.

I realize that not everyone, everywhere, can have a good food storage program because of climate, availability and laws against “hoarding” (which to me is just next months casserole, I don’t understand the problem), but we don’t have any of those problems in this area. As a matter of fact, we are ENCOURAGED to have at least a one year food and sundry supply storage for every family.

Some of you are thinking that I left out the lack of storage space as a deterrent to a good food storage program. WRONG! I have been there and done that and, believe me, you can store a lot of stuff in a two bedroom apartment.

Let’s talk about the storage side of food storage. Where do I put it? When we lived in our two-bedroom apartment, I had to get very creative. We had moved from a house that had plenty of storage room to an apartment that was meant to store only four people and little else. I found that the biggest thing that had to be overcome was the “this can’t be done” attitude. Once I started to get creative, the thoughts and ideas just started coming to me.

I used a case of toilet paper, with a piece of wood on the top and covered with material, as a nightstand between my kid’s beds. It was big enough to hold two lamps (one for each child, of course), a radio/alarm clock, a couple of dolls and my son’s dinosaur collection.

I was reminiscing with my married daughter, about creatively hiding food storage items, when I reminded her of that. She had no idea that her nightstand was a box full of toilet paper. She just thought that it was big so that she and her brother wouldn’t fight over space.

My year’s supply of flour went behind my couch like a couch table. It was up against the wall and all I had to do was put a plank down and cover it with more material. It looked nice and we had a place to decorate and keep the remote.

In your clothes, closet you can put down cases of cans and use them as a place to put your shoes on instead of a shoetree, one row of shoes on the box and one row in front of the box. You can also store water at the ends of the closet. (Two gallons of water, per person, per day, for a two week period.)

Another good place is under the bed. But not like you think. This takes a little more planning. Use either a strong blanket that can be pulled on or better yet, a sheet of plywood with handholds cut out. Place the items to be stored on the plywood and make a map of it and then just push or pull it from under the bed. You can cover the items with a sheet and it will help with the dust problem. With your map of items stored and the ability to expose the items easily, food storage will be easy.

Coat closets are also good. I “built” shelves with five-gallon buckets and planks to hold cases of canned and bottled goods. We had one of those “under the stair” closets and it was shaped in a triangle. All of the 25-lbs. and 50-lbs. bags of stuff went in the extreme part of the triangle and everything else went on my bucket shelves by the door. I kept a map of this too. Believe me, the maps are very helpful. I bought a coat stand for the coats. It was kind of cute.

Now stop making excuses and go get creative. I’m thinking three or four cases of tuna and a table round would make a darn cute end table.