Self-Reliant Saturday -- Procastination and Emergency Preparedness Don't Mix

Prepare Today Homemade-- Shelf Stable Cheesecake Recipe

My cheesecake drama, you can read about here, actually turned into an experiment on how to use cream cheese powder.  I purchased a #10 can of cream cheese powder from Honeyville Grain and then attempted to make a no-bake cheesecake out of it.  Attempted because there aren't a lot of instructions on the side of the can to know how to reconstitute it! I asked a friend of mine to help me with measurements and she said 1 1/2 Cups of powdered cream cheese will equal 1 8oz. block of cream cheese.  Adding water to get the right consistency is what took a little experimenting.  I only used about a 1/2 cup of water to get a cream cheese texture that I could mix easily with a hand mixer.  So watch the water amounts when you are making this, you can always add more.

 Shelf stable whipping cream made by Gossner's is one of my favorite items to have in my food storage.  It can be used for whipped cream, you can make butter out of it, and it is great in soups.  I buy mine from Honeyville in Salt Lake City.  Totally worth it to have on hand!  And the cream cheese powder is now another one of my favorite shelf stable ingredients.  I picked that up at Honeyville as well.  It runs about $28 online right now.  I was not compensated for this post.  These are truly products that I have in my storage and that I use. 

As you can see from the picture I figured out this cheesecake craziness!  Much better than my first runny mess of a cheesecake attempt.  You can see that disaster in my last post, read it HERE. I was making the cheesecake for a preparedness class at church so I used a 13x9 pan to feed a crowd instead of a pie pan.  

The crust is simple, I used the same recipe from my last post HERE,  which has graham cracker crumbs, sugar, powdered butter, and then I added the water to reconsitute the powdered butter. 

I mixed it up with a fork and then used my hands to really mix it well.  Then I firmly patted it down into the 13x9 pan and let it chill in the fridge.

Now, onto the making of the filling.  I actually made two different cheesecakes so I could try out my shelf stable heavy cream in one of them.  The other recipe uses sweetened condensed milk with the cream cheese. 

No-Bake Cheesecake Using Heavy Cream

3 C powdered cream cheese (or 2 8oz packages cream cheese)

1/2 C- 1 C water (don't add the water if using real cream cheese)

2 t lemon juice

16oz (1 pint) heavy whipping cream, chilled

1/3 C sugar

Using a hand mixer blend the powdered cream cheese with a half cup of the water.  Slowly add more water until you reach a cream cheese texture.  Don't add too much water!  You don't want it runny. Mix in the lemon juice until well blended.

Add in the whipping cream and mix on medium high until stiff peaks form.  Add in the sugar and mix well.  Mixture should be slightly thick, not runny.  Pour into prepared graham cracker crust and chill at least 2 hours. 

This is the cream cheese powder mixed with a little water.  Don't let it get too thinned out or the cheesecake won't set up.  The cream cheese powder does thicken when it sits in the fridge. 

This is the mixture after adding in the lemon juice and the whipping cream. See the stiff peaks in the middle of the creamed mixture. 

The sugar gets mixed in lastly and mixed well.

Spread the mixture over the crust and chill. 

No-Bake Cheesecake With Sweetened Condensed Milk

Toothpicks held up the cover :)

Sweetened Condensed Milk

In a blender add:

1/2 C hot water

1 C non-instant powdered milk

1 C sugar

3 T melted butter (3 T butter powder+3/4 t water)

Blend until mixed well. Or substitute 1 14oz can sweetened condensed milk.

In a mixing bowl add:

3 C cream cheese powder (or 2 8oz packages cream cheese)

1/2 C-1 C water (don't add the water if using real cream cheese)

Combine the cream cheese powder and water in bowl with hand mixer, slowly add 1/2 C water until well blended, smooth, and has a cream cheese texture. Add more water as needed to achieve the right cream cheese consistency. 
Add in:

2 t lemon juice

1 t vanilla

Blend well.  Add in the sweetened condensed milk from the blender, or 1 can sweetened condensed milk.  Blend well with hand mixer.  Pour into prepared graham cracker crust and chill at least 2 hours. 

This is the cream cheese powder, lemon juice, and vanilla mixed together.  

In goes the homemade sweetened condensed milk.

Chilled and ready for serving. I needed to transport this to where I was teaching and I first put aluminum foil over the top...see where it stuck to the top of the cheesecake!  I added toothpicks to hold up the foil.  I didn't want to mess it up even more by pulling them out before taking the photo. 

The cheesecake made with the shelf stable whipping cream set up a little better and had a firmer texture.  It also cut and held up on a plate better than the sweetened condensed milk version, which was kind of sticky. I preferred the cheesecake made with whipping cream because it had a lighter texture and wasn't too sweet. But they both tasted great!  It's always smart to have options when it comes to food storage. If plan A doesn't work, you can fall back to plan B or even plan C.  I will probably use real cream cheese to make these recipes most often, but knowing I have another option, if the situation arose that I needed one, is a comforting feeling.

Prepare Today Homemade-- Graham Crackers & Graham Cracker Crust Recipes

If we all looked as good as we portray ourselves on social media most people have perfect lives, with perfect children, and perfect recipes that bake up perfect every time.  Well, I'm here to keep it real.  A lot of what comes out of my kitchen is not blog worthy, but this oops deserved to blogged about.

It didn't quite set up.

 On Tuesday night I am helping out with a preparedness class at church and I volunteered to bring a food storage related dessert.  I thought a no-bake cheesecake would be perfect. I have wanted to try cream cheese powder forever! Thank goodness I decided to try it out on my family first!  That liquid mess in the pie dish above is suppose to be cheesecake.  It never set up.  It sat in the fridge and then the freezer for hours and never set up.  You can see we ate the crust from under it, which was yummy, but the cheesecake part was a total flop.  I may be panicking just a little if I can't figure this out by tomorrow. 

So I am going to share with you my graham cracker recipe and also the recipe for the graham cracker crust.  I did find a cheesecake recipe that worked, thank goodness, and I'll share that later this week.

Homemade Graham Crackers

2 C whole wheat flour
1 C white flour (can use all whole wheat)
1 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 C butter softened (1/2 C butter powder + 1 1/2 T water)
1/2 C brown sugar
1/3 C honey
1 t vanilla
1/4-1/2 C milk  
extra flour for dusting and rolling out
 Cream the butter, sugar, and honey until fluffy.  In another bowl mix the flours, baking powder, baking soda and slowly add to the creamed butter mixture, alternating with the milk and vanilla.  Only add enough milk for the dough to come together. The dough will be sticky and not quite like a bread dough when you have added enough milk.  (I had to add about 1/2 C more flour to be able to get it out of the bowl) Cover the dough and place in the fridge for an hour or up to overnight. 

Preheat oven to 350°. Divide the dough into fourths. Working with only one section, leave remaining dough in the fridge, roll out onto the bottom of an ungreased jelly roll pan.  Don't be afraid to use a lot of flour to keep the dough from sticking to the rolling pin and your hands.  It's a really sticky dough!

Roll as thin as possible, almost paper thin, using your hands to flatten if necessary.  Prick with a fork and score into graham cracker shapes. Bake 11-14 minutes.  Watch the crackers at the 11 minute mark, the edges tend to burn quickly.  Once done score the crackers immediately after taking out of the oven and remove to a cooling rack.  If they cool on the cookie sheet they will stick.

Repeat with the remaining quarters of dough.

 

These are a hit at my house, even my husband loves them!  They would be really good with cinnamon and sugar sprinkled on top before baking them. A great use for graham crackers is to make a super simple crust with them.  I needed to make a few crusts for my preparedness class and this was the best part of this whole process.

 It was kind of therapeuticec to bang all those crackers into crumbs.  They broke easily and then I was ready to make a few graham cracker crusts.

 Graham Cracker Crust

1 1/2 C finely ground graham crackers

1/3 C sugar

6 T butter melted (6 T butter powder + 1 1/2 T water)

Mix all ingredients in a bowl.  (if using butter powder don't use all the water at first.  Pour about half and stir the mixture and add more as necessary until the crumbs start sticking together.) Don't be afraid to use your hands to incorporate all the crumbs and butter.  Press into pie pan or 13x9 pan.  Chill for 1 hour, or if the recipe calls for a baked crust bake at 375°for 7 minutes. 

Stay tuned later this week for the recipe for the cheesecake that filled this delicious crust!  I found two great ways to make a no-bake cheesecake that use all shelf stable ingredients!!!

Self-Reliant Saturday-- The Right Nutrition In An Emergency

"In an emergency, the right nutrition becomes a crucial element of your survival and ability to do what needs to be done--whether that's rebuilding your home, searching for other survivors, or evacuating on foot.  Protein is a non-negotiable when it comes to nutrition [and preparedness].  Stock up on your favorites!"

  --quote from the Emergency Essentials monthly catalog

Even if your home isn't destroyed, or you aren't searching for survivors, if we are living in a post disaster world for a while life will be harder physically.  We will be doing work that we aren't used to doing physically.  Digging, clearing debris, cooking over a fire, manually grinding flour, these are all activities most of us don't do on a daily basis.  Protein will help keep you feeling full, and give your the extra strength you'll need in a disaster. I'll list a few examples of protein sources that aren't a slab of meat :)

• peanut butter and all other nut butters
• nuts and seeds
• quinoa/amaranth/bulgur/teff/millet
• chia seeds
• protein bars
• beans
• tuna
• canned chicken and other meats
• protein powder (would be great to make a protein drink with one of those shaker cups)

Organizing -- How Food Storage Fits In My Kitchen?

Organizing our food storage was the challenge for January.  Click HERE if you missed that post. Now it's time to move out of the storage room and into my kitchen.  Organization is still a big part of my food storage in my kitchen.  Organization, and having a method to my madness, allows me to keep up with my inventory, and it also enables me to cook and use the food before it expires.  

 In one corner of my kitchen I have a dedicated cooking area which allows me to prep meals/bake, and not have to walk around the kitchen to gather what I need.  It is where I have all the measuring spoons/cups, spices, cookbooks that I use most often, mixers, flour, sugars, etc.  I make my bread here, put together dinner here, and pretty much all other food gets made in this area of my kitchen.  

This cupboard is directly above the counter that I use for meal prep.  I keep my baking ingredients and a few spices in this cupboard.  

Next to my spice/baking cupboard I have my surplus spices (which I seal in jars using my foodsaver), vinegars, sugars/agave syrups.  I also keep my liquid measuring cups in here. I can easily reach up for the ingredients that I need and not waste time walking all over the kitchen.   

Below my prep area I keep my spices in these two drawers.  I like being able to see them all at a glance and it keeps them from getting lost in a cupboard.  I also have them organized by ethnic flavors such as Mexican spices and Italian spices. 

On the opposite side of the kitchen I have a few cupboards that were out of the way for storing everyday cooking ingredients. I would be walking around an island to grab an ingredient if I stored the food I used every day here.  I decided to make these cupboards my smaller can storage area.  

I can see at a glance what I am low on and when I shop at the case lot sales I bring the cases right into the kitchen and unload them right into the cupboard.  The extra cases go out in the storage room.  This has worked really well for me and I love seeing all of the cans neatly lined up on the shelves...yes I may be a little OCD.  

 My Pantry

The ingredients that I cook with every day and the snacks my kids live on are stored in my kitchen pantry.  I have a rotating system that works for me.  I store most of my long-term food in my storage room in bulk.  I then have smaller containers, that I fill from my bulk storage, that I store in my kitchen pantry. I usually keep on top of this because if I am out of something in the pantry I go right out to the storage room and fill up  my pantry container from my bulk buckets.  Click HERE to see a post on my bucket storage. Using Gamma lids really makes this process easy.  Opening a bucket and filling a container takes just a few minutes.

This is my pantry.  I didn't clean it or make it pretty for the picture.  I wanted you all to see it exactly as it looks everyday, with 5 kids in and out of it, all day long.  

I have a few #10 cans stored in here. They are mostly the ingredients that I use to make bread, but there are other #10 cans like onions that I use more often, so I keep the opened can in the pantry and not the storage room.  It saves time walking out to the storage room.

The kids' snacks are on the lower shelf and then a miscellaneous shelf and above that are my pastas.  My lesser used cookbooks also have a home in my pantry.  The red and blue storage bins were purchased at the Dollar Tree store.  They are great for corralling fruit snacks, pretzel bags, paper goods, etc.  I keep my bread, peanut butter and bagels in the blue bin in the lower right corner of this picture.  This way I can grab the bin when I am making lunches for the kids and it is all in one spot. 

This is how my kitchen functions and it works for me. What kinds of organizational tips do you have from your kitchens??

Self-Reliant Saturday-- First Aid

Self-Reliant Saturdays are all about quick, simple preparedness ideas. 

One of the things you don't want to be without in an emergency, 
or to just have on hand for every day accidents,
 are First Aid items: 

• tons of band-aids (especially if you have children)
• sterilized bandages of all sizes
• antibiotic ointments
• over-the-counter pain medication
• blanket
• non-latex gloves
• cayenne pepper 
•  First Aid Book!

This list is not complete....but a starting off point.  Customize your first aid kit for your family.

 Click HERE for more ideas.
Or Click HERE for a previous post on first aid. 

Shopping With Emergency Essentials

We live in a world with a wide range of products available for purchase, especially food storage products.  We are very blessed to be able to order almost anything we need online and have it delivered right to our doors. I live in a small town without many choices for shopping, so shopping online has been such a time saver for me.  But there are times that I really want to see a product in person before buying it, but this requires some planning on my part.  Taking a trip into the city, 25-45 minutes away, usually includes several stops and my lists are carefully planned ahead of time. This week I headed down to Orem, Utah where I visited the Emergency Essential store and I also stopped by a local grocery store to pick up a few case lot items. I can't ever pass up a case lot sale :)

 I receive the Emergency Essentials catalog every month (sign up for a catalog HERE) and I always want to order a few items, but I never get around to it.  This month I decided to head to the closest store to me, about 30  minutes away to check them out.  I have shopped with them before in Salt Lake City, but never at this location.  

 Emergency Essentials

216 East University Parkway
Orem, Utah 84058
United States
(801) 222-9667

Store Hours:
Mon. 10:00 am-6:00 pm
Tues.-Sat. 10:00 am-9:00 pm
Closed Sunday

 
Please note that I have been a very loyal Honeyville Grain shopper, but I do like to branch out and check out all my options. I do think that Emergency Essentials is a little higher in price point than Honeyville Grain, but the quality of the food is about the same. 

 Here's a fun fact:  when you type in a company name into Google Maps, make sure that the location you pick is the retail store and not the company headquarters.  Guess how I know this fact?  See the picture above, that is the company headquarters for Emergency Essentials.  I met the nicest receptionist while I was there and she gave me directions to the Orem, Utah store front location.  I am so glad that the store was only about 10 minutes away from the company headquarters.  Gotta laugh at yourself sometimes :)

I did eventually make it to the retail store and it was worth the hassle of finding it.  It was light, bright, very organized, and the staff was very helpful.  They were out of a few items that I wanted but that just saved me money :)  

 Emergency Essentials carries more than just freeze-dried food in #10 cans, which they do carry quite a variety of!  They have water purifiers of all kinds, buckets of emergency food for 72-hour type kits, cookbooks, all sorts of preparedness gadgets, sleeping bags, Volcano stoves, fire starting gadgets, and more!

Here you can see the sleeping bags in the rear of the photo and the wall of Mountain House freeze-dried meals and MRE's.  There is also a test kitchen along the back wall of the store.  I was impressed by the look of the store and the helpfulness of the employees.  

 Here's a picture of my loot and the register where I checked out.  The big bucket in my cart is actually breakfast cereal!  A 5-gallon bucket of frosted flakes!  I know it's not the healthiest, by far, but in an emergency it will come in handy for an easy breakfast. 

 Do you see the inside view of the broccoli on the side of the can?  Ok, it isn't really a window into the can, but what a great view of what each product really looks like.  The image on the front of the can doesn't always represent the food that is on the inside of the can. Notice the fresh looking head of broccoli on the front of the can verses the freeze-dried image on the side of the can.  I like knowing what the freeze-dried food looks before I open the whole can.  I give Emergency Essentials and A+ for this "inside the can" image idea!

Here is another view of the inside image of the freeze-dried mushrooms that I purchased.  This can is also the smaller sized can that Emergency Essentials sells.  This is great for single people, college students, couples, or small families.  This smaller sized can is also a great way to try out a food before committing to the larger #10 can size.  I had to buy the smaller cans because they were out of the #10 cans of freeze-dried mushrooms.  I have noticed that most food storage retailers are also out of freeze-dried mushrooms.  I hope there isn't a mushroom shortage!! 

 Important information:  Most of the freeze-dried food at Emergency Essentials has a shelf life of 25 years! So if you have sticker shock from the freeze-dried cans of fruit, just know it will last a looonnngg time on your shelf!  My kids are banned from my freeze-dried peaches and oranges!  There will literally have to be zombies in the back yard for those cans to get opened anytime soon! In all seriousness, the freeze-dried fruits are tasty and they go fast in my house!!

All in all I was very impressed with the Emergency Essentials store.  If you don't live near one of the retail store fronts (their 4 locations are all in Utah), don't worry because you can order online anytime!  (beprepared.com) They have a flat rate shipping charge of $6.00 for orders shipped in the continental United States. If you aren't familiar with Emergency Essentials, check them out.  I do recommend their products, but please do your own research and price comparisons before purchasing anything.  I am NOT compensated for this post, or for any post that I write.  These are my true opinions of the products that I buy.