After a lovely break and a brand new year to look forward to it’s time to get back to the work of posting recipes! I’ll start posting again tomorrow, but before I do there are a just a few things to share with you all…
“Bread in a Bag” is now available to buy!
For those of you excited to try the book “Bread in a Bag” that I posted about in November, it’s available again, either on Amazon or CreateSpace. I’ll update the post itself with the links on where to buy it but I wanted to be sure that everyone who’s been excited and asking about it knows that it’s available now. Be sure to let us all know what YOU think of it by commenting here on the original post after you’ve given it a try!
An Awesome Idea to Use with your Pantry Meals…
I was so excited when I found this idea on the internet about a week ago and it’s apparently been around for a while, so I don’t know where I was or how I missed it, but here it is in case you might like to use it. It’s maximizing your pantry space by storing your pantry meals’ ingredients in BOXES! Check out the blog post about it over at “Cooking From My Pantry” to learn more…
photo courtesy of “Cooking From My Pantry”
Question Grab Bag … from the mail box
Here are a few Q & A’s that some of you have asked me more than once and others of you might be wondering…
Q. Do you cook like this all the time?
A. No, I cook like a normal mom most of the time. My quest all this time has been to find *real food* from food storage that my family will *really eat*. In the course of things I’ve discovered that a lot of meals I never would have thought to be food storage meals (too fancy to make from scratch) are actually not hard to make … and in trying them out my family now asks me to make them again and again. Homemade ravioli and cannelloni are a couple of things that intimidated me at first but now are just as easy to make as making a pie crust. It’s been a lot of fun realizing that food storage can be made into a lot of different things and that with just what I have in my storage I can create something wonderful.
Q. Do you ever change anything in your recipe book?
A. All the time! My book of recipes began with the best I’d tried at the time and went from there. In the beginning if the family liked a recipe I was ecstatic and it went into my book because, to be honest, in the go around of originally trying things out there were plenty of recipes that went straight to the trash– so any success was big. Like with everything though, there’s always something better , so as we continued to try things out the options got better and better. I still will sometimes trade out what I like better with recipes I have in the book if it’s really a great one — that’s where the flexibility of the recipe cards and the numbered colored dots comes in and is nice to have. You don’t have to “lock” into a recipe for life in your food storage plan — things can be changed!
Q. What are the top “non- electrical” kitchen accessories you use all the time in cooking with food storage?
A. Here’s my personal “favorites” list:
- can opener (my favorite for it’s durability so far has been this one)
- a good fine meshed strainer (can be used to sift dry ingredients as well as to strain wet ingredients)
- a hand cranked pasta maker — useful for pasta of course, but also in making dough thin for crackers or quickly pressing tortillas
- my wonder ovens (♥ ♥ ♥ )
- my sun oven (I’m seriously considering buying a second one if the opportunity arises because of the amount of food that can be cooked in one at a time versus the amount a family needs to eat for a day and the amount of sunlight that’s available in a day to heat it.)
- ravioli rolling pin (love it!) / regular rolling pin
- wheat grinder — right now I don’t use it to grind my wheat, I use my heavy duty blender, so it’s down to #7 on my list for now, but if I were needing it it would be #1 on my useful kitchen appliances list and would be grinding a lot!
- candy thermometer (for making cheese, yogurt, checking to see that bread is done)
- “Good Grips” food mill (for making bread crumbs, cracker crumbs)
- a large (and I mean large) mixing bowl for making granola, large batches of bread, etc.
Just a rough list, but these are things I use all the time.
See you tomorrow as we kick off a new year of cooking with food storage! I so appreciate all the words of encouragement and support you all have given me in this project — all your comments on the blog and notes via email are appreciated. What great readers I’ve gotten to know here! Thanks!
Another storage tip for organizing pantry meals is to use inexpensive clear plastic storage boxes (like Sterilite Flip Top Storage Box, Micro to Large). You can get different sizes for different meals, but there’s enough room in even the small ones for 1-2 cans and some pre-measured baggies of dry ingredients. They are sturdy, stack well, and are mostly pest/air/dust/water proof… unlike paper bags. Since they are clear, unlike cardboard boxes, they don’t get lost on the pantry shelves 😉
I use the “micro” size (6x5x4) for recipes that use the smaller 4-8 oz cans, or recipes that are all/mostly dry ingredients in baggies. I have a whole row of this size dedicated to several variants of “just add water” omelets/scrambles and a can of Yoder bacon, corned beef or Spam. And another row dedicated to different combinations of single-serve pizzas with different toppings (tomato powder is your friend!!). So much better than the commercial box mixes!
Thanks — those are some great ideas to consider too! I’ve realized that while the brown bags work, it’s taking up so much space to store them that I need a more space effective container. The next step is to check between the different containers prices to see what I can afford.