Garden Delight
July 9th, 2008 by KimA friend shared this delightfully simple casserole recipe to help me use the armloads of zucchini we are getting from the garden. Enjoy!
Zucchini Casserole
Layer the following in a greased 9 x 13 pan in given order:
Zucchini (and yellow squash, if desired), cubed to fill bottom of pan
1 lb. raw hamburger, crumbled over zucchini
Grated cheddar cheese
1 can cream of mushroom soup combined with
1 sm. can tomato sauce and spread over top
Cover with foil and bake at 350 degrees for 1 1/2 hours.
We like to spoon this over rice.
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Food Storage Life Spans
July 9th, 2008 by KimHow long will it last on my shelf? This is probably the most popular question in food storage, and the answer is essential to ensure a nutritious, tasty product when it’s time to use it. Temperature and oxygen have the greatest effect on food storage shelf-life. If your foods are stored in airtight containers (e.g., #10 cans, food storage buckets with oxygen packets, etc.) in a cool area of your home (70 degrees is the standard), their shelf-life will be extended considerably. So, yes, you should probably throw out that wheat that’s been in the garage for years. :) This storage life information, summarized from the Walton Feed website, has been extremely helpful to me so I wanted to pass it on. All of the storage times are based on the items being stored in #10 cans that are nitrogen-treated or with oxygen packs in other containers, in a temperature controlled area.
Hard Grains (red or white wheat, corn, buckwheat, etc.): 15-20 years in the environment mentioned above, considerably longer if you are able to keep them cooler.
Dry Beans: 8-10 years
Dehydrated Vegetables: 8-10 years
Dehydrated Dairy Products: 5-10 years (rotate Morning Moo milk by 5 years, as it is whey-based)
Flours: 5 years if stored without oxygen in a cool location, but don’t try to store longer than 1 year if it is unprotected. This includes baking mixes. However, if these items are stored in your freezer they will last much longer.
Pasta: 10-15 years if oxygen is removed and it is kept cool and dry.
Honey: Honey, Salt and Sugar should keep indefinitely if stored free of moisture.
Brown & White Rice: Brown rice will keep about 6 months in average conditions. If it is sealed in food storage containers without oxygen it will last 1-2 years and up to 4 years if kept really cold (like vacuum-sealed and stored in your refrigerator or freezer). White rice is much less nutritious but will store 8-10 years if properly packaged and stored.
Yeast: Store in its original foil packaging in your freezer for the longest storage life–5+ years.
I hope this information helps your family to rotate your dry food storage in a timely way. For more details, you can click here and scroll down.
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June 28th, 2008 by KimPosted in Home Storage & Preparedness Tips || No Comments
Follow-up on Cooperative Wheat Purchase
June 15th, 2008 by KimI recently received prices back on our white wheat in 45 lb. buckets. With the increased cost of the wheat and the insane freight charges, I have decided not to make this purchase. At present the savings would not warrant the hassle for all of us because 45 lb. buckets of hard white wheat from Lehi Mill are available at Costco in St. George, Utah for $26.99 each. At last report, Costco had 700 of these buckets available. With prices ranging up to $43 per bucket, this is by far the least expensive price locally at present.
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Food storage for those who hate to cook
June 8th, 2008 by KimOne turn-off to food storage for some is the assumed need to possess extensive cooking skills. Although there is some truth to needing to know how to prepare beans and other dry goods from scratch and learning simple recipes to incorporate food storage items into your menus, there are other super simple options for those who feel like fish out of water in the kitchen. I was recently introduced to Daily Bread ready-made meals. These are individually packaged meals that only require water. The representatives who showed me the product, Benson and Shane, left me a sample of Daily Bread’s Chicken Teriyakki with Rice. It was of course very easy to prepare, and was surprisingly good. All of my kids gobbled up their samples and wanted to know when I would be ordering more. The company touts these packaged meals as “efficient, compact and easy to store, ready in 10 minutes, and great tasting.” The representatives also told me that their products have a 25 year shelf life. So, for a person who doesn’t want to store a bunch of #10 cans of products they don’t know how to use, this may be an ideal option for long-term food storage.
We enjoy cooking and we cycle all of our food storage items, so stocking a large amount of these ready-made meals as our main source of food storage isn’t the best option for my family. (Plus, I know my kids will want to eat them for lunch all summer.) However, they are so handy and tasty that I think they will be a great addition to our 72-hour kits. They are very light weight and would be perfect for backpackers as well. And, we thought they would be handy for camping. Daily Bread also sells dry white and chocolate milk packets, as well as 72 hour kits and portable burners for cooking. If you are interested in learning more about products and pricing, you can call Benson at 801-941-1645 or Shane at 801-791-0211. You can click on one of the Daily Bread links above to connect to their site and request a free sample as well.
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A Way to Rotate Your Powdered Milk
May 17th, 2008 by KimIf you’ve followed the amounts on most food storage calculators, you are likely dutifully storing a lot of powdered milk. And, possibly wondering what to do with it (because, we really don’t want to drink it unless we absolutely have to, do we?) I try to use my powdered milk in bread recipes to rotate it in my storage. Below is a recipe for Indian Fry Bread that uses a cup of powdered milk per batch (and you don’t have to reconstitute it). For drinking, I prefer the taste of Morning Moo milk over the standard powdered milk, and this brand is available in chocolate and strawberry flavors as well. Through perusing the internet, though, I have read that Country Cream brand dry milk is the best tasting…the closest to the real thing. I am trying to order a sample so I can try it. Since we don’t want to store what we won’t use (or don’t know how to use), it makes sense to divide our storage between dry milk for drinking and for baking.
Indian Fry Bread
4 C. flour
3 heaping tsp. baking powder
1 1/2 C. warm water
1/2 tsp. salt
1 C. powdered milk
Mix all ingredients. Roll or form into flat rounds with your hands and fry in small amount of oil. Serve with chili and cheese, or with butter and honey.
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If it’s not one thing…
April 24th, 2008 by KimIn the wake of wheat shortages, it appears rice is the next product to send us scurrying to stock up before potential price increases. Our local new station had this report on Costco stores limiting the number of bags of rice that customers could purchase.
Rice stores well in buckets, #10 cans or vacuum-sealed bags. I vacuum-seal or freeze pouches of brown rice to extend the shelf life.
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Simplify your calculations
April 24th, 2008 by KimIf you are still struggling to calculate just how many pounds of everything it will take to prepare your family’s food storage supply, the calculator from Simply Living Smart may be a great resource for you. Simply Living Smart offers a spreadsheet that can be used interactively on your own computer with Excel. Per their website, it was developed with the tables and charts from the book Making the Best of Basics by James Talmage Stevens (by permission) which their site will also have available for purchase.
I like this spreadsheet because it is simple, and can be customized to your family’s preferences. Some calculators are very extensive. This one just gives you a total number of pounds needed for your family in the basic categories of essential and supplementary items. You decide for your family how many cans of meats, fruit, soups or vegetables that equates to. You can click here to download the spreadsheet: Food Storage Master Plan
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Spiff-E-Whip…Truly Spiffy!
February 29th, 2008 by KimIf you haven’t tried Spiff-E-Whip, the powdered instant whipped topping, the beautiful strawberries gracing produce shelves should convince you. Spiff-E-Whip is a fun food storage item. It is a fine powder similar to powdered sugar in texture, and mixed with ice water will whip into beautiful and delicious whipped cream. It has a great consistency for fruit salads so you can keep it rotated in your pantry, or in an emergency it would be a fun addition to the oodles of dry pudding mixes or cocoa that is likely in your storage. It works like Dream Whip, so you can also make a chocolate mousse or cream pie with the mix (There is a recipe on the side of the can to make it from scratch or you can use the Dream Whip recipe that uses a pudding mix.), and you can even turn it into frosting (again, the recipe is on the side of the can). It holds is consistency nicely in the refrigerator for at least 2 weeks and can even be whipped back into shape if it falls by adding a little more ice water. I love this product! For more information or to purchase, visit www.waltonfeed.com. They also have a photo of the prepared product.
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Strength in Numbers
February 29th, 2008 by KimSome have said that it takes a village to raise a child. Can it take a village to secure your food storage? It can certainly help you acquire items at the lowest prices. Last year, Charlotte, a woman in my area, began negotiating with several food storage manufacturers in Northern Utah. She spoke with her local friends and inquired if anyone else would like to order #10 cans of food storage staples, or bulk items with her so they could place a larger order and get a reduced price. Many people were interested. The woman collected the orders and money, and once a month her husband or another man would drive a trailer to Salt Lake and pick up the order. A year, and several thousand #10 cans later (literally), the companies Charlotte was using offered to bring the orders to her (which would save on gas and time) if the orders were large enough. The group needed to order 8 pallets worth of items. So Charlotte opened the opportunity up to our women’s organization and others in the area to use the strength of our numbers to get the lowest possible prices.
This system is working great for us. Each month, Charlotte selects a few items that will be offered to the group to order. Last month, we could choose from 4 kinds of soup mixes packed in enameled #10 cans, and a 25# bag of dehydrated hashbrown potatoes. Limiting the number of items for the group to purchase each month allows us to focus our buying power for the lowest prices on these select items (we’re buying hundreds of each one, rather than 10 or so of multiple items). Each group of women has a designated person to announce the items, gather the orders and payments and then deliver the orders to Charlotte. We place the orders at the beginning of a month and then they are delivered by freight toward the end of the month. The other benefit of offering a few items each month is families don’t feel overwhelmed and anxious about spending a bunch to build their food storage supplies. They can just buy something each month.
Charlotte is also using our bulk buying power to negotiate the best prices on preparedness items like water filtration bottles (these can be as much as $49 online, we’ll be ordering them for under $20) and emergency blankets. Charlotte isn’t making any profit. All of us are benefiting from the use of organization and ingenuity to provide the manufacturer with a very large order, who in turn provides us with a nice price reduction. It’s a great arrangement.
Cooperative buying groups for food storage are being organized by some web sites, but you can do this yourself easily. If you have any questions, please e-mail me at kim@allaboutfoodstorage.com.
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