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Truly Impossible Pie

2 May Impossible Pie (13)

A friend of mine who reads the blog and is trying to put together a breakfast plan using her wonder oven, asked me last week about making an impossible pie in a wonder oven.  I thought it was an interesting twist and got to thinking about it.  Well, I’m so glad she asked because now I’m totally in love with this recipe!!  So, what’s an impossible pie, you ask? Children of the 70′s (and their mothers) should remember this Bisquick creation, where Bisquick was poured over top of an egg batter layered with vegetables, meat and cheese and baked.   It’s impossibility was that you got a “crust” without rolling out pie dough.  The result was a quiche that was fast and easy to fix.

Well, if ever there was an impossible pie, I’d give that title instead to this variation!  If you’d asked me even a year ago, I never in a million years would have thought this to be a possibility as a food storage recipe.  Thanks to discovering Honeyville’s OvaEasy Eggs, now it is.  And beyond that, it utilizes the heat retentive cooking of a wonder oven, which makes it a breakfast possibility even if the power is out.  You see, you can’t bake anything — for breakfast— if the power is out.  The sun isn’t out to heat your sun oven so you’re options are limited to cooking over a stovetop of some kind.  Not that hot cereal isn’t great, but it gets old like everything else.

This recipe exemplifies the idea that in using a wonder oven your pot and lid act as a “mini-oven”, just as in making bread, where you can still bake using just a minimal amount of stove top fuel if the power is out. Continue reading →

Italian Love Nests

14 Feb Italian Love Nests (15)

I thought this recipe would be a fun one for your Valentines week reading.  This “outside the box” pasta idea uses angel hair pasta tossed with an alfredo sauce, along with chopped ham or sausage, and bakes it into cute {crisped} muffin sized nests.  Here’s the non-food storage recipe it’s based off of (no, I didn’t make this idea up myself).  Once again, to keep these little babies held together, chia powder takes the place of the eggs it once called for.

Everyone here loved these!   Using a marinara sauce would work too, btw, so don’t feel limited to the cream sauce if you want to branch out.  Ha ha!  Get it?  ”Branch out”, “love nests?”  Have fun and enjoy!

makes 18 nests

Continue reading →

Cajun Red Beans ‘n Rice

13 Dec Cajun Red Beans 'n Rice (12)

Print the recipe page!  cajun red beans n rice

If you’ve read much here on the blog, you know that one of the websites that inspired me most initially was Karen Wilkinson’s kneadfulthingsnow.com.  So I was alarmed to receive an email this week that one of my links to her website wasn’t responding.  I tried it myself and sure enough it wasn’t.  I’m trying to contact Karen to see if I can find out where her site has gone, but in the meantime this brings me to share a word with you about the worth of recipes and the frailty of the internet.

It wasn’t all too long ago (my grandmother’s era) that recipes were guarded, prized and generally kept to oneself or strictly within a family.  There are some funny stories my grandmother used to tell about women in the town she grew up in who either outright refused to share certain recipes or gave out bogus “altered” ones to keep their true recipes safe.  Owning a copy of a good recipe was a big deal back then.

Today, we see the opposite: recipes are everywhere.  Good ones, bad ones, and everything in between.  This is great but with so much saturation we risk taking them for granted.  As far as emergency preparedness goes (in my opinion) a recipe that uses your preps, that your family will eat, could mean the difference between surviving and staring at a wall of food storage not knowing what to make.

Bottom line:  if there’s a recipe you think you might want to include in your food storage preps, don’t wait — get it printed out.  You can always toss it later but on the other hand, you might be really glad you’ve copied it; you just never know.  Remember, all the recipes here on the blog can be printed as a simple recipe card and are found at the top of each post.

Which brings us to our recipe, brought back to you from being “lost”… Continue reading →

Pigs in a Blanket

27 Nov Pigs in a Blanket (1)

Print the recipe card!     pigs in a blanket

Here’s another idea using the Hot Ham Roll’s biscuit mix.  My five year old loves that he makes this dinner 90% “by himself”.   It’s a perfect kid helper meal;  the kids have fun making pig families of all sizes and wrapping them up in their doughy blankets.   So easy!

As an aside, I have to admit I’m not one who personally “gets along” with hot dogs {we’ve never really been friends} so for me I like the fact that I can sneak a package of vegetarian hot dogs in and my kids (and my husband) for whatever reason never suspect.  It’s funny to me that they never ask questions but they don’t.  They think they’re getting hotdogs for dinner and I sleep better at night knowing they didn’t.  Everyone’s happy :)

This meal works as a short term (3 month) meal for me by my keeping a couple packages of (faux) hotdogs in the freezer.  Alternately, vienna sausage “pigs” work as a longer storable option if you want to include it in your long term plan. Continue reading →

Quinoa Pizza Bites

18 Oct Quinoa Pizza Bites (7)

Print the recipe page!  quinoa pizza bites

Just WAIT until you try these! If you’ve ever caught anyone saying they don’t like quinoa then this is the recipe to convince them they like it.   Your family is going to devour these quinoa bites, they really will!  And you yourself don’t have to feel guilty eating them…according to the original post (linked in the next paragraph) their calorie count is just 35 calories per bite!

I found them over at So Very Blessed and thank Becky over there for sharing them.  Becky says they’re “hands down” the best thing she’s ever cooked.

As far as making them with food storage ingredients, they cooperate just perfectly!  I used ground chia instead of eggs, freeze dried cheese and veggies in exchange for fresh.  I’ve tried out two different variations so far… both of which have been great!   They’re so easy to change up based on what you like or what you can eat (even vegetarian) I’m convinced anyone can work these yummy bites into their plan!

Continue reading →

Chia “Real Meat” Meatballs

13 Oct Chia Real Meat Meatballs (16)

Print the recipe page!  chia real meat meatballs

These meatballs, made with real meat (as opposed to the wheat meat meatballs  I tricked all my kids with) use ground chia seeds as a binder in place of eggs. No kidding!  I was so excited to find out chia can do this!  Due to their gelling properties when soaked, chia works as a substitute for eggs in all kinds of baking.  (It also makes wonderful pudding, but we’ll get to that another day.)  I’m quite smitten by these little chia seeds.  They’re simply amazing! God truly thought of everything and gave them an extra handful of “nutrition” and “usefulness” when the plant gifts were handed out :) .

We’ll get to the recipe (which is also pretty great) in a minute, but first I have to pause for a moment to introduce you to these amazing little seeds.

Continue reading →

Lasagna Rolls

12 Sep Lasagna Rolls (1)

Print the recipe page!  lasagna rolls

The two winning ingredients in these lasagna rolls are the copy cat ricotta cheese and the Barilla brand no-boil lasagna noodles.  The ricotta cheese is a result of me tweaking around in the kitchen and {somewhat accidentally} creating a clone of something I like to cook with often.  The no-boil noodles are ideal because they’re “sturdy” enough to roll the filling into while still having the delicate texture of fresh pasta we like.

My whole family loves this meal plus it’s an easy one to make in the sun oven.  My 13 year old even asks for it specifically so he can have the leftovers in his lunch the next day!

Continue reading →

Skillet Penne with Sausage and Spinach

20 Apr Skillet Penne with Sausage and Spinach (1)

Print the recipe card!  skillet penne with sausage and spinach

This meal is a fast one to put together and everyone likes it!

It’s based off a favorite one dish meal, this time made over using  food storage ingredients.  The pine nuts are definitely optional, it’s good with or without them.

Continue reading →

Pot Stickers

25 Jan Potstickers (36)

Print the recipe page!  pot stickers

Never again will I buy these delectable treats!  Seriously.  These were *easy* to make, a little time consuming when it came to filling them, but the process itself was not complicated at all.  And the best part… they were fantastic even using 100% food storage ingredients!  They’re definitely going to be added to my plan now.  Also, this was my first try ever making them ( just so you know I’m not pulling any punches when I say they were easy) and they turned out fabulous!   So, in case you need another reason to go out and buy yourself a pasta machine, this is another really good one.  Why buy pot sticker or won ton wrappers from the store when you can make them yourself?  It might even save you from calling for take out!

Continue reading →

Italian Polenta Bake

7 Dec Italian Polenta Bake (1)

Print the recipe card!  italian polenta bake

Give polenta a try!  It’s something different /easy to make and requires basic ingredients that can be stored.  You can add anything you like to it from mushrooms to broccoli to herbs and cheese, or you can choose to keep it plain and simple as a base for something else.  This recipe is a keeper at my house — I think you’ll like it too!  Here are some other ideas for using polenta in your meals:  Continue reading →

Pizza!

5 Oct FS -- Pizza 042

Print the recipe page!  pizza

Let the joyous news be spread,  pizza is on the menu as a food storage and sun oven meal!!

A little history.  I’d never considered pizza as a food storage recipe until Karen from www. kneadfulthingsnow.com talked about it here.   I know I rave about her a lot.  The funny thing is that I haven’t even met this woman — someday when I do I’m going to give her a big hug and thank her for being so smart!  Anyway,  Karen had some awesome ideas there that got me realizing that fun normal foods like this were possible in a food storage plan!  Who would’ve thought?!!

So, it was decided.  We would be having pizza…somehow.

The second phase of getting pizza on the menu however was that I had to come up with a way to bake it in a sun oven.  The last thing I wanted was to have spent a lot of money on freeze dried cheese ($3- $4 per cup) and other ingredients and then be dependent on electricity (which may or may not be there) to be able to make our pizza!  So this is what I’ve come up with.

Continue reading →

Balsamic Tortellini

30 Sep FS -- Balsamic Tortellini 012

Print the recipe card!  balsamic tortellini

It’s hard not to love this one.  It’s super yummy and takes less than five minutes prep time to make.  In fact, the extent of your effort will be to boil a pot of water… you’ve gotta love that!  On top of that, those you prepare it for will applaud your culinary inaction with all kinds of compliments.  Just be polite and say thank you anyway.

Continue reading →

Hot Ham Rolls

14 Sep FS -- Hot Ham Rolls 018

Print the recipe card!  hot ham rolls

Our kids love these rolls! Thanks to the publisher of  “It’s in the Bag” (www.cedarfort.com) for allowing me to reprint this great pantry meal recipe!  I’ve done just a couple of things differently since you saw it in my introductory videos.  Firstly, thanks to a great idea from a reader I’ve switched to using shortening powder rather than shortening.  It works perfectly and simplifies  the bagging process and meal prep time!  Secondly, because I’ve had problems with the baking powder hardening while it’s stored I’m now storing the flour mix in vacuum sealed bags.

Continue reading →

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