Emergency Food Storage In A Nutshell- A Book Review

I am truly blessed to live near the Honeyville Grain store.  They have so many different classes and I get to meet so many people in the food storage world.  Last week I was able to attend a class taught by Leslie Probert who co-authored "Emergency Food Storage In A Nutshell".  Besides being a very entertaining speaker she makes cooking with your food storage sound so simple.  Simple is her favorite word when it comes to using your food storage.  So I was totally on board when she said she had over 400 simple recipes in her cookbook that used all food storage, shelf stable, ingredients.

 In the cookbook Leslie compares preparing to a squirrel's activity of preparing for winter.  Squirrels are prepared for each season and we can learn from their persistence. Leslie and Lisa start off their book with planning and gathering your food storage.  They even have several pages that you can use to inventory your food storage, and then several pages where you can write down recipes for each meal.  I was impressed with the organization ideas and explanations on how to gather food storage.  If you are just starting out and need a plan, this may be the book for you!  

The cookbook portion of the book has recipes divided into sections.  The first section are recipes using only stored foods, like wheat, oats, etc.  There is even a section on mixes and recipes that use the mixes.  I made the "Fabulous Cornbread" the other night for dinner and it was delicious!  It was moist and had just enough sweetness to it, plus it didn't crumble when we cut it.  The other chapters include breads, salads soups, main dishes, side dishes, desserts, cookies, and drinks.  I can't wait to make dinner this week. I am going to try a few recipes and because they are so simple to put together I know they will work perfectly for our busy nights.  Tonight I am going to make the Black Bean Ragout over Polenta and Peanut Butter Muffins.  The ragout sounds really fancy, but the instructions are only four lines long!!

  Update after dinner:

Mixed reviews on the black bean ragout-mostly good though.  It needed more spices. Surprisingly my husband loved it!

Peanut Butter Muffins were a hit!!!

Leslie says "With a pool of good recipes, if you eat food storage meals 2 days a week...you can rotate a whole year's supply of food in just 3 1/2 years!!"  And with how yummy her recipes sound, I can image eating complete food storage meals more than 2 days a week. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has bags of wheat, oats, rice, and beans and has no idea what to do with them, or you just want some new ideas to use your food storage.  I am always on the lookout for new recipes and this book has tons of them!