Spice of Life

If we’re going to actually eat our food storage items, it’s a good idea to store some seasonings to make them more palatable.  Alison’s Pantry offers a large selection of spices and seasoning blends that can spruce up your pantry items.  Here are a few that our family has tried and enjoyed:

Tuna Salad Seasoning–This is a blend of spices that transforms a tuna sandwich into tuna salad even if you don’t have celery or onion on hand.

Chili Seasoning Mix–a not-too-spicy blend that will perk up all those dried beans you are storing, and turn them into a meal.

Mom’s Meatloaf Seasoning–this is a seasoning blend that takes the guesswork out of flavoring your meatloaf.  If you are storing canned ground beef or dehydrated beef crumbles, this seasoning would be a good one to store.  Click on the link and check out the great recipes on the AP site for this one.

Tasty Tomato Herb Dip–don’t wait until an emergency to enjoy this one!  This seasoning blend can be combined with sour cream and mayonnaise to make an easy dip for vegetables or crackers.  Add in fresh chopped roma tomatoes and crumbled bacon for a real treat.

And my favorites, Alison’s Pantry Fruity Flavored Powdered Flavorings–these come in Sweet Vanilla, Strawberry and Lemon and can be added to anything from whipped cream to cake mixes and frostings.  I use the Sweet Vanilla Powder in my baking because it doesn’t include alcohol so all of that great vanilla flavor stays in the recipe rather than baking out.  I also like to sprinkle the Vanilla Powder into our all-natural fruit smoothies (just frozen fruit, about 2 c. orange juice, and sometimes a tablespoon of dried milk, ground flax, or oatbran like the smoothie stores add)  to create an “orange julius” flavor.  It’s great in oatmeal as well.  Keeping these powdered flavorings on hand gives you options.  I love that I can whip up frosting and it doesn’t have to just be vanilla!

Alison’s Pantry offers the seasoning blends in plastic containers that are large enough to divide and share with a friend. In fact you can split them up into several small shakers and package them for a unique gift for bridal showers or Christmas.  The vanilla and fruit-flavored powders are in sizes you’ll want to keep for yourself, but buy them in the multi-packs because it’s not only a little bit cheaper, but you’ll likely start talking about them and your friends and family will want to sample yours. 🙂