Okay, so I totally posted the wrong weekly prize for week #4 in our round up post Saturday. Seriously, I did! You probably all caught it and were worried about me (“what in the world?”).  The worst part is that I didn’t even catch it until Sunday morning.  Now, I do have to tell you that this “ah hah” moment also happened to also coincide with the fact that I got more than 4 consecutive hours of sleep (which apparently my brain needs to think straight), so I don’t know, but I may be on to something there.  Truly though, I’m so sorry for confusing everyone.  The next time it happens I think I should be fired. (Ha!!) Keeping that in mind, please bear with me for a moment while I fix my mistake (you of course already know who won) and then I have just a few Q & A notes of clarification about participating in the contest.

Week #4’s prize was — in truth –graciously donated by MFSC reader and Thrive Representative, Martine Anthony.  It’s three pantry sized cans of some great Thrive products that I know our winner is going to enjoy!  Butter powder, freeze dried ground beef and (this is cool) Paula gets HER CHOICE of either mozzarella or cheddar cheese.

Looking into THIS WEEK (week #5) our prize coming up is another of the Emergency Essentials prize packages.  This includes a #10 can of freeze dried onion flakes, Shortening powder, a can of Red Feather (real) canned butter and a “Swing-a-way” can opener.

I promise I’ll try harder to keep things straight but (as I told Martine in an email I sent to apologize to her about it) we got to church on Sunday and had to laugh upon discovering that our toddler aged little girl was wearing two “left footed” black dress shoes — ah, yes, completely different styles– so that about sums things up.  It’s healthy to keep a sense of humor about things and, lucky for me, I constantly have things to laugh about.

Secondly, I have some contest questions to answer that I’ve been asked lately (from more than a couple people on each of them, but yet the same questions).

Contest Submission *questions* I’ve been getting:

Q:  Is it alright for me to just submit a link rather than typing up the recipe?

A:  Definitely (and I’m sorry I wasn’t more clear about this in the beginning).  Whatever is easiest.  I just need to see the recipe you made whichever way you want to send it to me.

Q:  Is it alright for me to make a “from scratch” recipe once, possibly in large quantities, and use it in multiple recipes?

A:  Yes!! The whole goal of this contest is for you to get to try as many recipes as you possibly can so you’ll know whether or not they’re for you and whether or not you want to store for them.  You’ll remember what it was like to make those “from scratch” things (trust me, I know you will) even without having to make them every time you cook.  There are a lot of things like this you can add into other recipes.  Tortillas is a big one.  You can get chips from them, taco shells, tortilla strips for Tortilla Soup, etc.  Plus the chips and taco shells keep a couple days.  There are lots and lots of options once you look at what “from scratch” (I’m also calling them “skill”) recipes that are out there.  Use your smarts to figure out the most time effective way of getting some of these harder things made so you can then use them to try new recipes with them as well as get bigger point scores.

Q:  I’m having trouble with the Rafflecopter this week (week #5)

A:  If anyone was trying to access it from facebook, I just realized (tonight) that it was still set with last week’s contest over there.  Try it again here, you shouldn’t have a problem but please leave me a note if you’re having trouble.

Here it is again:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Q:  What exactly is considered food storage?

A:   Food storage (to me and for the purposes of this contest) is anything that doesn’t require refrigeration to keep, so whatever you have stored in your pantry (or in those mysterious #10 cans) which you’d draw upon if you were faced with an emergency.  It can also mean anything on grocery store shelves, jarred or canned.

I hope that helps!  Thanks for hanging with me, guys!

–Megan