To My Followers

I'm so sorry to all you out there that followed me for my food storage, dehydrating, canning and other information!! It's just been so crazy getting settled down and the apartment is so small that I don't have room to do any of my exciting things! But I will say that we've eaten a lot of Dinner in a Jar meals as well as am mainly cooking with food storage, and it's been going pretty well. I think the only complaint I've had so far is that I left my white flour open in it's #10 can for too long and it got a little old. So the cookies I made with it are edible, but they aren't my favorite. I also baked these said cookies with homemade dried eggs and I think the next time I do it, I will water down the eggs first and then add them.

Hmm...so for the most part cooking with food storage hasn't been too much of an issue. It's tough not having meat...well, we have chicken and elk, but a nice slab of steak would be GREAT. But we can't grocery shop except for the fresh things like fruits and veggies, so we are basically food storage 99% of the time. We've got our butter stored in the freezer along with the cheese, so we don't have to shop for that for a while. The bread has been bought from the outlet store, which costs us 88 cents instead of $4, but I can make bread now that I have the recipe for my "quick mix" so that's going to save us 88 cents a loaf. I think the only problem I have with food storage cooking is that all my recipe books are still in storage, and it's hard to think up tons of different recipes!! But here's some meals I've cooked so far.

Couscous with mixed vegetables and mushrooms.... The mixed vegetables were dehydrated by yours truely, as were the mushrooms. I warmed up 1 1/2 cups water on the stove with chicken bouillon, and added 1 cup of couscous. Oops...I forgot to tell you about the veggies. I just soak those in boiling water (which comes out of our faucet!!) and then add them once I add the couscous (same with the mushrooms). Then it just sits there and expands and tada! Dinner!

Rice and chicken Dinner in a jar. The only problem with this is that the recipe asked for too much salt, and so other than that, it was good. And the chicken was self preserved (canned) and so it broke apart REALLY easily, so I think that fresh chicken would be better for this. But for our situation, it was alright.

Chicken soup with Vegetables. Pretty much like the couscous recipe. Chicken bouillon in water till it disappears, then canned chicken, mixed veggies and noodles. This one was pretty good once I spiced it up :)

We also had my self made/canned chicken soup. No noodles, but it was AWESOME. Brad said it was pretty spicy, so next time I might add less chili powder.

Biscuits and gravy...this one didn't turn out, but it was all operator error! My head was in the clouds while I was rolling out the biscuits, and instead of 1/2 inch thick they were...like 1/8th inch thick, so they were solid as rocks. But we just let the gravy soak for a bit, and they were edible.

I can't think of any others right now...oh, except for my cabbage and kelbasa soup, but that's not really food storage (except the meat in the freezer).

Ta ta for now. I hope that I don't loose too many people, because once we move to the new house (if we get it which I HOPE WE DO!!) then I will be canning/baking/storing up a LOT. And I will also be adding quilting to my list of expertise...if you can call it that...and I will be back to sewing clothes for Grace and I. I will also be adding dutch oven cooking too! Oh, and you can't forget gardening. This will be the best garden I imagine, seeing as it's about 4 times the size of our one in California!!

Amanda