By Daisy Luther
Welcome to Foodie Friday, snow day edition!
This feature will be chock-full of all things food related: news, preservation, and delicious real food recipes. As always, I really hope you’ll share your links and ideas in the comments below. As well, we’ll have a question of the week on each Foodie Friday post.
Cookbooks
How are you going to use the ingredients in your food stockpile? If you are new to preparedness or using the pantry principle to save money, check out The Prepper’s Cookbook. It’s loaded with ways to use up your beans and rice, tuna, and dehydrated foods.
Do you have a grain-free kitchen? More and more people are going lower-carb and reducing their consumption of grains. I got Against All Grain: Meals Made Simple for Christmas and I absolutely love it. Since my family is not Paleo, specifically, I adapt the recipes that use alternative milks to use the raw milk I have at my disposal.
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Do you want to prep but you’re not sure how to get started?
We can help. Go on over to Preppers University and check out our Prepping Intensive course. And if you’ve been at this for a while and want to take your preparedness to the next level, check out our 6-Week Advanced Prepping Intensive.
[thrive_link color=’teal’ link=’https://preppersuniversity.com/learn-about-the-prepping-intensive-courses/’ target=’_blank’ size=’big’ align=’aligncenter’]Which Prepping Intensive Course Is Right For Me?[/thrive_link]
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Foodie Friday News
GMO Potatoes will soon be on the market. Unfortunately, it looks like we’ll soon have another genetically modified food to dodge. The USDA and the FDA have put their stamps of approval on a new spud, modified so that it doesn’t brown or bruise. The potato was engineered for use in fast food restaurants and potato chips. Thus far, there is no evidence that these taters are in your local supermarket, but I have little doubt they’ll soon appear in a processed food aisle near you.
Imported shrimp raised on pig feces approved for American consumers. Remember the outcry recently when Congress decided we had no right to know the country of origin for meat sold in American grocery stores? Well, here’s another reason you might want to know where your food is coming from. Just approved for our consumption is a special shrimp from Vietnam. The shrimp are fed a diet of pig poop, then tossed into tubs of ice made from water so dirty that the local government advises consumers to boil it before drinking it. Then, the shrimp are packaged and sent here to us. Bon appetit.
Has your favorite food brand sold out? It seems like there are a million different brands at the grocery store, but the sad fact is, many of the brands you find out there are simply different labels from a handful of parent corporations. Check out this article to see if your favorite brand is part of a conglomeration that may lobby against GMO labeling (because they use GMOs) or have otherwise questionable business ethics.
Food Preservation
What’s better than a piping hot bowl of stew in the winter? You don’t have to get a grocery store can of soup with questionable ingredients to enjoy stew as quickly as you can heat it up in a pot. Learn to can your own, using healthful ingredients you know you can trust. One of our family favorites is home-canned Hungarian Goulash. Check out the easy instructions here. (This recipe is from my book, The Prepper’s Canning Guide.)
Does a big canning marathon seem overwhelming? I love canning but it can be time-consuming, messy, and a whole lot of work! Here are 15 sneaky tricks to make a canning marathon go a lot more smoothly.
Here’s a quick, thrifty way to add shelf stable veggies to your stockpile. Many preparedness pantries are lacking a sufficient supply of vegetables. The freeze-dried ones can be prohibitively expensive. This time of year, many frozen vegetables go on sale at the grocery store, but in a power outage, those would be at risk within a day. The solution? Dehydrate frozen veggies that you pick up at the store. Here’s how.
What to Eat This Week
What should you eat if the power goes out? With a huge storm bearing down on the Eastern United States, it’s a good bet that some folks will lose power. If you don’t have a back-up cooking method, you’re going to want food that you can eat immediately, without the need for cooking. Here’s a list of some of our favorite no-cook foods.
After playing in the snow, warm up with rich homemade hot cocoa. Don’t touch those little packets. Making hot cocoa from scratch only takes a couple of extra steps. This recipe is positively decadent and you probably have all of the ingredients on hand. (You can substitute whatever mik and sugar that you use in your home.)
Or, make fancy coffee. If you’re like me, coffee is your favorite cold weather beverage. But please, skip the unhealthy grocery store creamers. Instead, be your own barista and make one of these 25 tasty and non-toxic homemade creamers.
Have you made homemade noodles yet? If not, you’re totally missing out. Not only are they absolutely delicious, but when you make them yourself, you’re guaranteed to have food with wholesome ingredients. Here’s an easy 4 ingredient recipe with flour and this one is a gluten free recipe without all of the weird gums.
Do you have a bread recipe that uses only food storage ingredients? In the event you can’t get to the store for a while, it’s important to have recipes that use the shelf-stable ingredients that you have on hand. This incredibly easy, mouthwatering artisan bread uses only 5 common pantry ingredients. For diabetics or others who are avoiding grains, here’s a unique and easy grain-free bread recipe – you’ll want to stock up on the supplies to make this one!
It’s a homemade stew kind of weekend. Wherever you happen to be this weekend, it looks like the weather will range anywhere from chilly to downright BRRRR….this simple real food beef stew will provide a comforting and delicious meal to warm you to your little pink toes. Serve it over homemade noodles or with one of the homemade bread recipes above.
Products
Are you looking for a high quality cocoa for your food storage? Look no further. Check out Frontier’s Fair Trade Organic Cocoa Powder.
Got milk? Unless you have a dairy animal, you may want to store some powdered milk for emergencies. Unfortunately much of the dry milk available is from cows treated with hormones and antibiotics, so it’s important to shop carefully. Food for Liberty offers some very high quality options. They offer a certified hormone-free choice as well as a premium organic one, depending on your budget. Both are offered in larger quantities at better prices, too.
Foodie Friday Sound-off: What is your favorite cold-weather meal?
This week’s Foodie Friday question: When the snow flies and the mercury drops, what is your favorite thing to make to warm up your family?
Somehow, an entire dozen muffins vanished at my house during the night, and I’m not sure if it was teenagers or the dog, so it looks like I’ll be doing some more baking in a few minutes. Are you doing some scratch cooking or food preserving this week?
Dish with me in the comments below!
Since I have gas logs and a gas stove, the on and off power situation with this storm hasn’t affected me at all! I have put the chicken and turkey skin and bones I’ve saved up in the freezer into two large cast-iron pots with lots of water (and a splash of white vinegar in each to leach out minerals from the bones) to simmer for 24 hours. Warms up the house and smells wonderful! Tonight I’ll strain the whole lot into a stainless steel pot and put it in the refrigerator. When the fat rises and congeals enough that it won’t run through a slotted spoon, I’ll lift the fat layer off (ick!Wonder if the birds would like this….?), and prepare to pressure can it all. We’ve got a TON of snow here in NW TN, so I may be off work (substitute teacher) into next week, so I’ll have plenty of time to can!
We just discovered Calico Bean Soup. During an on-line search I found a variety of spice combinations. After a small batch for taste testing, I upped the ingredients for canning.
I overnight soaked a cup each of a variety of beans (then added peas and lentils),simmered for a bit, then added our favorite veggies. Then I separated the contents of the big pot into two smaller ones and seasoned each differently. I have a vegetarian chili version of the calico beans with red and hot peppers, and one with Thyme seasoning and ham. 17 quarts, plus what we ate.
A new recipe for us, security on the shelf! We love trying new things.
Beef stew, pinto beans, pot roast, and chili are some of my favorite cold weather meals.
Tonight we are having some canned beef stew. It is Daisy’s recipe and it is delicious! 🙂
This afternoon, we shoveled out the car and the driveway. It took a while, as we have about 18 inches of snow.
Hope this finds everyone safe, warm and fed.
Praying for all of you back East who are being hit with such a storm. We, here, in Northern Nevada are finally getting a break from the snow and rain that has been with us since before Christmas. Just had wind and rain today, with next storm coming in Friday night.
Split Pea soup is my favorite cold, snowy day meal.
Stay safe and stay warm.
Well you can never go wrong with a big pot of stew, but my other favorite dish to heat the family up with is curry. Chicken curry, tuna, beef, rabbit, shrimp, whatever meat I have on hand with whatever veggies I can toss in. I actually just made some up the other night. It included green onions fresh from the garden, which is hilarious since I live in the mountains. If you plant green onions in a raised bed in the spring-summer, by fall they will be mature. Cover the bed with a cloche (mine is just white garden fabric rolled over it) and they will hold all winter long. I had to scrape off three feet of snow from the cloth, but they were still doing just dandy. They don’t grow any more in the winter, but they never seem to die, even when it’s -10˚F out. White Lisbons keep perfectly (lush green tops included), while Red Torpedoes of Florence have their green tops shrivel to uselessness but their red bulb is just fine and absolutely delicious. The celery is also holding up pretty well and was a complete surprise since I planted it exceedingly late in the year.
Many thanks for the head’s up on the potatoes. I wasn’t planning on planting them this year but I guess I’ll have to work them in somehow. It’ll be a trick and a half since the ground is so terrible up here. Still, some is better than none.