Great Ideas for Food Storage

You know how during the holidays sometimes you'll get a mason jar filled with layers of a mixture to make cookies, hot cocoa, etc? Someone came up with the idea of putting a meal in a jar. Check it out here:

http://dinnerisinthejar.com/

This idea was submitted by Karen Welch, Our Stake Provident LIving Specialist

Two Week Experiment Part Two- Food, Glorious Food!

Market Basket Strawberries never tasted so good as they did today!
Today I went grocery shopping for the first time in two weeks. It was a thrilling experience. We had gone a full week without milk this past week. Any dinner invitation or playgroup that involved free food was enthusiastically attended this week. All in all I learned some things during this experiment and I'm glad we did it (glad it's over too!).

A few things I wanted to jot down:

• Never plan soup for family dinners- not filling enough to keep the natives satisfied. Make that at lunch item.
• Stock up on more condiments that make other foods taste better. We ran out of Ranch dressing and peanut butter. I think the ranch especially would have made a lot of our boring, canned good meals more tasty.
• Mac N Cheese is still doable w/out milk. Not as good, though.
• It was very helpful to have rationed out my dessert items. I realized how important peanut butter was for us here because I use it for no-bake cookies and it can also spruce up toast and even oatmeal.
• The hardest part was the milk just for the sheer fact that my kids love cereal. I thought we'd do more oatmeal, but boiling the water seemed like more of a pain in our morning rush. We had a lot of toast. Having two loaves of bread in the freezer worked out really well. {Also I have to confess that we didn't use our stored water!! I think that would have been the hardest thing, maybe another time...}
  
• I found that a lot of my food storage dinners took more time to prepare. I was wishing I had more items I could whip up in 20 minutes.
  

The Two Week Experiment

The Provident Living Committee is conducting an experiment to live off Food Storage for two weeks in the month of March. Each of us are at different points in this experiment. My family (the Plant Family) is finishing up week one. I knew that week one wouldn't be as difficult as week two so I haven't kept as detailed of notes as I am planning for week two. Here is what I have found so far:

• We are being less wasteful with the knowledge we aren't going to the store for a while. Kind of refreshing.
• We have been needing to plan out meals more and be a little more organized.
• We have used up most of our fresh items with the most recent expiration dates.
• My meal planning is going to kick into over drive as I try to figure out ways to make our canned goods exciting for our family. Stay tuned for that one!
• I am wishing we had more treats in food storage to boost morale through the end of next week!
• We had some missionaries drop in and Josh gave them the LAST of our milk with their cookies! Eek! My plan is oatmeal and canned fruit for breakfast this week.
• It snowed today and we considered throwing snow in the post to boil with our spaghetti. I chickened out, though! Maybe we'll be desperate by Wednesday.

This is an old archived picture of our food storage. Brave of me to show you our bread and butter eh?

Ensign

Check out the latest March Issue of the Ensign to see if your ideas about home food storage "have expired. "

There is a new message about family home storage that makes being prepared seem a little easier.

Fall Recipes With Food Storage Items

Chili
1.5 lbs. ground beef
1 lb. chili beans (about 2 cups)
3-4 ribs of celery
1 can diced tomatoes undrained
3-4 Tbls. chili powder
1 lg. onion, chopped
.5 tsp. cumin
Soak beans overnight. Bring beans to a boil and simmer until tender. Leave the water in the pot, that should cover the beans and add the tomato juice to it. Brown ground beef. Add ground beef, cumin, onion, celery, and chili powder. Let simmer until flavors blend. Adjust the ammount of chili powder to taste.

Pioneer Stew
Makes 8 servings
1 1/4 cups dried pinto or kidney beans
3 cups cold water
*1/2 to 1 lb. ground beef
1/2 cup finely diced green pepper
1 (16 oz) can whole kernal corn undrained.
1 (16 oz) can diced tomatoes undrained
1/2 tsp chili powerd
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
In a large saucepan place washed and drained beans, cold water and salt. Bring to a boil. Cover and simmer two minutes. Remove from heat and let stand for 1 hour. Return to heat and simmer 1 hour and 15 min. In skillet cook ground beef, chopped onion and green pepper until meat is browned andvegetables are tender. Drain off fat. Add meat mixture, corn, tomatoes, chili powder, and salt to taste to beans. Simmer 20 mins. Combine 1 Tbls. flour with 2 Tbls. water. Stir into stew. Cook and stir until thickened and bubbly. Stir in cheese.
*or add 1 can of chunk turkey or beef.