Food Storage Made Easy

Food Storage Made Easy Podcast – SNEAK PEEK

We are VERY excited to let our blog readers be the first to know that we are now officially part of the Survival Mom Radio Network. We have followed Lisa’s blog for the last few years and think very highly of her. We reviewed her book last year and she has also reviewed our eBook. So when she started up this radio network specifically to highlight women podcasters, we were thrilled to be involved with it.

So what does this mean for you?

Every other Thursday we will be featuring a new podcast
You can download the podcasts from iTunes and listen in your car, at the gym, etc.
Learn from us in a new and different way
Shows will feature reader questions, cooking tips, how to plan your food storage, best ways to buy it, and much more
Special giveaways and sales for podcast listeners only
We get to partner with an amazing group of women who are all publishing great podcasts on being self reliant

Click the banner above to listen to Episode 1 now!

In the meantime, here are some resources that we discussed in the first show. In our first episode we wanted to cover something that we’ve discussed here on the blog several times. We talk about three of the most common excuses we hear for why people don’t start their food storage. We give lots of tips and helpful hints on how to overcome these challenges which can help both beginners and veterans alike.

No Money
Our favorite couponing website – Deals to Meals
Dave Ramsey’s Book – The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness
How to make a can rotating rack – Tutorial and pictures
Follow our checklists and buy a little each month – BabyStep Checklists

No Time
Make big batches and use it for multiple things – THE BEST bread recipe
Make mixes to save time while using food storage – Smoothie Mixes and Food Storage Mixes

No Space
Our handout with TONS of ideas – Small Spaces Storage Solutions

Jodi and Julie May 15, 2013 Leave a Comment

Strawberry Macaroons (Food Storage Cookies!)

I have a confession to make. I’m in love with the Thrive Macaroon Cookie Mix. If you ever need a super fast and amazingly delicious treat to bring to an event, these are THE thing to make. It’s a cookie mix and you just add water, scoop onto a cookie sheet and cook for fifteen minutes. EVERY time I bring these somewhere I get asked for the recipe and have to sheepishly admit they are from a can mix. I don’t care though. They are so good that I always offer to bring the treat, just so I can have an excuse to make them. They are awesome to keep as a comfort food in your food storage, but we always eat through them faster than I can replenish!

Today we had a mother’s day picnic in the park and I was assigned to make an “Oh My Heck” Salad (our family calls it the oh my heck salad because it is so good that you say oh my heck when you taste it). Anyway, maybe we’ll post that recipe another day. But I was in the mood for my cookies so I offered to bring them too. I’ve been reading about other people trying some variations so I decided to take the plunge and experiment and I have to say, it was WORTH IT! Here’s how you can make delicious easy strawberry macaroons out of your food storage foods

Food Storage Strawberry Macaroons

Ingredients
6 1/2 c. Thrive Macaroon Mix
2 c. freeze dried strawberries, rehydrated
1 c. boiling water (I used the water leftover from rehydrating my berries)

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Reconstitute your strawberries. Try to get a lot of powder from the bottom of the can to enhance the strawberry flavor. Once the strawberries are softened, drain them and reserve the water. Boil 1 cup of the strawberry-flavored water. Mix with the Macaroon Mix in a large bowl. Mash up the strawberries and stir them into the mix. Spoon with a meatball or ice cream scoop onto a greased cookie sheet. Bake for about 12-15 minutes or until golden brown. Let them cool on the cookie sheet for a few minutes to let them set or they will just tear apart when you try to get them off.

This is a double batch of the recipe on the can. It probably made about 50 cookies. There wasn’t one cookie left after our picnic, and my 8 year old was mad because he only got to eat one. Yes they were THAT good.

p.s. Since these cookies are white, you can also add food coloring to make festive cookies (i.e. I made green ones and took them to a St. Patrick’s Day event)

Filed Under: Fruit Recipes, Recipes Tagged: food storage cookies, food storage recipes, macaroon cookies, macaroon recipe, strawberry macaroons

Jodi May 11, 2013 1 Comment

5 Things I Wish Someone Would Have Told Me 5 Years Ago

We’ve been doing this blog for almost 5 years. The other day I was doing a big Food Storage room clean-up and reorganization. It made me somewhat nostalgic. This week I have pondered a lot where I started, where I am, and where I’d like to go. While cleaning the room I realized there were some things I wish I would have known when I started this all. Today I figured I would share them with you. Maybe they might help YOU out a little.

1. Don’t buy things you don’t eat
So when I first started building my food storage, I got really into couponing. It was a great way to buy things for great prices and build up a food storage. I would buy things I didn’t necessarily eat because they were such good prices. I thought to myself, in a real emergency I would probably eat that stuff. I didn’t buy a lot of it, and it was the kinds of foods you could open and eat right out of a can, so I thought I was being practical at the time. Well, those things are STILL sitting in my room 5 years later … and I need to figure out what to do with it all.

2. Despite your best intentions you won’t remember when you bought stuff
Back when I was a little girl, my favorite job was when I had to go down to the food storage room and write the date on each can of food. I pretended I was a cashier at a grocery store, and would pull each can through, one by one, putting the dates on them. Well nowadays a lot of foods come with expiration dates, but not all of them. So I haven’t been diligent in marking when I bought my foods, and they get mixed up on shelves. Looks like my 5 year old is about to be recruited to the family cashier job next time I do a big shop.

3. Don’t trust your kids to tell you when they take things out of your food storage
When we started the blog, I only had 1 little toddler who never went into the food storage room. Now I have a few boys who raid it regularly. I keep sending them downstairs to get me things when I’m cooking. What I’m learning is that they also go down there and help themselves as well. Between sending them down all the time, and them raiding the room, I don’t keep as good of track. I’m working on a solution for this one.

4. Your diet may change or evolve
This one is tricky! Since starting my food storage, I have switched to pretty much all whole grain everything. I also refrain from most pre-packaged, pre-made meals as well. When I started I was doing half and half. Well now I have quite a bit of white spaghetti noodles, some white rice, white sugar, and white flour. I had no way of knowing back then, what I would be eating now, or what I’ll be eating in 5 years. I’m not sure how to get around this dilemma. People who develop allergies probably face the same types of problems. Perhaps I could do some food storage trading with people. For the unopened and unexpired things I could donate it to the food bank.

5. Plan for expansion
I did this in my first house. I put shelves up in a way that I could keep adding to them because I KNEW I would be growing it. Well considering I started with nothing, of course I would grow it. Well silly me moved into this house and thought I had it all figured out. Since then I decided I wanted to store ALL my foods in #10 cans except wheat (I talked about this in my New Year’s resolutions post). Well that means I need another rotating shelf. Well now I need to explain to my husband that he was right and I should have put the food storage in the other area of the basement that would have accommodated this. I HATE doing that!

The older I get, the more I realize the only constant is CHANGE. It would have been nice to know all these things 5 years ago, but the fact of the matter is that is not how life goes. You learn, grow, try new things, and adapt all the time with EVERYTHING. So while it would have been nice to know those things… It’s ok. I’ve had fun learning!

Filed Under: Julie's Progress Tagged: food storage, food storage organization, food storage tips

Julie May 8, 2013 1 Comment

Pizza Casserole (Food Storage Style)

I don’t know about you, but some days I just see the same recipes going around Facebook and/or Pinterest over and over again. It’s like a conspiracy to try to get me to make something naughty. A couple of weeks ago this delicious looking pizza casserole was making the rounds:

I thought it looked easy and yummy but I was missing a few of the ingredients for it … so I decided to make an adventure of it and try making a food storage version. I have to say I was pretty thrilled with the results, and it was a winner with my kiddos. That doesn’t often happen when I’m trying new recipes. So here is MY version of the pizza casserole. Enjoy!

Ingredients:
1 16 ounce package rotini pasta
2 c. freeze dried sausage crumbles
1/2 c. freeze dried green peppers
3/4 c. Thrive Tomato Sauce Powder
3 c. water
2-3 c. freeze dried mozzarella cheese
1 small package sliced pepperoni

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a 9X13 casserole dish. Cook rotini noodles until slightly underdone. While pasta is cooking, lightly brown the dried sausage crumbles (before reconstituting). Mix tomato sauce powder with water until smooth, add browned sausage and freeze-dried green peppers. They will rehydrate in the sauce so no need to do that beforehand. Combine the sauce and the noodles and pour into the casserole dish.

Lay freeze-dried cheese out on a plate covered with a paper towel. Spray it with water using a spray bottle until the cheese is fully hydrated and not crunchy any more. Sprinkle over the top of the noodle/sauce mixture. Top with pepperoni slices. Bake 20-25 minutes in the oven.

There you have it, an easy yummy dinner that could be made totally with shelf stable items. Who wouldn’t want “pizza” in an emergency? And this is a lot easier than grinding wheat to make homemade pizza dough

Filed Under: Pasta Recipes Tagged: food storage, food storage recipes, pizza casserole recipe, pizza recipe

Jodi May 5, 2013 1 Comment

Homemade Ranch Dip or Dressing

As I’m getting ready to write this post today, I realized I’ve been on a kick to share my friend’s recipes lately. Here are a few of them:

Our regular readers know I’m not the type to follow a recipe, so sharing my recipes has been really hard for me. I always get anxiety trying to come up with the exact measurements I use. Well the beauty behind sharing my friends’ recipes is that I can share real measurements and I’ve tasted them so I know they are good.

So this recipe is for a homemade ranch-like dip. This dip tasted so fresh and delicious. I’m a big fan of the recipe for a lot of reasons:

It is homemade and free of preservatives and ingredients I can’t pronounce
It uses ingredients I often have on hand (thanks to freeze dried spices, and powdered sour cream)
I can make it as thick or thin as I would like depending on how much liquid I add
The fresh (or freeze dried) instead of dehydrated spices made it delicious!

Ingredients:
1 c plain greek yogurt (full fat)
1/2 c. sour cream (or sour cream powder)
1 t. onion powder
1/2 t. garlic powder
1/2 t. dill (I used freeze dried cilantro instead)
1/4 t. pepper
3 T. minced fresh parsley (or freeze dried parsley)
2 T. minced fresh chives (or freeze dried chives)
salt to taste

Since I couldn’t help but put a food storage spin on the recipe, I’ll explain what I did. For the sour cream, I used sour cream powder and I put the same amount, and then just added water until I got the texture I wanted. I was using this for a salad dressing, so I went a little on the runnier side than a dip would be. I also added a teeny bit of lime juice, since I opted to use cilantro instead of dill. I like this because sour cream is something I never have on hand.

You’ll also notice I used freeze dried spices… which are currently my favorite! If you haven’t tried them, you really need to. They act like fresh spices instead of dehydrated. The flavor is amazing, and I don’t have to worry about rotting parsley and cilantro in my fridge anymore! You can buy them at discounted prices at our Thrive Life store here.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged: food storage, food storage recipes, homemade ranch dressing recipe, ranch dip recipe

Julie April 30, 2013 2 Comments

How to Overcome Food Storage Challenges

The other day we posed this question to our facebook group:

What is your biggest Food Storage Challenge?

Click above to see all the answers. We love when you guys share like this

So it took everything in me to not respond to each person individually and give them some advice on how to overcome their challenge. Instead, we decided to take the top five challenges and address them in a post that we will share with everyone. Hopefully it will help all those who responded, as well as help the rest of our readers who struggle with one of these areas.

Challenge #1: NO SPACE

One of the most common problems people have when tackling the task of building a food storage is lack of space. Trust us- we didn’t build our own food storage when we had very limited space. We would promise ourselves “one day, when I have more room – that’s when I’ll build my food storage”. When we started getting more readers to our blog, people started asking us about small spaces storage solutions and we panicked- we had no answers for them! We quickly confessed our shortcomings in building food storages when we lived in small spaces … and surveyed all our readers for their ideas. The results were amazing! We received over one hundred emails full of fabulous ideas. We compiled them into a list sorted by areas of the house to make it easy to find ideas that will work for your family. Click here to view and print out our SMALL SPACES STORAGE SOLUTIONS handout.

Also, check out Jodi’s husband’s solution for freeing up room for food in their living areas, while storing other items up in their attic.

Challenge #2: NO TIME

Let’s be honest – we’re all busy! Sometimes it’s hard enough just to get dinner on the table, let alone to build up a year supply of food while we’re at it. Not to mention learning how to actually COOK with these new foods too! The best way to overcome a weakness is to try and turn it into a strength. As you learn more and more about using your food storage, come up with ways to make the most of your time WHILE using your food storage.
- Learn to use your freezer, make extra of favorite meals, food storage meals, rolls, breads, etc. and freeze
- Double your staple recipes and use them to make multiple items (bread recipes can be used to make bread, breadsticks, cinnamon rolls, pizza dough)
- Use food storage as a time-saver and cook things ahead of time like pizza pockets or use pre-made smoothie mixes and other food storage mixes
- Start to gradually learn skills and practice them when you have a chance. At least then you will know what to do if a situation arises where you need to start living off of food storage.

Don’t forget, you don’t have to cook homemade bread every week and dehydrate your own foods to actually build and use your food storage. Pick a weekend and try making bread. Once you have the skill learned, you can use it should the need arise. But *confession* I still buy store-bought bread on weeks that things are crazy and I don’t get any made. It’s OK! And there are tons of great options to purchase dehydrated and freeze dried foods that you can use to save time in your everyday cooking and/or keep for emergencies only.

Food storage doesn’t have to take lots of time, and it can actually SAVE time if used correctly.

Challenge #3: NO MONEY

One of the things that makes starting a food storage feel like a daunting task is thinking of all of the expenses associated with it: expensive shelves, water storage containers, FOOD, generators, wheat grinders, dehydrators, and the list goes on and on. We found that by utilizing our CHECKLIST SYSTEM and doing things in BabySteps, and setting aside a small amount of money ($40-$50) each month, we were still able to accomplish a lot with our food storage. In fact, we were pleasantly surprised to find that food storage actually started to save us money as we really got into it. There are a a lot of ways to save money AND build food storage at the same time. Check out these posts for tons of ideas:

Top 10 Tips for Emergency Preparedness on a Budget: You don’t have to have a lot of money to get started on your emergency preps.
Food Storage and Money Savings
A look at how food storage should be part of your financial plan.
Using Food Storage to Make Cleaning Supplies: Learn how to use items that are already in your food storage to make cleaning supplies.
Saving on Groceries Made Easy: Take a look at how easy it is to get the best deals on your groceries using Deals to Meals.
How to Make a Can Rotating Rack: Save money on expensive shelving systems and make your rotating shelves for free – OUT OF CARDBOARD!
Making Your Own Plant Pots Out of Newspaper:
Save money on expensive plastic plant pots by making these yourself for FREE.

We also LOVE the Shelf Reliance (now called Thrive Life) autoship program called the Q. You select your food budget and it automatically sends food storage to your door every month. It’s a great way to stay in budget, but always remember to be adding to your storage. You can even become a consultant (on our team) and earn FREE FOOD and extra money to go towards your food storage goals. This has been a great way for us to build up our storage.

Challenge #4: ORGANIZATION/ROTATION

It never fails that every 6 months or so one or the other of us has a complete meltdown and has to reorganize our entire food storage. It’s HARD to keep up with it, we know! If you need some AMAZING tips on staying organized, Julie shared some of her strategies in her Food Storage Spring Cleaning post. Everyone has their own systems for organizing but she helps you think about what might work for you.

One of our favorite tools for rotation is to practice making meals that actually USE our food storage items. We all have to cook dinner every day anyway, right? So a couple of years ago we asked our readers to help us with a BIG project. We had them submit shelf stable recipes to us and we got over 200 recipes to choose from. We compiled 100 of them into an amazing FREE Shelf Stable Recipe Cookbook that you can download. It was a “surprise party” gift for our readers. Use these and other recipes that use your core food storage ingredients and you will find that you are working through them quite regularly!

Challenge #5: DIETARY RESTRICTIONS

People have many reasons why they need/want to eat a certain diet. It could be anything from taste preferences, to healthy eating, to severe allergies. We have covered a few of these topics on our blog quite in depth. Hopefully this will help you get started as you go through this journey. We know it can be difficult when your situation doesn’t fit the normal food storage “mold”.

ALLERGIES: We have been asked about modifying food storage calculators for allergies A LOT. Unfortunately it is something we don’t have much personal experience with so it’s hard for us to fully delve into this topic. We have done a few posts to help people GET STARTED and figure out a plan for themselves on how they will tackle it. Other posts to check out are sources for alternative grains, gluten-free raspberry thumbprint cookies, and rice flour crepes. It’s not a lot but it’s a start!

HEALTHY FOOD STORAGE: Julie attended a great workshop all about healthy food storage and took detailed notes on it. There is an alternative food storage calculator suggested as well as lots of other tips for storing foods that will enable a healthier diet. Since then, Julie has delved into some more advanced healthy eating topics that go hand in hand with food storage such as how to make Ezekiel Bread, Sourdough Bread and Starter, and more.

Another way to add great healthy foods into your food storage is to purchase Freeze-Dried Fruits and Veggies. If you look at the nutrition labels for these products most of them ONLY include the food item … that’s it. No preservatives or additives. We LOVE this!

We hope that you can take some of this advice and use it to overcome your own personal food storage challenges. We still struggle with MOST of these things every day, but we’re always improving. Good luck!

Filed Under: General Tagged: food storage, food storage challenges, how to build a food storage

Jodi and Julie April 25, 2013 Leave a Comment

Boxed Cake Mix Extender

So today I’m going to tell you about a fun tradition I have going with my sister’s kids. About 4 years ago my sister was making her son’s first birthday cake. She was doing an Elmo cake for him. We were together, and she could tell it took everything in me not to leap over the counter and try to take over as she was decorating. I might be a little overbearing, I know. After trying to get Elmo’s face done, she looked at me and said “Fine, you can do it”. That is where the tradition started. Since then, she has let me make her kid’s cakes, and I LOVE to do it. One of the sweetest parts of this tradition was when she told me she overheard her son telling her daughter “When your birthday comes up next, all you have to do is tell Julie what you want and she can make ANYTHING”. Since they are only 5 and 3, I can still impress them and I’ll keep doing it until they realize I’m no professional…

So onto why this has anything to do with Food Storage. This year, her daughter wanted a Dora Cake. Fair enough right? Well then she decided she wanted a Three Tier Funfetti Dora Cake. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think you have to give into every little whim of a child, but I’m the Aunt and I’m allowed to! I had a Funfetti mix in my food storage, but I knew it wouldn’t be big enough for three tiers. I didn’t want to go to the store, because I never want to go to the store. So I got online. I found a recipe for a cake extender. Basically you can use it in any cake mix and it makes it bigger. I love food storage for so many reasons, but the Everyday Emergency is one of my favorites. For more about WHY food storage, check out our series here.

Boxed Cake Mix Extender

Ingredients:
3/4 cup of flour (I used whole wheat flour ground in my Wondermill)
1/4 cup of sugar
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1/2 cup of water
1/4 cup of oil
1 egg

Directions:
Mix dry ingredients in with the cake mix. Mix wet ingredients separately. Add together and follow directions on cake box. You may need to cook it a little longer since it’s more batter, but it just depends on how you spread out the batter.

So I wrote this down on an envelope and can’t remember where I found it online. I can’t seem to track it down again, but it seems like it’s a common recipe. I really liked how it worked. This little extender allowed me to make the full three tiers and it tasted great. A lot of people actually commented on how good it tasted. I know you can make cakes from scratch and everything, but she wanted Funfetti. And I’m a FUN Aunt! Hopefully you can put this little trick into use one day, when you have an Everyday Emergency!

Filed Under: Recipes Tagged: cake extender recipe, food storage, food storage cake, food storage recipes

Julie April 23, 2013 Leave a Comment

10 Ways to Use Freeze-Dried Meats (plus a SALE)

This was sent out in our newsletter last month but we wanted to include it here for those who aren’t signed up for that. Click here if you’d like to receive our newsletter, we have an AMAZING one we are putting together for this week!

A while back we did a big post all about how you can incorporate meats into your food storage, ranging from canning your own to purchasing freeze-dried and everything in between. Today we want to focus specifically on Freeze-Dried Meats since people tend to be unfamiliar with them and don’t really know how to use them. They are one of our FAVORITE storage foods since they can really add a lot to any meal. Below we’ve listed 6 ways you can use freeze-dried meats, as well as 4 of our favorite recipes to try them in. Enjoy!

Ways to Use Freeze Dried Meats

Toss it In
Any type of soup, stew, or sauce is liquid enough to reconstitute your meats within a few minutes. No need to hydrate them first. It is so easy and can add bulk and calories to any meal. No chopping, thawing, cooking, etc. required.

Bulk it Up
Many just-add-water meals tend to be vegetarian in order to keep the price down. There are a lot of bean and rice meals, soups, etc. that hover around 200-300 calories per serving. If you have a lot of those type of meals in your storage, adding some freeze-dried meat can be a great supplement. You would want to rehydrate them in hot water, and then add them in just as your meal is almost finished cooking.

Wrap It
Don’t have time to prepare some chicken for a quick enchilada or quesadilla? No problem! Add freeze-dried chicken and you can add some protein to your mexican dish in about 5 minutes. Dinner is fast and easy and you are practicing with (and rotating) your food storage.

Top It
One of our favorite food storage meals to make is pizza (who will be sad in an emergency if you can eat pizza???) Freeze-dried chicken, beef, or sausage are all great pizza toppings to add some variety to your pizza.

Extend it
If you are running short on meat in your freezer/fridge, or you are worried about trying things with JUST freeze-dried meat, it is so easy to mix it half and half. I love to do half a pound of hamburger and throw in some freeze-dried ground beef that I already reconstituted while it fries up. It can be used for tacos, sloppy joes, etc. and no one will even know it wasn’t 100% fresh meat.

Eat it Dry
Ok this may sound a little odd but hear me out, freeze-dried sausage crumbles dry can be delicious as a crunchy topping for a salad. Think bacon bits but BETTER.

Our Favorite Recipes Using Freeze-Dried Meats

Freeze Dried Meat BUCKET SALE

Lindon Farms is currently running a promotion on all their freeze-dried meat buckets!
HERE’S WHAT YOU GET:

$20 OFF ALL MEAT BUCKETS
A FREE goal zero LED light with any meat bucket purchase
You qualify for $20 OFF a 90 serving meal bucket with every meat bucket purchase

Each meat bucket comes with 6 sealed mylar pouches inside so you can open up one pouch to try out the food, put it in a disaster kit, or bring it camping … and not worry about spoiling the shelf life of an entire #10 can. All meats have a 15 year unopened shelf life. The buckets stack nicely for easy storage and have a pop top lid for convenient access.

Filed Under: Long Term Food Storage Tagged: food storage, freeze dried meat, lindon farms, Long Term Food Storage

Jodi and Julie April 16, 2013 Leave a Comment

Rice Flour Crepes

When we go to expos and classes a lot of times we’ll bring along a display item that has different grains in glass jars with the grain in the bottom half and the ground version in the top half. It’s a great visual aid to show some of the things you can do with different grains. Well it never fails that someone asks “What can you do with rice flour?”. I never had a good answer for it since I’ve never actual used it. I know it can be used in gluten-free cooking but I do not know all the ins and outs of that. I figured you could make rice noodles out of it, and I looked into trying some recipes for that but gave up as it seemed a little tricky. HOWEVER, I can finally say that I found a way to use it that was easy and yummy!

I was searching around for rice noodle recipes and stumbled upon a crepe recipe using rice flour. It sounded very similar to my mom’s crepe recipe so I just decided to use hers and swap out regular flour for rice flour. It worked, it was delicious, and my kids snarfed them up as soon as they got home from school. Yay!

Rice Flour Crepes

1 c. rice flour (about 3/4 white rice ground up)
1 c. milk
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp. salt
1 T. melted butter

Instructions: Grind your rice into rice flour. (I used my WonderMill Electric Mill on the finest setting). Mix all ingredients until smooth. Pour into a hot non-stick skillet about 1/4 cup of batter at a time. Turn the skillet around to let the batter spread out into a thin circle. Cook about 30 seconds on each side. Server with jam, syrup, fruit, honey, nutella, powdered sugar … whatever your heart desires. YUM!

WonderMill Price Decrease

We are so excited to let you know that WonderMill just lowered the minimum price that they are allowed to be sold by $20! Since we always sell things for the cheapest possible price (and free shipping) this means you can now get your WonderMill for just $239.95. Woo-hoo! If you haven’t already made this investment, now would be a great time before they raise the prices again. Get full details at our online store.

Filed Under: Rice Recipes Tagged: gluten free crepes, rice flour, rice flour crepe recipe, rice flour crepes, rice flour recipes

Jodi April 14, 2013 1 Comment

Raspberry Almond Thumbprint Cookies – Without Raspberries?

A few weeks ago I was sitting in my family room, when the doorbell rang. My good friend had just tried out a new recipe and needed me to tell her if it turned out good or not. I’m ALWAYS willing to help a friend in need, so I tested a vegan, gluten free cookie she had just made. Now I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve been off refined sugar for a long time, or if I was super hungry, but these cookies made me happy. Instantly.

Fast forward a few days. I was babysitting my cute niece who told me she wanted cookies. How could I deny my cute little niece cookies? I remembered where my friend had told me she found the recipe and looked it up. I was so happy I had all the ingredients (because I don’t usually cook vegan, gluten free). All the ingredients except raspberry jam.

I knew I wanted to make these cookies. The reason I don’t have jam in my house, is because I would eat jam if it were in my house. And let’s be honest… most jam is just straight sugar. Anyways, I had a little idea about how to get around the no jam problem I was having to make these cookies. I thought to myself… I wonder if I sprinkle a little bit of water on freeze dried raspberries, and then added maple syrup to taste if that would work as a quick and easy jam. It worked. The reason I think it worked is because there wasn’t any water in the raspberries to start with. Had they been fresh raspberries, I think there would have had too much liquid, and it would have turned the cookies soggy. Not to mention, I don’t just have raspberries in my fridge. Like ever.

Raspberry Almond Thumbprint Cookies

Ok, let’s move on to the RECIPE. I didn’t have a chance to ask the author if I could share the recipe right on here, so I am going to LINK TO IT HERE. The website is called “Oh She Glows”. I haven’t been on there before this, but it seems right up my alley with a lot of healthy cooking. Since I know some of the ingredients in this recipe aren’t totally conventional, I figured it might help to give you a little cheat sheet on them:

RICE FLOUR: Rice flour is a common flour used when baking gluten free things. I don’t eat gluten free, however I eat enough wheat through bread, that I figure when I can mix up my grains, I ought to. I think variety in all things are good. You can buy rice flour, but it can be pricey. I use my WONDERMILL to grind brown rice, and voila! I have cheap and healthy rice flour in seconds!

ALMOND BUTTER: Almond butter is like peanut butter, made out of almonds. I get mine at Costco and I like it. If you’re looking to stick to “healthy” check that the only ingredients in there are almonds.

GROUND FLAX SEED: The ground flax seed in this recipe is what replaces the eggs. It’s pretty common for people to use ground flax seed as an egg replacement, or in smoothies. Ground flax seed is just flax seeds that have been ground. You don’t want to grind these in your Electric Mills because they have oil in them. You can however grind them in the Wonder Jr hand grinders. If I’m being honest, I just buy it pre-ground. It’s worth it to me.

ALMOND MEAL: Almond meal is just finely, finely ground almonds. Again, you can purchase this, or you can make it. If making it, place raw almonds into a high-speed blender or food processor. Process on high speed until a fine crumb, making sure not to process too long or the oils will release.

Have I told you about the pan my mom got me for my birthday. It’s like an EXTRA LARGE cookie pan that fits the whole oven. It’s awesome. Except when you preheat your top smaller oven and realize the inside of that is smaller than regular ovens, and have to restart, and heat the bottom oven.

Filed Under: Rice Recipes Tagged: food storage, food storage recipes, gluten free cookies, raspberry almond thumbprint cookies, vegan cookies

Julie April 11, 2013 1 Comment

Food Storage Made Easy