Wednesday, June 12, 2013

The All American Sun Oven Newsletter- June Edition

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The Global Sun Oven company sends out a free newsletter once a month entitled, Every Needful Thing.  It is full of emergency prep information along with Sun Oven tips and tricks, and of course, Sun Oven recipes.  In the June newsletter I found this tip too good to not share.  


 Use your Sun Oven as a wonderbox cooker!!!!

From the June issue of Every Needful Thing....
Use Your Sun Oven® as a Food Wonder Box
Sometimes the best laid plans, like cooking in your Sun Oven®, get messed up. We
were all set to bake pork chops in our Sun Oven®. The oven had been preheated to
250 degrees on a partly sunny day. Previously skillet browned chops, placed in a
graniteware pan over sliced, raw sweet potatoes, were on their way to the oven when
we noticed that our partly sunny day had become a much less sunny day. We put the
chops in the Sun Oven®, left it for about an hour, checking from time to time. The
weather deteriorated, so we closed the oven reflector and took it inside, leaving it
closed until dinner time. When opened, the potatoes were soft and the chops were
“melt in your-mouth” tender. What a concept-use your SunOven® as a wonder box.
A Wonder Box is a heat retention cooker. Once you heat your food to boiling,
place it in the insulated cooker. It will keep your food at cooking temperature for
hours. This can be done with gas cookers outside as well as starting food on your
stovetop. The other night, we prepared old fashioned oatmeal and cracked barley in
coconut milk for breakfast, just bringing it to a boil. Into the Sun Oven® it went.
Next morning all we had to do was add some warm milk, stir and eat.



I thought this was a great idea for all those cloudy days.  I don't know if this happens to anyone else, but whenever I set out my Sun Oven, the clouds roll in.  Now I have a back up plan if this happens again!!  For all other questions and for a great collection of Sun Oven recipes check out their website HERE!

Friday, June 7, 2013

Food Storage In A Bottle

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While shopping the other day I noticed these 3L water bottles.  

 What is so cool about them is they stack!!!


They would work great for storing dry goods, beans, rice, wheat, etc.  Throw in a oxygen packet and they are good to go!

This is a view of the bottom to show you how they stack.  They are 3 liter bottles and they were only $1 at Walmart.  I also saw them for $.78 at my local grocery store.  Totally affordable and then you are also only drinking water to empty the water bottle and not soda!! I am always asking family for their soda bottles because I don't want to drink the soda or pour it out.  I haven't blogged for awhile, life has been CRAZY, and when I saw these I had to post about them.  They are a great idea for water storage, but also for dry goods and I was so excited.  (doesn't take much does it :)

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

"Soup In A Bag" Review

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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.   

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Thrive Life Butter Powder

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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.

Monday, April 29, 2013

Prepare Today Homemade: Oatmeal Pancake Mix

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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.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

The Great Utah Shakeout 2013!

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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.  

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

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

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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


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