"Soup In A Bag" Review

One of the benefits of having a blog is meeting new friends over the internet in the blogoshpere.  Megan, from My Food Storage Cookbook, is one of my food storage blog friends.  The reason her website caught my eye was her amazing food storage recipe organization.  Her recipes are organized into several catagories, cross referenced, color coded, so at any given time she knows what recipes her family eats and what she needs to shop for. If there was an emergency and she had no power, Megan can look at her recipe book and can see exactly which recipes are for a Wonder Box, or cook top, etc. It really is a great system for rotating and using your food storage!!  Plus, she shows you how to make your own recipe book with instructions and videos!  She is also truly inspired when it comes to finding new ways to prepare and cook every day food by using your food storage and shelf stable ingredients.  I have learned so much from her website. Take a look at My Food Storage Cookbook and you'll see why I was so impressed with her organization and recipes. 

Megan had a giveaway for the book "Soup In A Bag" and I was lucky enough to win a copy in return for reviewing a few recipes from the book. The concept of "Soup In A Bag" is a cookbook collection of soup recipes that use all dehydrated and shelf stable ingredients that can be stored together, in a bag or jar, to have on hand for food storage emergencies, busy nights, etc.  I selected a few recipes, spent one day dehydrating ingredients for the different soups, another afternoon making up the recipes and sealing the soups in mason jars using my Foodsaver. I made four different soups from the book and my family let me know which one was their favorite one.  

Check out my review HERE and watch Megan's website for reviews from the other giveaway winners all week.   

Thrive Life Butter Powder

There are a few foods that will make or break a recipe when it comes to food in #10 cans.  Powdered cheese, butter, sour cream, eggs, etc. will be different from one company to another, and that will determine the outcome of a dish. I usually don't mind using a generic version of grocery store foods because I don't see a big difference in quality, but I have learned, by trial and error, that there is a big difference between the many food storage companies out there today.

One example is butter powder.  I really don't like to mention company names when I don't like a certain product, so I am just going to say that I have 3 different butter powders at my house right now that I don't like to use in my cooking.  They have an obvious non-butter taste and don't even smell close to real butter.  I have read on several blogs that Thrive Life has a really good butter powder.  I finally broke down and paid the $25.49 + shipping and ordered a #10 can of it.  I am so glad that I did!!!!  

The first thing I noticed right away when I opened the can is it smelled like butter.  It was light in color and not a fake yellowy color.  I mixed a small amount with a little bit of water and it reconstituted into a buttery spread.  It spread onto bread so easily and tasted good too!  It won't make a cube of butter but if you need some butter on your toast, this would work!!  I have since made brownies and cookies with the butter powder.  The brownies worked great and I couldn't taste any fake buttery flavor at all.  But the cookies were another story.  My one complaint for butter powder from all companies are the reconstituting directions!!!!  There are none for baking!!  I want to know how much water I add to the butter powder for say, 1 C of butter in a recipe.  I tried looking online and I couldn't find anything.  So if any of you know, please send me in the right direction :) That is how I messed up my cookie recipe.  It called for 1 C of butter, so I added 1 C of powder to my bowl and slowly added water.  I added too much water and then had to add extra flour.  I couldn't ever get the batter to form a cookie dough, so I baked it in a 13x9 pan and we had cookie brownies.  It still tasted good, but I need to research the water to powder ration some more.  Again the "cookies" tasted like they should without an off taste that I noticed with other butter powders.

Out of the several butter powders that I have used I highly recommend Thrive Life's Butter Powder.  Click here to see more information.

Prepare Today Homemade: Oatmeal Pancake Mix

I have been on a mix making kick lately and this recipe for Oatmeal Pancake Mix has been on my pinterest food board for a little while now.  My two oldest children get up for school and leave before I get up and one of them will "forget" to eat breakfast many mornings.  She claims milk makes her stomach hurt, so I have been trying to think of things she will eat instead of cereal.  This may sound easy, but this child is incredibly picky.  I don't usually give in to a picky eater, you eat what I prepare, but I feel so guilty when they go to school without having eaten anything!!

I found this recipe for Oatmeal Pancake Mix from Mel's Kitchen Cafe and I couldn't wait to try it out.  It has had rave reviews from so many people that I decided to give them a try.  

I followed Mel's directions exactly as she explained, but I used powdered eggs and buttermilk powder instead of the fresh variety.  And I may, or may not have, switched the powdered buttermilk measurements and added 1 C of powdered and 1/4 C water instead of the other way around.  Sheesh, it's always something with me and cooking!! I think I salvaged the mistake and cooked up 38 pancakes.  I was going to just make the mix and 1 batch of pancakes, but I figured, since I had everything out already I may as well cook up the whole batch.  The pancakes are light yet hardy!  They will keep you feeling full until lunch for sure!! Next time I make them I will add ground flax seed and maybe some chia.  They will be delicious with some peanut butter slathered on top and hopefully make it easier for a certain daughter to grab her breakfast and go.

Click HERE to get the recipe.

The Great Utah Shakeout 2013!

Today in Utah was the statewide shakeout.  At 10:15 a.m. the entire state took cover for 1 minute in an earthquake practice scenario.  My four older children were at school during this time and my husband was at work, 45 minutes away. My 5 year old and I were at home and we practiced where we would go if we were upstairs and then again downstairs.

Can you see the little girl under the clothes?  We chose the closet to hide in upstairs.

 

We chose to hide under the kitchen desk downstairs during the Shake Out.

Do you all have a family emergency plan? I moved about 3 months ago and I realized that my family needs a new emergency preparedness plan.  

For my family's plan we need to:

• designate a new meeting place outside of our home
• designate a new meeting place outside of our neighborhood and make sure the whole family understands how they will get to the meeting place.
• create a new plan if a disaster happens during the day when only mom and the 5 year old are at home.  How will the kids get to the meeting place?  How will dad make it home?  
• Update all car kits.  My husband drives quite far for work and would have to walk up a canyon to get home.  Does he have what he needs in his vehicle and at work?
• Then we need to actually practice our plan during the daytime but we also need to have a run through when it's dark.
• I also need to replace the shoes and flashlights that I had under our beds in our old house.  This will proctect us during the night from glass and other fallen objects.

  Click HERE for more information on earthquake information and having an emergency plan.  

Using My Food Storage: Soup In A Bag (Jar)

Today I ended up with several uninterrupted hours and I found the perfect project to tackle. I recently won a giveaway on Megan's blog, Myfoodstoragecookbook.com, and I received the book Soup In A Bag.  I needed to review a few of the soups and in my few uninterrupted hours I made several jars filled with dehydrated and freeze-dried foods.  When I reconstitute them I will have almost instant soups.  I made them in an assembly line type of process and it really helped that I could get out all of the ingredients, make the jarred meals, seal them, and get them put away, without children interruptions.  I love to look at the jars all finished and ready for a busy night when I can pull out a jar, heat up some water and have dinner ready in minutes. 

 

 One of the recipes called for dehydrated rice and tomatoes and I needed to dehydrate them before I could make jarred soup mix with them, but I had all the other ingredients to make Carrot Yam and Potato Cheese soup mix.  I sealed the jars with my foodsaver and they are good on the shelf for at least a year.  

This is a great book if you want to make your own Soups In A Bag or jar.  The author uses mylar bags and jars to preserve her soups, but you can choose which way works best for you. Find the book HERE

Prepare Today Homemade: Homemade Butter

In times when food storage may be our sole source of food, dairy foods will become few and far between, unless you have a cow.  I know that I could give up quite a few foods, but cheese and butter are two that I am not going to let go of quietly.  Cheese can be found in many forms for storage but butter is a little trickier.  Butter powder is available and works for baking but sometimes you just want some creamy goodness on a piece of bread!!!  There is a way to make butter and it is very simple to make. My sister was making us dinner the other night and the soup recipe called for cream.  We used my Gossner's shelf stable cream in the recipe and we had about a half of box leftover. I was lazy and was just going to throw it away, but my sister was appalled and she told me to make butter.  It really isn't hard so I don't know why I didn't just get out the mixer and make the butter in the first place.

 Let me introduce you to Gossner's Shelf Stable Whipping Cream.  While it is great for dessert it also whips up into butter in about 2 minutes!!! For times when the grocery store isn't an option, or if you don't have a friend with a cow, this stuff is gold!! 

Fresh Butter from Whipping Cream
1 container Gossner's shelf stable whipping cream
stand mixer

Mix cream in mixer until a liquid begins to separate (that's the buttermilk) from butter.  Watch carefully, don't let it mix too much or it will ruin your batch of butter.  Save or drain off the buttermilk and rinse the butter in cold water until water runs clear.  The buttermilk will cause the butter to go rancid so make sure to rinse the butter well.   Store the butter in a container in the fridge.  You can add salt if desired.

It spreads just like butter and I think the taste was much better then the butter from the store.  It tasted so fresh! The butter can also be made with a manual mixer for times of no electricity. I bought the whipping cream at Honeyville in Salt Lake City. It isn't available on their website but you can purchase it HERE online.  It also lasts much longer then the expiration date.  I have used it a year past the date with great results. 

Using My Food Storage: Making Mixes

My goal when grocery shopping is to stock up when an item is at its lowest price point.  This way I am getting the most bang for my buck.  I usually can keep my pantry stocked using this method but lately I haven't been able to find brownie mixes for under $1.00.  I  know it isn't that difficult to make brownies from scratch, but my children usually want them after dinner and I don't want to mess up the kitchen again getting all the baking ingredients out.  So my goal for today was to mix up a big batch of brownie mix and only make the big mess one time.  Now we have a container of brownie mix that will make at least 7 batches of 8x8 size pans.  

I am not a huge user of  homemade mixes, but there are a few that make my life a little easier.  I use the book "Make-A-Mix" for most of my recipes and mixes. The brownie mix has always sounded so good, and....

...the brownie mix can be used for more than brownies too!!!  How about chocolate chewy cookies, Texas sheet cake or Brownie Alaska. These all sound so good, can you tell I really love dessert!!!  (Click HERE to view a previous post I wrote on making mixes.)

The original recipe calls for melted butter and eggs when you mix up the brownies, but I food storagized the recipe and used powdered butter and powdered eggs.  If I was a math whiz I would've figured out how much to add to the dry mix, but I freely admit math isn't one of my talents, so I just added it in when we mixed up the batch of brownies.   It worked great and the brownies cooked up fluffy and looked just as brownies should.  Although as I type this I remembered that I totally forgot to add the vanilla in.  I had "help" making this (my 5 year old was mixing) so I can blame it on that :)


My other new find that I am using all the time is chalkboard contact paper.  This may be too crafty for some of you but stay with me.  I bought the chalkboard contact paper, chalk paint pen, and a cute punch out stamp on amazon.com and I have been labeling everything.  It started with my flour and sugar canisters and now I am labeling my food storage containers.  What is so wonderful about the contact paper is it is removable and the chalk pen ink is erasable!!!!  

 All the items in the picture (not the container) were purchased on Amazon, but I assume craft stores would carry these supplies as well.  When the brownie mix is all gone I may want to fill the container with corn meal, and all I have to do is rub the chalk ink with a damp paper towel and rewrite the label.  I am in love with this stuff!  I even made labels for my dehydrated food...

My dehydrated food jars will always be changing depending on what I am dehydrating and the labels are so easy to change.  Plus I can peel off the contact paper label so easily if I need to water bath or pressure can with these jars.  Maybe I am a little to excited but this has been so fun to do!  And I am not usually a crafty person, but I like to be really organized and this system really makes the pantry look put together. 

Here are our brownies made from a mix using butter and egg powder.  They are definitely more of a cake-like brownie, but we did add chocolate chips to our batch and that helped to make them more fudge-like.  (and I had no idea how to reconstitute the butter powder.  I probably did it wrong and so the brownies aren't that fudgy )And I don't know if it is me or the butter powder but I can totally taste it, even when it is cooked.  I have heard great things about Thrive's butter powder so I may look into trying that brand.  For the next batch I will make them with real melted butter and see if I can taste the difference. And as I was putting this in the oven I mentally smacked myself because I could've made this in the sun oven today, it was so sunny outside.  Next time....

I'm sorry that there is no mix recipe in this post, but I highly recommend buying the Make-A-Mix book for all of the recipes in it. I just wanted to give you all an example of what I do daily to use my food storage.  This may inspire you to do something today with your storage!!  If you would like a brownie mix recipe, I found this one on pinterest and it seems to be really popular.  CLICK HERE  to view it.