Cooking From Scratch

One of my friends asked "Can you tell me when you have time if you make things from scratch every night or freeze stuff and heat up? Is it cheaper?"

Well, I almost never have time, but I'll take the time anyway to answer this important question. How is cooking from scratch important to home food storage? Besides being cheaper and thus insuring that you have some extra coin to get a reserve going, it's healthier for you and it will help you eliminate waste and spoilage through rotation.

Yes, I cook from scratch almost every night. When I am not struggling with organization, I also freeze stuff and heat up...but not in the "make a casserole and freeze it" sort of way. What I like doing is buying my meats and immediately upon getting home, I separate them into bags, plop in some kind of marinade (from scratch-hardly ever use bottled stuff) and THEN freeze. To use, I simply remove a bag of marinated goodness from the freezer in the morning, set it on the counter (I know, I'm bad) and then grill or bake for dinner. Add a can of veggies and maybe some potatoes or rice and that's it. Now, being the busy and lazy person that I am, I have to qualify this some: I prefer to do this every time I go to the store, but have to admit I sometimes get lazy on the front end and pay for it when I wish I had something fast to throw together. But I still force myself to defrost something and cook from scratch, why? The answer is simple: economics. We'd have starved to death long ago if I was trying to buy mixes and boxes. Here are some recipes in my personal collection that I use for marinades:

Orange Glazed Chicken
Honey Glazed Dump Chicken
Caribbean Dump Chicken
Spiced Citrus Dump Chicken
Herb Wine Dump Chicken
Oriental Chicken

When I have a little extra time, these Stuffed Chicken Cutlets are divine and perfect for individual freezing on a jelly roll pan, then pop the frozen bundles into a big Ziplock for one at a time dispensing.

Yes, I know. We eat a lot of chicken. But we also eat pork when it goes on sale and these recipe's all work well on pork. Marinades are easy! Sometimes, I just start dumping things in. I buy bags of lemons and limes at Sam's and I just go crazy with the spices and oils. Anything you marinade this way will turn out really well because it gets to really penetrate the food since it gets to be in contact with it for so long! I also sear the outsides of roasts and add in my braising liquid prior to freezing for positively delectable pot roasts!

I ALWAYS try to buy in bulk, it's cheaper in the long run, helps us eat healthier foods, and I always have something on hand...somewhere, which means fewer trips to the store. It's a proven fact of marketing that the more time you spend in a store, the more money you spend at the store. I get a whole lot of mileage out of my Sam's Club card and I also frequent a store that sells overstock merchandise and things that are nearing expiration. I can buy 10 yogurt cups for a dollar. I can buy 3 boxes of Bunny Grahams (Annie's Organic) for $1. (reg $3 each) I can buy ground beef for .99 a pound and my kids and I were just thrilled when I got packages of Cheese Dogs for $1 each. The thing with the meats is that they are usually frozen and hamburger is in a 5-7 pound chub. Here are some recipes to use for ground beef:

Salisbury Steak but I make meatballs, then cook, add gravy and freeze.
Mini Meatloaves Again, individual freeze and reheat.
And of course, I usually keep a big bag of frozen ground beef on hand that has been browned with onion, garlic, salt and pepper. It is a perfect start to about 101 different casseroles, burritos, sloppy joes, and even as a mix in for that wonderful standby: Mac and Cheese.

Now, this is where lots of people start needing to breath into a paper sack, cooking from scratch every night is a lifestyle change. For most, this change will occur gradually as you build your food storage program, so if you are smacking down McD's 3 times a week and Hamburger Helper is your BFF, I want you to consider why you are in this habit. Is it because you simply have nothing on hand and are too tired to make stuff to eat when you get home? Would it help you to have something to serve on short notice, even if you had to micro-defrost it? Would it make you feel less guilt to have something decent to eat without a trip to the store or a drive-thru? I will guarantee that with a small investment of time each week, you can free yourself from pre-packaged, sodium laden boxes and Fat Food Drive-Thru non-food FOREVER. You will feel better, you will look better, and you will be richer...or at least, less poor. ;O)

With just a bit of planning, you can have at least 6 different chicken varieties on hand with only about 30 min invested. Here's what you do: make up several marinades in advance. Put them in gallon size Ziplock bags. Go to the grocery store. Buy several packages of chicken, thighs and legs, breasts, whatever is on sale...and if it's marked down for quick sale...even better. When you get home, open up chicken packages, rinse off the meat, remove skin (or not), and then put as many pieces as it takes to feed your family into each Ziplock. Smoosh the Ziplocks around some, (or employ a three year old to help you carry them to the freezer) and pop them in the freezer. You're done. You just cooked dinner for at least 6 nights. In UNDER 30 minutes (not including shopping time). I know it's technically not "cooked" but it will be, most chicken cuts cook very fast, and truthfully, many of these cook up just great in the crock pot too! Plus, you'll be looking forward to trying your creations instead of groaning about having to come up with something for dinner. And the next time you make something, make a double batch: freeze one, serve one. With a little time and discipline, you will be eating better and cheaper than you ever thought possible and building your food storage AT THE SAME TIME!!! YEAHY!

Stay tuned for a post later this week on canning meats and soups! I have two bottles of chicken (surprise! lol), a bottle of ground beef and two quarts of chicken soup...and I took pictures and video as I went so you can join in the fun! Until then, happy storing.

Stop Planning and Start Buying

By now, you should have a list of stuff you need to purchase. Do you feel better knowing that you have officially started your food storage program? If you don't have your list, go to Step by Step over there in the sidebar and start reading! Today, I was approached by someone who was anxious to get some more food storage done and after a short talk, we decided running out and putting up #10 cans probably wasn't the place to start for her. You can obsess over many things in life, but please, don't obsess over what to buy first for your food storage! Find a sale? Stock up! You now have your list so you know EXACTLY what and how many you need! Keep your master list with you at all times so you can refer to it when you see green beans on sale for .33 cents a can!

I don't personally subscribe to the idea of trying to prioritize my purchasing with any real precision. Some do. Whatever works for you. I'm more likely to buy in "chunks" with a set amount of money each month, but I'm also likely to spend my regular grocery money if something great comes along and then just eat out of the freezer and pantry for a couple weeks. Special purchases like a 5 gallon bucket of honey or a bag of powdered milk are not things on my regular shopping list, but they do need to be re-stocked periodically. The main thing to remember is that you are going to be spending more on your food bill than usual for a while. Make friends with that idea and you'll be OK. Once you have stocked up, you'll be able to cut back again, and you may find, as I have, eating simpler, whole foods is much less expensive and very much worth your time in preparing dishes from scratch. I have a friend who's much too modest to admit, but I'm fairly certain she's paid off her mortgage this past year, in part due to her commitment to not eating out and eating simple foods prepared at home.

Your best friend in storing food is your Sharpie marker. Go ahead and put that on your list. Any large batches of stuff you buy needs to be dated with the Sharpie. Just write on there somewhere. Month and year. That's it. Well, OK, you can put a smiley face if you want. Wendy Dewitt outlines her method for rotating and purchasing. It is as sound as any I've seen for a food storage that is kept separate from the family pantry. Basically, food is kept under the beds, and twice a year, she consults her list, looks for stuff that is coming due for shelf life, takes that item out of storage (like her boxes of cereal, she takes them out once a year) puts it in the pantry for use and replaces it with fresh stuff. It's simple and effective. If you are doing the traditional method, you need to make certain that you are eating at home! If you do that, your food storage will stay fresh. If not, you may be looking at giving some away if you can't use it before it goes stale. The only thing I've had go bad in food storage is a can of potato pearls that got forgotten and a couple bags of beans...and I'm not sure those were bad or if I'm just traumatized by my mom's pork and beans and all beans just taste bad to me as a result. I inherited the beans. Totally not my fault. (Long story short, mom made a huge pot of beans once in a while and that's all you got to eat for a month. OK, a week, but it seemed like a month. Ketchup doesn't help. No matter what she and grandpa said.)

It's late and I'm tired. I'll have a new installment or two this next week...provided calculus doesn't kill me off. I'll even add a link or two for you to check out. Namely a link to someone who figured out how to amass a food storage for $5 a week per person. Now there's someone with a plan. And a lot of extra time on her hands. Thank goodness for good people like her, right?

Again With The Planning

A big thank you to those who attended tonights boot camp! It makes me feel all warm and cozy inside to think that 5 more families will have food in their tummies if worst comes to worst.

Since you've found your way here, go ahead and look around, much of what we covered tonight is in the previous posts...they are in reverse order in case you aren't familiar with how blogs work. Since our group all decided Wendy Dewitt demystified things for them, your homework is to write out your menu plans and do your calculations. If you click on Wendy's name there, you will be taken to her information. If you go to pages 19 and 20, she gives you 4 breakfasts and 7 dinners, all family friendly, all food storage friendly, and already calculated out for a year. I assigned you to do 14 if you could, but if you just want to do 7 menus, the work is ALREADY DONE FOR YOU!!! How easy is that?! If you want to use some of these items for your menu's, you now have a great time saver. If you want more ideas, look on page 21. Don't forget, if you are doing 14 menu's, you can cut down Wendy's amounts by half.

Also, for information on your bread, look on page 9, she's already done the math for you. We've had a little heart to heart chat about wheat, and for my readers who didn't have the benefit of that discussion, you should know that you CAN have food storage and not store raw wheat. Your food storage plan can evolve over time, and for many people, the idea of learning to use traditional food storage items like wheat makes the process overwhelming enough that they put off starting at all. With that in mind, I'm giving you permission to spend your precious food storage money on nutritionally worthless white flour. Why would I suggest such a thing? Well, in addition to the fact that I love being a rule breaker, if you don't have a mill, you can't turn raw wheat into flour for bread anyway. Also, I'm betting we can add enough other grains to plain old white flour to make a reasonably healthy loaf of bread and delay purchasing a mill until you have enough to get you by for a year. One side note to the white flour thing: I wouldn't recommend buying wheat flour to store in place of white. Why? It's more expensive, and all the extra nutrients you get from the whole wheat start to disappear within about a week of the grain being milled into flour. You can slow the process by refrigerating or freezing, but you don't know how old the flour is to begin with and IMO, it just isn't worth the extra expense and is WORSE for storage than white flour because it will also go rancid due to the natural oils in the grain. So just go ahead and buy white flour and I'll make a special post with some information on grains we can add to that flour to up the nutritional value.

Plan Your Work: Part 3

Are you overwhelmed yet? I hope not. Usually, taking that first step of seeing what you have and then getting an idea of what you need is the worst. It gets better from there.

Today we're going to talk about equipment and miscellaneous stuff you might need for your food storage plan. Notice how I said "might". What we need to do is look at your plan so far and see if you are going to need anything special to make your plan work. Then you can examine these things and see if they are things you are able and willing to spend your dollars on right now or if you should adjust your plan a little and delay purchasing equipment in favor of buying more food right now.

If you've chosen the Dewitt plan, you need to look at making sure you have can openers, and cooking equipment...like pots and pans. If you have kept your menu's simple, you really don't need a whole lot of specialized equipment for this method. That's the beauty of this plan, you have to spend more time planning, but it is very straightforward to implement. Wendy's method usually calls for some canned meats, which can be purchased but do tend to be a bit pricey. Here's where we come to one of those food storage decisions we all have to make. Do you just suck it up and plop down the bucks on some canned meats, or do you invest some time and money into learning how to can come meats on your own? Maybe a good compromise might be to buy the meats for now, and after you have amassed enough to get you by for at least 6 months, you could buy a pressure canner and start doing some on your own. My only caution is to make sure you don't put off storing these items because you "are going to learn to can" but then get overwhelmed by that process and avoid doing it at all! If you are going to go with Wendy's plan, I would suggest that you put a pressure canner, a dutch oven and maybe a solar oven on your radar...you don't have to rush out and buy these things before you get storing, but you should at least keep them in mind.

Some things about this equipment: you will be looking for a pressure canner not a pressure cooker, the canner will have a gauge and it will not have a rubber or plastic seal. You may find one at a garage sale or on e-bay. If you buy a used canner, you will need to take it to your Agricultural Extension office and have the gauge tested/calibrated. You may also find a used dutch oven somewhere. If you come across one with some rust, you may be able to clean it with a paste of salt and oil if the rust hasn't gone too deep into the metal. You can check out solar ovens here and here, and there are several sites out there that show you plans to build one, like here, here and even a version simple enough for kids here.

Now, if you are on the "Grocery Store in your House" plan, you may need a few more things for your food storage. Like a freezer. I'd die without my freezer. And since my freezer will die without electricity, a generator. A generator moves food storage and self-sufficiency to a whole new level. It opens up options for comfort and normalcy, but it also creates the need to store fuel to run the contraption. Again, another food storage decision. With planning, you can certainly do without a freezer and generator, but if you are willing to lay out the bucks, they can sure make life nice. Keep in mind, a freezer doesn't have to run constantly, so a few hours of running the generator each day can meet your survival needs.

Another piece of equipment you will need to purchase is a grain mill. While you can do food storage without storing raw wheat, wheat is nice because of its incredibly long shelf life, superior nutrition and versatility in a food storage program. A simple blender will grind up enough wheat to make some pancakes or bulger cereal, but if you'd like to make bread, (and who doesn't love a little warm yeast bread in their survival diet?)you need to buy a decent mill. Again, you have to decide on electric or manual or both and in what order you need to make these purchases so that they don't break your bank. As for what type to buy, having recently purchased my own, I'd recommend the Nutra-Mill if you get an electric, and the Country Living Mill if you go manual. I've also had the Kitchen Aid attachment and while slow, it worked well also.

Since I'm under time constraints today and this is a whole lot of information to process, we'll take a break here. You don't have to decide on what you are going to buy this exact moment, but just be thinking about these purchases and how they fit in with the plan you are formulating. All I'm saying is: If you don't have a mill, you may want to store some flour in addition to your wheat. If you don't have a freezer AND a generator, you might hold off on buying a side of beef...got it? Great! See you tomorrow!

Plan Your Work: Part 2

Got your list? Good. See? It wasn't that bad. The next step is actually a fork in the road and you have to decide what fits your style the best.

If you are going to plan each meal and emulate Wendy Dewitt, you need to sit down and write out 14 breakfast, lunch and dinner menu's. Now, before you go including all your fancy company dishes, I want you to remember to think SIMPLE. You may be cooking over a camp stove. Like spaghetti? Can of sauce+handful of noodles+maybe some cheese and a nice loaf of bread= perfect food storage fare. Look at Wendy's recipe's for ideas but KEEP IT SIMPLE. If you can only bring yourself to think of 7 menus, do 7. So what if you end up eating spaghetti once a week for a year? We are talking SURVIVAL here people! You don't have my permission to get any fancier than 14 different menus until you have enough to survive for ONE YEAR. If you just know you would not like living this way, you must pick the other method. Once you have your menus, you must write down what you need to prepare each dish on those menus. Then you must take a break, prop your feet up and eat some chocolate. No more for you today. Tomorrow, you can multiply everything out by 26, create a master list of what you need, and see how what you have fits into that.

If you are going to create an in home grocery store, you must go run the calculator, you must print it out, and you must write down what you do have that will count toward your needs. And then you can take a break. And eat some chocolate. And ponder what a domestic goddess you are for taking the biggest, hardest step in beginning your food storage. It's all downhill coasting from here.

Plan Your Work: Part One

If you're ready to get more serious about food storage than just buying extra stuff all willy-nilly, I'll give you a place to start. But if you feel yourself getting overwhelmed, promise me you'll just go buy an extra case of green beans and try again another time...OK?

I like lists.

In order to have a list, you have to make a list. Clear as mud? Great!

There are a couple of ways to approach this. You can plan every meal down to the last teaspoon of salt that you'll need like Wendy Dewitt, or you can create an in home grocery store. Most people I know do something somewhere in between. No matter what you do, you need to know what you are starting with. You need to do an inventory of what you have on hand. Go count up your cans, write down what you have in the freezer, leave no stone un-turned. Count it all and make a list. It doesn't have to be fancy. You can DO it!

Don't Do As I Do...

So, now that you know all about my buggy bag o' wheat, I'll let you in on another secret. I have a couple hundred pounds of wheat, rice and beans in my bedroom. Romantic, huh? Some of it is still in the original paper bags. I just realized it's been there about a year now. I probably ought to get on "improving" that situation. I promised you when I started this blog that I would reveal to you all the things I do that break the food storage rules. So in the interest of keepin' it real, I will share with you the fact that I put my bulk dry foods in plastic 5 gallon buckets recycled from Wal-mart's bakery. Yep. They are food grade plastic, I wash and dry them well, they each hold about 35 pounds of whatever I put in there and best of all, they were free. Food Storage Natzi's will tell you that the only way to store wheat properly is to put it in cans, or buy it from someplace like Walton's in a mylar Super Pail. And goody for them. I'm doing the best I can over here, and it's way better than nothing at all. For sure there are a few things I will go to the extra expense and effort to put in cans and sealed Super Pails, powdered milk, dehydrated vegetables and pricier stuff like that, but the cheap stuff that has already had Mother Nature all over it, it's going in the buckets.

The Ugly Truth

I'm here to tell you that I inherited about a hundred pounds of wheat that had been stored in plastic garbage bags inside a clean plastic garbage can for over 15 years. We kept it from getting wet, but that's about it. It was stored in several garages and sheds, in both hot and cold extremes. Basically, this wheat was just stored "all wrong". Short of storing it on the garage floor in nothing but the paper bag, we couldn't have stored it any worse. When I finally cracked open the container, there was one bag that had been open and partially used. It had some funky looking little critters in it. The other bag is good as new. I didn't have to sift out any bugs, it tastes fine and hasn't killed anyone! If I were truly hungry, you bet your left ear I'd do my best to sift the critters out of that partial bag, grind it up, and make up some bread! And as bad as it may sound, I'll probably hang on to this partial bag too. If I were ever in a tight spot, I might still be able to sprout it, plant it or give it to my chickens.

What people don't understand is that if you are truly hungry, you will do anything, and I mean anything to provide for your family. If you didn't store any food, and you showed up at my house and all I could give was this poor, improperly stored, buggy bag of wheat, you'd spend all day picking the bugs out so you could eat it. It would keep you from having to lie, cheat or steal just to feed your children for one more day, and you'd be glad to have it. I'll let you in on a little secret: We've grown fat and lazy in our land of plenty. We have grown disconnected from the agricultural process. The idea of eating anything that touched dirt or has bugs in it sounds icky and not at all OK. But guess what? The things you eat started their lives outside, and Mother Nature? She got ALL OVER THEM! Yep. Your food doesn't grow or get harvested in a sterile environment. But listen, if you are in a position of having to spend your days figuring out how to procure your next meal, you'll have plenty of time to pick bugs out of your wheat if you didn't do a perfect job of storing it. In history, people have literally eaten their own shoes in an effort to survive. Start storing some food! You can get to the details of storing it well as you go. Don't let your own perfectionism, or worse, someone else's perfectionism, keep you from doing what you can do.

Start Simply and Simply Start

The thing I hear the most often from people who want to start a home food storage program is that they don't know where to start. Somewhere along the way, we've turned food storage into a mystical process that is nothing short of intimidating...Oooops. Not at all what we need to be doing. What you need to do is bookmark this site and come back every day. I'm going to give this to you in manageable bites. I'm going to do my level best to build your confidence.

I'm here to assure you that food storage is a simple thing. Like anything else, we can improve on how we do it, but the basic truth of food storage is that anyone can and should do it, and no matter what anyone tries to tell you, imperfect food storage is still food storage. Worried about how to store water? Start by washing out old milk jugs, filling them with water and sticking them aside somewhere. Yes, I know this suggestion will make die hard preparedness experts cringe, but if it comes right down to it, you've got a bit of water. Worried about where to start? How about watching for sales on canned goods and buying a case or two when you see things on sale? You can START a food storage program without any lists or fancy calculators. Anything you've bought and put aside will be a blessing to your family if you are trying to survive. Any effort you put into this will build your confidence, get you in the habit of storing and thinking about storage.

Keep in mind, we live in a litigious society. Some of this has crept into food storage. Many times manufacturers and "advice givers" tell you stuff to be on the safe side, you shouldn't ignore their warnings and advice, but you should keep in mind that they may be telling you stuff just to cover their fannies. I'll tell you what I do, you use your own judgment and decide what you want to do. Many people are absolutely militant about storage procedures, and goody for them. You'll have no trouble finding out how to do everything the "right" way. But I'm all about diving in and getting started. If all you have to store your wheat in is plastic garbage cans, wrap the paper bags up in plastic garbage bags and store your wheat in plastic garbage cans. You'll see eyes bulging from their sockets and snarky comments from some, but WHO CARES? You're one step ahead of those who have nothing and you can improve as you go. My mantra is the only "wrong" way to do food storage is to neglect doing it at all.