Organize Your Food Storage
September 28th, 2007 by KimThere are great resources on the web for keeping track of your food storage inventory. One of my favorite sites is www.organizedhome.com. Here you can find printables to be inserted in a “household notebook” to track pantry and freezer inventory, as well as fantastic printable pages to organize every other aspect of your life. Since it is important to use and rotate food on your shelves, these printables make for an easy reminder of what to pick up the next time you are in the store. And, they’re a great way to track what your family actually eats. Again, why store what your family won’t eat, or what you don’t know how to prepare?
I am putting together my own household notebook for our food storage and busy life, and my family is finding it a very useful resource. Our kids can easily find the list of their friends phone numbers, take-out menus for local restaurants, information on school events, etc. It helps to have family and household information all in one place and really cuts the clutter.
Posted in Home Storage & Preparedness Tips || 1 Comment
Get food for free with savvy shopping
September 28th, 2007 by KimOne of my favorite ways to stock the pantry is by pairing grocery store “loss leaders” with manufacturer or store coupons. “Loss leaders” are the extremely low-priced items that grocery stores advertise to lure customers into the store. They are almost always located on the front or back page of grocery ads, and savvy moms across America plan their weekly menus around them. It can pay to plan your food storage inventory with these items too.
For example, last week our local Albertson’s store had Quaker products advertised at 10 items for $10. This included their new Nature’s Harvest All Natural oatmeal, regular Quaker oats (which are a food storage staple), a variety of granola bars (perfect for 72-hour kits as well as school lunches), Life cereal and several other items. Recent Sunday newspaper ads included $1 off coupons for multiple Quaker products. By pairing the coupons with the in-store loss leaders, most of these products were FREE. This is a great way to build food storage fast, and on a budget.
Remember to watch store ads for hefty manufacturer coupons. The stores will print the coupon in their regular ad, but instead of being titled “in-store coupon,” the top will read “Manufacturer Coupon.” Last week, another local store ran a manufacturer’s coupon for $3 off a $10 purchase of Quaker products. So this only sweetened the deal on the Quaker products. The stores allow you to pick up multiple ads and the expiration dates are valid for several months, so savvy shoppers can hold onto some coupons for future sales.
Posted in Home Storage & Preparedness Tips || 1 Comment
Basic Tomato Pasta Sauce Recipe
September 25th, 2007 by KimAs promised, here is our family’s favorite way to use those canned tomatoes, Authentic Italian Pasta Sauce!
Authentic Italian Pasta Sauce
4 Tbsp. olive oil
1 medium onion, very finely chopped
1 bottle (or lg. can) diced tomatoes
1 lg. can tomato sauce
2 large cloves garlic, minced
1/2 Tbsp. basil
1 1/2 tbsp. dried oregano, or 3 Tbsp. fresh
salt and pepper to taste
1. Heat oil in a medium saucepan. Add the onion, and cook over moderate heat until it is translucent (5-8 minutes).
2. Stir in the garlic and the tomatoes with their juice. Season with salt and pepper. Add the herbs. Simmer for 20-30 minutes.
Options to add to basic sauce: sliced fresh mushrooms, ground beef, meatballs, olives, scallops, shrimp.
I’d love to hear how you use your tomato harvest. Please post your favorite pasta sauce or other tomato recipes here.
Posted in Gems in a Jar || 4 Comments
Actual Shelf-Life for Dry Goods
September 25th, 2007 by KimBrigham Young University has determined that many food storage products, stored in sealed cans under controlled temperatures, will last years past their expiration dates. Here are some of their findings:
PRODUCT SHELF LIFE
Powdered Nonfat Dry Milk 13 years
Salt 30+ years
Sugar 30+ years
Wheat 30+ years
White Rice 30+ years
Pasta 17 years
Pinto Beans 24 years
Baking Soda 24 years
Rolled Oats 20 years
Potato Flakes 16 years
White Flour 12 years
For more information on this study: http://www.ivanhoe.com/science/story/2007/02/248a.html
Posted in Home Storage & Preparedness Tips || No Comments
Planning or Paranoia?
September 25th, 2007 by Kim”If ye are prepared, ye need not fear.”
My religious leaders have counseled us to put away a supply of food and some financial savings for whatever challenges life may bring. I am pretty certain that my area of the country will never see hurricanes or tornadoes, and will likely never have a major flood or other natural disaster, but there is always the possibility that my husband’s work situation may change, that unexpected medical expenses could arise, or any number of reasons to heed this practical and prophetic advice. So, my family proceeds (with practicality, not paranoia) with planning for whatever the future will bring. However, I have one criterion for my food storage: ”I will not store anything I do not know how to prepare, or that I know my family will not eat.”
I hope that allaboutfoodstorage.com will provide useful information for building practical food storage for families. It will include recipes and tips for canning and storing food, as well as great shopping advice for building food storage on a budget. Hopefully, it will also become a great forum for sharing tried-and-true ideas from families on these topics.
Posted in Home Storage & Preparedness Tips || 1 Comment
I say tomato, you say tomahto
September 25th, 2007 by KimMy husband and I recently spent two Saturdays bottling tomatoes for food storage. Since we planted our garden too late this year, we bought 5 delicious boxes of tomatoes from our local fruit and vegetable stand. These tomatoes were grown in Colorado and were the closest thing to the flavorful, home-grown variety. We use a lot of tomato products in our family, making homemade pasta sauce and salsa, so we were excited to have jars of fresh tomatoes to use in these favorite recipes. (I will include the recipes in another post.)
To prepare the tomatoes, we floated them in a pot of boiling water for a minute or two (until the skins began to wrinkle), and then plunged them in a separate bowl of ice water. This process makes the skins slip right off. We then used a food processor to crush the tomatoes before pouring them into quart jars. The variety of tomatoes we used were juicy and did not require any water to be added, but we did add about a teaspoon each of lemon juice and salt as natural preservatives and to maintain the beautiful color of the tomatoes. Then the lids and rings were added and we processed the quart jars in a steam canner for about 45 minutes. (We found a steam canner in a local grocery store for $20 that processed 7 quart jars at a time. The benefit of a steam canner is that it requires much less water, hence much less time waiting for quarts of water to boil in a traditional canner.)
We also diced some of the tomatoes and otherwise processed them the same way. This was our first time ever bottling tomatoes. I would love to learn how to make my own seasoned tomato sauce. If any readers have a “family favorite” recipe, I would love to have you share it here.
Next year, we hope our garden will produce plenty of tomatoes and peppers so we can bottle our own salsa as well.
Posted in Home Storage & Preparedness Tips || No Comments