What a week! On the one side we’ve had a group of die hard participants ready to climb a proverbial Mt. Everest cooking with food storage and on the other, because of my own overzealousness (who me?) I think I’ve overwhelmed many of you by the way things have been presented.  More about that, including some minor rule adjustments I’ve made to make things more fun for everyone here in the post.  First though, let’s see what our weekly winner did this this past week!

Nearly doubling her already high score of 47 points from last week, Paula Herron scored an amazing 86 points this week with 12 recipe submissions!

Thanks to The Prepared Hour, Paula wins a $69.00 trio package of some wonderful essential oils, each 15 mL in volume :  Lime, Ginger and Lemon.

Enjoy, Paula!! Congratulations!

With such an incredible week this week I’ve decided to share all of what she made here with you. Just click on the collage image if you’d like to see it enlarged.

1.2.

Homemade Ice cream — recipe from Misty over at Your Own Home Store.com

Hot Ham Rolls (baked in a Pizza Box Oven!! )

3.4.

Homemade Hamburger Helper (Cheeseburger)

Homemade Egg Noodles

5.6.

Chicken and Corn Chowder with Sweet Potatoes

Buttermilk Pancakes (adapted to food storage from this recipe)

7.8.

Bourbon Chicken with Rice

Rice Pudding (made with coconut milk…yum!)

9.10.

Homemade Ritz Crackers

Tuna Noodle Casserole (with homemade noodles)

11.12.

(food storage side dish) Mashed potatoes, peas and carrots

Fast Fool Proof Bread (recipe here)

Phew!! Did you catch all of that?!  Seriously, Paula, you did some damage (in a good way) this week!

And the winner of this week’s random drawing…

(I’ll tell you more about the prize Amanda won in just a minute here, but first I have to tell you what’s been on my mind this week…)

On Swimming and Cooking with Food Storage

One of the things I forgot to consider in planning this contest — which I now feel to apologize for –was remembering what it was like myself to be starting out cooking with food storage.  This week I took a minute in thinking back on my own experience and found the memories were all still very easy to remember.  In fact, it was only 5 years ago that I was completely new at all of this just like everyone else!  This is what I remember…

The shaky unknown territory of it (…what am I doing…am I crazy??), using completely foreign ingredients (…so THAT’s what’s inside this can!), praying extra hard over the food at dinner time that it would honestly be “good”.  I remember the weeks leading up in finding the time (and working up the courage) to actually try a food storage recipe for the first time.  After searching long and hard for recipes that might work, my heart was about as timid as this boy here on the high dive wondering if we’d all survive such a thing.  

After a while, I got over it and did it anyway.

The first recipe I chose was Red Chicken Enchiladas with homemade flour tortillas.  I thought it had a good chance of succeeding with my family and I was really interested in seeing what it was like to make my own tortillas.  I remember rolling out the tortillas for the first time, each one individually.  It was a lot more work than I was expecting but in the end the enchiladas actually tasted pretty good and the meal went over well with my group.

Most importantly though, I felt extremely proud of myself.  I’d actually done it!  I had a recipe which I knew I could make from scratch (that my family would eat) and I felt significantly more prepared having triumphed over the unknown…including the previously unknown contents of those daunting #10 cans.

In thinking about the steps it took me to actually get to the point of cooking, I’ve come up with a series of preliminary steps which from now on will be merged for you (to earn points) within the weekly random prize drawing.  These are the “thinking before doing” steps that will bring this “high dive” of a task down to a manageable level for anyone who is feeling entirely overwhelmed at jumping straight into the deep end.

1.  Define YOUR purpose.  Why do YOU feel doing this is important?  Disregarding anything that anyone else (or I) have told you, why do you *for yourself * believe that learning to cook with your food storage is high on your self-reliance priority list?  Clarify WHY you have a desire to learn these skills in the first place before moving on to anything else.
2. Envision your GOAL for a successful outcome.  At the end of any given week (or at the conclusion of the contest), what would you look back on and see has having equaled “success” in this project?  What would it be like/ look like/ feel like if it were totally successful in your mind?  How many recipes would you ideally like to have “checked off” for your own personal preparedness?
3. Thinking it Through — How it’ll get done.  This step involves choosing recipes, evaluating what ingredients and tools you have to work with, buying any missing ingredients and planning ahead.  Allow yourself to feel gratitude for all the wonderful resources, tools and ingredients available to us.  We truly have the world at our fingertips, and what better way to utilize these things than to prepare for a “less than sunny day” in the future.

In my experience, once you have the recipe(s) decided, the ingredients ready and a time set to cook, everything runs much more easily.  I believe it’s actually all the thinking that wears you out more than anything.  Once you’ve made a plan and everything is gathered, honestly half the game is already won and you’re sure to follow through to get the cooking done because you’ve set yourself up ahead of time!

Hopefully these ideas will help you “test out the water” more easily.  If you’re not ready to cook the very same week you’ve gotten your “pre-work” done, you’ll still earn points for the week toward that week’s random drawing and then maybe you can do the cooking the following week.  And if you’re not to the point of even getting near the water, I have some point options for you in the Rafflecopter just for sharing the posts with your friends and spreading the word!

(PS– I totally love Norman Rockwell art, don’t you?)

So, just to review, the **Weekly Prizes** still have all the same rules as in the original post, but now our weekly **Random Prize **(the water purification kit compliments of Water Pure Technologies) is going to be randomly drawn based on points earned for preliminary work via Rafflecopter.   Overall points will still be earned and accumulated by submitting completed recipes, but now you’ll be in the running for a great prize week to week just for getting the ball rolling (or for simply supporting the contest by way of comments or on social media).  This water treatment kit is something I know everyone will appreciate, since we all need clean water to drink! Remember, not only does this Copper-Silver ion solution treat water, making it safe for drinking, it’s especially effective requiring only a small amount to treat and inhibit future bacterial growth in your water container.

• 1 drop – treats 1 quart/liter of water
• 4 drops – treats 1 gallon of water
• 1/3 oz 10 mL – treats 55 gallons
• 1 bottle of H2O ResQ (60 mL) – treats 330 gallons of water.

Click here to join the contest for it this coming week:

a Rafflecopter giveaway 

Rafflecopter is simple to use and will monitor and track everything, all you have to do is enter and decide what you’ll do!  Here’s a list of the available points you’ll find upon following the link above.

• 2 pts Leave a Blog Post Comment about the past week’s winner/submissions.

Answer either (or both) of the following questions:  If you could choose one recipe from the winner’s recipes this week, which could you see yourself making?  What impressed you the most about our weekly winner’s submission?

• 10 pts Leave a Blog Post Comment

Think through your purpose and goals, spend time planning it out and tell me which FOUR recipes you’re getting ready to make!

• 10 pts.  (This is on your honor- check it off once you’ve completed it.)

I have collected all the ingredients and tools I’ll need to make the four recipes I previously posted about.

• 1 pts Tweet about the Giveaway

Tweet “Biggest Prepper GO!” This option may be repeated once a day if desired.

• 3 pts Like My-food-storage-cookbook on Facebook

• 3 pts Pin an Image on Pinterest (image is given to you)

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Coming up this week…

Last but not least, here’s our coming week’s weekly prize!!  Thank you to Thrive Rep Martine Anthony for this great collection of products!  Oh, and the best part, even if you’re living in Canada (as our prize donor does) or Alaska, this is the ONE prize in the contest which has been offered to those beyond the US lower 48.  Anyone can jump in this week and go for it!

It includes three pantry sized cans of some GREAT Thrive products.  First, my favorite (and the only) butter powder I use, YOUR CHOICE of freeze dried cheese (either cheddar or mozzarella) and a can of freeze dried Ground Beef!!

Remember, coming up next week we’ll be catching up with our overall points, who’s got what on our scoreboard and what’s up for grabs for finalist prizes!