Peaches

I love peaches and I usually freeze or can mine. My tree will be ready toward the end of September and if you would like to learn how to can or freeze peaches, comment on this post and I'll set up a time to demonstrate it. I also have a friend who has access to grapes and apples and I will be making grape juice, frozen apples, and apple sauce. This is a fun time of year and I would love to know if anyone else has access to large quantities of produce that needs to be preserved. Comment away!

Storing the "right kind" of food

I was changing my car battery yesterday and I noticed the cavity around my battery filled with rice, wheat, and D-con (rodent poison). Apparently the mice in our house have caught the vision of food storage! I've thought about this in regards to what we store. Are we storing the "right" kind of food for our family. We don't want to be like the poor mouse who was storing the very thing that was killing him. So, what is the "right" kind of food?
1. Food that your family eats. Don't store food that you have no intention of ever trying to incorporate into your diet - except of an emergency. If you suddenly try to eat only wheat and beans, your body will revolt and it may very well kill you. Your body would not be able to absorb the nutrients from these amazing foods unless you have incorporated them into your normal diet over a period of time. Now, this is not an excuse not to store these items - just a warning to make them a part of your diet now!

2. A balanced diet full of various nutrients. You have heard the saying, "Man cannot live on bread alone" - well this is true in more than just the spiritual meaning. You would not thrive and would be susceptible to various illnesses if your "emergency" diet lacked a variety of nutrients. Make sure you are storing those items that add color and nutrition to your diet. Also - it doesn't help much if you store wheat but none of the other ingredients for what you want to use the wheat for. Research recipes and make sure you have all of the ingredients.

3. Comfort foods. As I have written before, most likely the need to use your food storage will not come in the form of a major earthquake. It may be a prolonged illness in the family that makes getting to the store difficult, it may be employment issues that makes budgets extremely tight, it may come in the form of a drought halfway around the world that kills off a major crop and spirals the price of certain staples out of control. Whatever the cause, you will want to make your meal times a time of comfort and peace for your family. Store ingredients for a family favorite, desserts, or those foods that help in the time of illness. Having those types of things in your storehouse will take that stress away from an already stressful situation.

4. Rotate Foods. I've learned the hard way that chips, oils, shortenings, etc. don't store forever. Things can go rancid if they have any oil in them. (You will know this has happened when you open the bag of beloved chips and the smell of paint thinner over comes you.) Also, canned foods do have a shelf live and the product can begin eating through the cans after an extended period of time. If you can your own foods, make sure you have canned the foods correctly and that the date is labeled on the jar. Eat what you store - it is a pity to invest so much money into food just to have to throw it away from not using it.

Don't be like my poor mouse friend, storing up poison for his future. The beauty of your food storage is that it is yours. Make your storehouse full of the good food that your family loves!

Cannery opportunity

I just wanted to let everyone know about this great opportunity - please make sure you take advantage of this!

Below is a note from our Stake Family Preparedness specialist - it emphasizes the importance of being prepared at all times - I remember a few years ago when grain and rice went sky high. Being a little emotional in my preparation, I "stocked up" for fear of prices going even higher. Looking back (after prices fell in HALF!) I should have just been consistent in my supply, regardless of the world market. Lesson learned, right??? So, as you read the information below, keep in mind that this may be a good time, financially speaking, to "catch up" on where you are lacking in your storage, before prices escalate - but don't over do it! :)

Tuesday - August 17, 2010 - 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

Since Russia has imposed an export ban (from August 15 until Dec 31) imposed because of the shortage of grain due to drought and the fires in that country, other countries are quickly buying up commodities. It seems the stability of the world food supply cost to the consumer could go either way depending much on the weather. So far our Family Home Storage Center products pricing has not changed since January. However it is thought that due to the probable shortage of grain that the prices of food overall will increase this fall. I still feel that the price of wheat, for instance, is still a very good buy at the Sandy Store Dry Pack Center. We should encourage our Ward members to continually rotate and replentish their 90 day and long term (1 year) supply of food. Do let them know that if they cannot make the 9 to 1:00 p.m. time slot on Tuesday 17th they can take their chances at the Dry Pack Cannery by walking in any time when they are open; to can and purchase. Sometimes cans that have been filled by previous groups will be on the shelf and can be purchased. I walked in yesterday and purchased dried apples and quick oatmeal.

Recipes...

Thanks so much to everyone who gave positive feedback on the food storage items we sampled today! It is good to know that I'm not too wierd in my food tastes!

Brownies in a Pinch

1 box brownie mix
1 can of black beans
Chocolate chips

You can either puree the beans (juice and all) or rinse the beans and then fill the can with the beans in it with new water and puree that. Add the pureed beans to the brownie mix, mix in about 1 cup or so of chocoate chips, and follow the directions for baking.

Benefits: An excellent way to get more fiber into your families diet without them knowing. Also, since eggs and oil are hard to store - this is a perfect way to make brownies any time reguardless of your "fresh" storage items.

AMAZING Hummus
I got this recipee from the cookbook that I got with my Blend Tec Blender:

1 can of Chickpeas (Garbanzo beans) - I've used the equivalent of reconstituted and sprouted dried chickpeas with more water added
1 clove of garlic
1/2 cup sesame seeds
2-3 TBS olive oil
Add ins - fresh basil, roasted red peppers, pickled artichokes, ect.

Place all items in a blender and blend to desired consistency. You may need to add more water and/or olive oil to have enough liquid to continue blending.

We use this as a spread on crackers, a vegetable dip, a spread on sandwiches and wraps (in place of mayo)

Powdered Milk Yogurt
2 quarts of powdered milk made up (I use warm water to make it) - for thicker yogurt, add more powder to the water than it calls for (mine calls for 3/4 cup per quart of water, I add about 1 cup powder per quart of water for the yogurt)
1/4 cup of plain yogurt with active cultures

I fill a thermos with hot water and set aside. I make up the powdered milk, add the yogurt and gently mix it. I pour the hot water out of the thermos and then pour the milk/yogurt into the thermos. I put the lid on and let it sit out on the counter over night. In the morning you can put the yogurt into the fridge. I mixed mine with homemade strawberry freezer jam - the sky is the limit on the flavors you can create!

Enjoy!

The prophet said to plant a garden...

How many of you remember that primary song? I used to love to sing it! Well, in the spirit of trying to learn new (and yet old) skills I attempted a garden this year. I've always used the excuse that I was pregnant or had young babies so tending to a garden was not possible. With my youngest 2 1/2 now, I figure I don't have an excuse anymore. Leave it to me to pick a year with absolutely horrible gardening weather (Hello, snow in JUNE???), and mix in a lack of soil knowledge (and well just a basic lack of any green thumb) - and well - it has been a learning adventure.

The first thing I learned is that you can plant many plants/seeds early in the spring. Things such as lettuces, broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, peas, and beets can be planted in EARLY spring. If you wait, some of these plants will wilt and die in the heat (see my front yard if you are wondering...) I was really sad that I missed the window for spinach - but I can plant again in the late summer/early fall and have another window for these cool weather plants.

I learned that broccoli "bolts" or sends up its shoot of broccoli, fans out and goes to flower when it gets too hot. You can try to avoid this by keeping the soil cool (watering it frequently) during a hot spell.

I learned that my soil is very sandy and doesn't hold water very well. It defiately qualifies as "well drained" but I can't skip a day of watering my tomatoes even though they supposidly only like to be watered every few days. I also started a compost pile up in my wild hillside so that hopefully next year I'll have some nutrient rich compost to add to my soil. I'm not a huge fan of fertilizers and pesticides so I'm trying to figure out this the al natural way!

I learned that a trumpet vine attracts hummingbirds and wasps. Wasps don't eat nectar, they eat tiny bugs. Hummingbirds are VERY territorial and they guard their territory from other birds. By having this HUGE vine right by my peach tree, the hummingbirds take care of the birds that may want to eat my peaches and the wasps take care of the bugs - my peaches have been perfect and bug free (now if the frost didn't kill off 1/2 of my blossoms, we would be in good shape).

I had to replant all of my peas, carrots, and onions after the unusually cold weather we had - they just didn't germinate.

I still need to learn why people think tomatoes are so easy - mine have yet to ripen and look "healthy" but I did see some new growth today, so maybe we are finally on our way. I still need to figure out why none of my pea plants have produced a pea - I'm guessing that the deer eating the tops off of all of them is not a good thing. I've got some cantalope plants and pepper plants that aren't dead but arent' growning - I'm not sure I understand that at all - my tomatoes did that last year.

Now, for using what I am growing... I learned that you can use beet greens just like any other salad greens - and then you have the beets also. You can let carrots "winter over" in the ground and pick them in the spring - so you only have to pick what you are going to use. Onions are the same, I believe. I hope to freeze a lot of what I grow - it just tastes better that way (did you know that if you are making smoothies with greens, you can freeze your spinach and other greens - even those huge costco bags - and use them that way - your greens never need to go bad again.) I planted some zucchini - I figured this would produce something, right??? You can shred it up into a chocolate cake and it is YUMMY! I was hoping to can some tomatoes - but so far it isn't looking like a bumper crop. We ate the strawberries as we picked them. We will freeze or can our peaches. We didn't get any apricots this year (stupid weather). Our pumpkin plant will hopefully provide our jack-o-lanterns this year. There are a few other straggling plants that I'm waiting to see if they will produce.

One of my tomato plants - I bought it HUGE from Craig Fisher who started them from seed - I'm sure his look much better than mine do!

This is right behind my house (we only have 15 feet from our door to our rock wall. We are trying to make the most of every inch of space!) Here I have several tomato plants, a lavendar plant (have you ever had lavendar lemonade or lavendar sugar cookies??), cucumber seedlings and a couple of pepper plants that aren't doing much. There is also an apple tree in the background that did NOTHING this year - stupid weather.

This is carrots, onions, peas, and a huge pumpkin plant.

Some of our carrots are next to our stawberries

This is our strawberry patch.

This is Korabi (I have no idea - I'll let you know what it is and how it tastes :) ), cauliflower, broccoli, and some more tomatoes. The cauliflower doesn't look great and the broccoli keeps bolting.

This is our peach tree with the zuccini plant under it and tomatoes next to it. The trumpet vine is just to the left of the picture (I don't think you can see it)

This is down at the other end of the yard. This is our apricot tree that has no fruit on it this year, a couple of basil plants and some raspberries that aren't doing very well this year...

Interspersed, we also have some grape vines that aren't doing much, another apple tree, 2 cherry trees (that produce pit sized bitter fruit) and some various herbs.

Like I said, I'm learning and in a few years, I expect to be much better at this! :)

Food Storage experiments...

In the time that I have been silent on this blog - I have been experimenting with food storage. I got an awesome recipe for yogurt from Cassie Jacobsen and tried using powdered milk - guess what - we couldn't tell the difference!!! Here is the recipe I use:
2 quarts of milk - bring to a boil and then turn off and cool in a sink of ice until it reaches 100 degrees.
1/2 cup or so of plain yogurt (make sure you get plain - not vanilla) - after the first time, just save about 1/2 cup at the end of your yogurt to make more.

When the milk cools to 100 degrees, stir in the yogurt (it does not need to be totally smooth) and then pour into one of those 1/2 gallon thermos jugs. We've had one for years in our camping stuff and NEVER used it. After you fill the jug, screw the lid on and let it sit for about 24 hours on your counter. After that you can put it in the fridge and enjoy.

Cassie does hers in a gallon jug - I use the 1/2 gallon because that is what I already have. You can also pour it into canning jars and then put them in a warmed oven to sit overnight (warmed oven means heat it to about 200 degrees and then turn it off)

But wait - that isn't all! Did you know you can sprout any grain or dry bean you've been storing? Wheat (love the wheat grass, right) tends to like dirt if you want the actual grass. Did you ever wonder how people lived off of just grains??? If you spout them, you now have living plants (i.e. GREENS). To sprout beans, fill a quart jar 1/3 full with the beans and then fill it up with water. Let them soak overnight, drain the water, rinse the beans, and then turn the jar on its side. Every time you walk past it, turn the jar a little. The next day, rinse the beans again and then continue to turn the jar on its side. You shouldn't need to turn it after that and within a few days you'll see the sprouts. You can then use them in salads, eat them plain as snacks, ect. For a lid, I use a piece of cheese cloth held on by a canning ring.

Finally, I've been continuing to make my own bread (and loving not having to go to the store for something so simple.) Instead of copying the recipe down hear, I'll just send you to this great recipe site where I got my recipe. It is really the best recipe I've found and the bread is so light and fluffy you would swear you are eating store bought bread (but it is soooo much better for you). Word of warning though, this recipe makes 4-5 loaves. If you are not going to finish it all within about 4 days, put a few of the loaves in the freezer because without preservatives, it will go bad rather quickly.

Save the date...

The next opportunity to go to the Sandy Home Storage Dry Pack Cannery is:

Thursday, July 8, 2010 - 5:00 P.M. to 9:00 P.M.

This is a great time to gather the family and can food for family home storage. Let us encourage and enthuse our ward members to become prepared for any situation that would find us in need of self reliance. Friends and extended family are welcome to come as well.

For those of you new to food storage, here are some FAQ for you about the Cannery:

1. Can I bring my children? If the children are older than 8 years old, they can help you can. Younger children are not allowed in for safety reasons.

2. Do I have to go during the stake's appointed time? No, you are welcome to stop by anytime during the operational hours - BUT - the stake with the assigned time gets first presidence. To go during our assigned time assures you a spot inside the cannery instead of waiting to see if there is any room.

3. Can I purchase bulk goods? You can purchase bulk goods at the cannery, but it will not have as good of a shelf life if it is not properly stored. You can purchase the cans and oxygen packs and then check out the canner if you would like to can your items at home. This is a good option for those with young children that have a hard time finding sitters. To be honest, though, it is much easier to operate the canners at the cannery and the cans done at the cannery tend to stack better.

If you are interested in checking out a canner and setting it up at the church or someone's home to have multiple people use, let me know and I can arrange that.