At first I made this recipe with store bought tortillas, canned beans, and canned cream of chicken/mushroom soup – but I promised myself bit by bit I would make it using all the “advanced” techniques. Now that I have had a lot more experience using my food storage, I make it the real way and it tastes so much better – I wont make it any other way.

So here’s to sharing it with you and to giving you a special cooking challenge.

Ingredients:
1 can of black beans (*see below)
1 lg onion (*see below)
1 can of cream of chicken (*see below)
1 can of cream of mushroom (*see below)
¾ cup of milk (*see below)
1 (4oz) can diced green chilies
1 (8 oz) can mild enchilada sauce
1 pkg soft tortillas (*see below)
½ lb cheddar cheese, grated
½ lb monterrey jack cheese, grated

Directions:
Wash and cook beans. Mix next 6 ingredients with beans (Optional: add 3 chicken breasts shredded). Place tortillas in greased 9 by 13 inch pan. Top with half the bean mixture and half the cheese. Repeat the layers. Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes. Cool slightly and cut in squares.

Try each of these techniques one at a time or all at once. They are things that used to scare me and now I love doing them this way in all my recipes.

1 can of black beans with 1 1/2 cups of cooked beans from your food storage. Need to know how to cook them? Check out Crystals post on pressure cooking dry beans here.

Onion with dehydrated onion. These are not only a time saver, but are great to store to have added flavoring in your food storage.

1 can of cream of chicken, 1 can of cream of mushroom, and the milk with the bean flour cream soup recipe found here.

Store bought tortillas, with homemade tortillas made from scratch using recipe found here.

Again if you’re new – don’t get overwhelmed by these “weird” techniques – try them one at a time and one day you’ll be amazed at how much you have learned!

The recipe I’ll be sharing calls for whole wheat tortillas, so if you’re up for the challenge of trying it out when I share it, get a head start by trying these!

Ingredients:
4 cups of whole wheat flour (fine)
¼ tsp baking powder
2 tsp salt
1 cup of warm water (may need a little more – I usually do!)
¼ cup cooking oil

Jodi always mocks me for not being the “recipe” type, or having “clear” instructions when cooking (I’m one of those, a little bit of this and a little bit of that types…), so just to show I can be specific…

Directions:
1. Mix all ingredients together to make a nice pliable dough.
2. Knead 1 minute and let rest 5 minutes.
3. Roll the dough out so you can easily make equal pieces
4. Cut the dough into 18 equal pieces (I halved the recipe here)
5. Form into 18 balls
6. Roll thin (spray pam to help if there are sticking or dryness problems)
7. Fry on both sides, they cook quickly (no need to grease the frying pan at all)
8. Eat! It doesn’t take long to cook.

TRICKS:

I use a little hand roller that helps a lot and since I use tortillas mostly in recipes where they don’t have to look perfect, I don’t feel so bad when they don’t turn out in perfect circles… (Although I’m sure I could trace some lid from a bowl and cut around if I really cared)

My sister uses this kind of tortilla press and she says they are much faster and easier to make. I think one day I’ll get one. It’s only $13 on amazon, so to all my family members reading this… ahem ahem.  But for now, my handy roller works fine.


At a cooking class I was at once this lady had an electric press and cooker .  The thing was amazing! You threw a ball of dough in there and closed the lid, and voila! A perfect tortilla.  For people who love kitchen appliances (and have the room to store them) this could be something to check out!

Hope you like these!

With the Seven Day Challenge approaching on a surprise day in September, I wanted to make sure to really be on top of things (especially things I know I’ll need – hint hint!)

If you haven’t signed up already, make sure you do- there are some awesome prizes we’ll be announcing Monday.

When cooking rice, follow your package directions and add a teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of OIL! That was it, a trick that has worked everytime!

Now for some tips we found on the internet at wikihow:

• Instead of cooking the rice in water, you can use beef stock or chicken broth.
• You may wish to tweak the “rice to water ratio” with experience – for example: for larger quantities of rice, you may find a little less or more than one and a half the amount of water results in better rice.
• One cup of dry rice grains cooked in this way is about sufficient to accompany a meal for 2 adults.
• If the rice is a major component of the dish, you might need up to 1 cup of rice per adult.
• Your base measurement doesn’t need to be a cup necessarily – the key is to add 1.5x as much water as rice, whatever the quantity.
• It works best to use the original lid of the pot you use, since it will seal best.
• When the rice first boils, it might weep a bit or even lift the lid. Keep watch and an ear out for the start of the boil.
• These times and ratios are for white rice (e.g. Jasmine, Basmati, etc). If you are cooking brown rice you will need around 2C water to 1C rice and double the time.
• Water boils at a lower temperature at altitude. If you live at a high altitude it will take longer to cook rice.

As we have grown and expanded our food storage knowledge, we have continually added to our site. While the site has expanded with so much information, we still want to make sure that it’s still easy for beginners to navigate. Since we are about halfway through our Summer Crash Course we decided to give you a little break and announce some changes we made to our site recently to help you get the most out of our site.

You will see that the top navigation buttons have changed slightly. Here is a run-down of the new things to look for:

• The Start Here tab now contains helpful tips for how to best use our site and where to find the information you are looking for.
• The Checklists page now offers you a choice of how you would like to receive your checklists based off of what your preferred “learning style” is.
• We added an Emergency Preparedness tab as we have found that this is something people are looking for quite a bit, and we feel it is a prerequisite to getting started with your food storage. Check back on Friday as we will be adding some new sub-pages to this section which will include even more detailed information
• Tools and Products remain the same. We consistently put a lot of work into those sections so make sure to check them often.
• We added a tab for Recipes so that you can easily navigate to any of the food storage recipes we have tried and posted about.
• Links and About remain the same, although we will be revamping the links section soon to make it an even better resource for you.

Take a look around at the new sections and let us know what you think of the changes. We are trying hard to keep more experienced readers interested while still being able to help the brand new beginner. Believe us, we know how it feels to be getting started and get so overwhelmed with the abundance of information out there.

Well tonight I hosted a little dinner party at my house and decided I would sneakily use tons of food storage in my dinner and dessert.  I definitely recommend it, it was fun having a little secret… hehe.

Anyways,  I made a great tortilla casserole recipe, (added black beans) and even made the tortillas from scratch using all fresh ground whole wheat! I even replaced the cream of chicken soup with BEAN FLOUR cream of chicken, my favorite!

For dessert I made my EMERGENCY, I don’t feel like baking, icing or dirtying a pan dessert with POWDERED MILK!  Everytime I have to bring a dessert to a dinner and don’t have the time or energy to pick up fresh ingredients,  I make a quick and easy pudding pie.  I always have at least one tub of cool whip in my freezer for this special dessert.

Ingredients

Powdered Milk
Water
Box of Chocolate Pudding
Graham cracker crust
Cool Whip

Prepare pudding according to package directions for pie. Pour into graham cracker crust, chill for an hour or so. Top with Cool Whip. Optional, add strawberries, crushed skor bar or any crushed cookie.

I love this dessert because it is SO easy to bring places. The graham cracker crust container has a lid with it (you don’t have to remember to get your pan when you are going home). You don’t have to dirty dishes except the pudding bowl, but you can lick that. It’s a dessert that uses POWDERED milk and no one knows it. You don’t have to turn your oven on in the hot summer, its great!

So anyways, I wanted to share with you a few little tricks I have learned that have helped me lately. Make sure to leave a comment with your tips, we can all learn from each other.

To make it fun, I’m going to use my FAVORITE food as an example…. PIZZA!

Freezing Veggies

Have you ever frozen veggies (or fruit) and had them clump together? Well try placing them on a cookie sheet, let them freeze, then place them in plastic freezer bags.  These work great on pizza because you can throw them right on frozen.

Pre-Shredding Cheese

When cheese is on sale, buy it in bulk and grate it all at once.  I remember when I was little that was the job we all hated, so get it over with in one shot. One of our viewers on the Fun With Food Storage chat last week told us a great tip when doing this.  If you don’t want the mozzarella cheese to clump up, throw in a tablespoon of cornstarch with the cheese.

Grind Wheat Ahead of Time

I usually try to grind all my wheat fresh (it contains most of the nutrients this way).  However, I usually have about 4-8 cups in my freezer to use if I am in a “hurry” and can’t get my grinder out.  Freezing it helps keep it fresher longer.

Go for 2 in 1’s

Whenever I make pizza dough, I double the recipe and turn the other half into hot pockets.  I let them cool down, then wrap them in plastic wrap and throw them in the freezer.  That way I have lunches prepared ahead of time.  I use these on days that I just don’t feel like it (do you ever have those?). I cook it in the micro for 2 minutes and enjoy it every time knowing it is healthier and cheaper then lean pockets.

Ifyou’re now in the mood for pizza, check out this great recipe Jodi tried this weekend. Visit Crystal at EverydayFoodStorage.NET. She has videos and goes into great detail using this recipe:

30 Minute Breadsticks OR No-Fail Deep Dish Pizza Crust

(If it is too thick for your family, you can either half the recipe or put one full recipe onto two cookie sheets)

2 1/2 C. Medium Hot Water
5 tsp. SAF Instant Yeast*
2 Tbsp. Sugar
3 Tbsp. Oil
1 tsp. Salt
6 C. Flour (you can do half all-purpose and half white wheat or 100% whole wheat)
1 to 2 Cubes of Butter

Directions:
1. Pour medium hot water in mixing bowl. Sprinkle yeast on top and allow to dissolve.
2. Add sugar, salt, and oil. Gradually add approximately 6 cups of flour.
3. Melt 1-2 cubes butter on cookie sheet in oven as it is heating to 400 degrees and melt in oven. 4. Place dough on cookie sheet and press to fill pan, make sure butter gets on top of the dough.
5. Allow to double in size (About 10-15 minutes)
6. Cook for 10 to 12 minutes or until desired browning is accomplished.
7. Cut into strips or top with favorite pizza toppings.

* When using regular yeast change amount to 2 Tbsp.

Jodi’s kids enjoying the pizza! HOLY COW I AM REALLY hungry for some now!

Anyways, I was on a mission to tidy my lazy susan. This is how I did it:

1. I took an inventory of all the grains and legumes I use regularly

2. I determined if I used them in big, medium, or small quantities

3. I went around to a bunch of different stores looking at containers and prices

4. I settled in on some containers from walmart that would fit my needs

5. I emptied the plastic bags and cardboard boxes into my cute new CLEAR containers

6. I used larger cereal dispenser containers for brown rice, and wheat since those are the two grains I use most often

7. I taped the nutrition label from the bags to the bottom of the containers for future reference

If you need a place for containers but don’t want to drive around to 4 or 5 different stores like I did, amazon is a great place. Check out this set of containers, they come in all different sizes so you can store different amounts of different products.

Anyways, here is the finished product – having a good amount of each food in my pantry makes cooking much more pleasant. This way I’m only required to refill every so often down in the basement bulk containers…

Oh and as a side note, if you didn’t go look at my resolutions, I did number 3 a couple weeks ago! I’m right on track! In the words of Tracy in SC (our biggest fan) GO ME!

• I want to cook more with DRY beans and quit being so afraid of the soaking concept
• I want to plan dinners ahead of time to use more of my long term foods
• I want to find a way to help people who hate excel do an effective 3 month food supply plan even though the current excel file ROCKS! But I know, I know you don’t all love excel

Well good news – I’m doing alright. You’ll have to wait on the 3 month supply surprise just a little longer though. I have also been doing a lot better at planning dinners ahead of time. I used some of Crystal’s TOP SECRET tips for that.

And now for the beans. I have been into this humus kick for a little while now and buying it at the grocery store. I realized it was kind of full of preservative’ish junk and it was getting pricey. So I decided this would be my first guinea pig for using DRY beans. Turns out all my fears and anxiety were unnecessary. It was easy and DELICIOUS.

I got this recipe from the Safely Gathered In Blog. For full instructions, go to their blog. They have a lot of good pictures and instructions!

Roasted Red Pepper Hummus Recipe (Humus Recipe)

2 cups soaked chickpeas or 1 can beans, drained
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 Tbsp Tahini (sesame seed oil)
2 cloves garlic or garlic powder
1 tsp curry powder
1/2 jar of roasted red peppers, drained

Mince the garlic, put in food processor. Add the garbanzo beans, puree. Add the oil and juice, puree again. Drain and add roasted red peppers, add curry, blend.

If the beans are soft, then you’ll only have to process for a minute. When using soaked, but not cooked beans, process for five minutes or until smooth. Use as a spread or a dip.

MY FINDINGS:

I used olive oil instead of Tahini and liked it just fine. I also didn’t do the red peppers and curry powder, but I’m boring like that. Lemon Juice, Olive oil and Garlic are delicious enough all together for me.

You might want to try cooking the whole bag of beans, THEN splitting the beans into 4 or 5 ziploc baggies and freezing them for a quick treat on another day. 1 bag of beans got me 5 servings for around $2.50. Buying it pre-made from the store would have cost me over $20!

To make it an even yummier treat, I put hummus on reduced fat triscuit crackers and a piece of turkey pepperoni on top. I mean who doesn’t like pizza snacks! I am in love with making food storage healthy and cheap!

Remember our All We Want for Christmas Post? Our families must have been spying on our blog because we received several items from the list!

Julie STRUCK GOLD this year! She got a WONDERMILL GRAIN MILL! Her mom got her and 2 of her sisters the best present ever. Needless to say she’s been going to town (remember her all about wheat post). She loves it so much, we became Authorized Dealers for WonderMill to help people buy them at the Minimum Advertised Price allowed (click here for details). By the way, aren’t Julie’s sisters cute?

Jodi received a few books that will definitely help her with her food storage goals this year, Cookin’ with Dried Eggs and the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. She also got some food from The Ready Project which she’s excited to try out!

So now for our “NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS”:

• I want to save up enough money to buy a wheat grinder so I don’t have to borrow Julie’s any more
• I want to plan my summer garden specifically with canning in mind
• I want to create a recipe binder full of meals that use my long term food storage items and cook from it frequently

• I want to cook more with dry beans and quit being so afraid of the soaking concept
• I want to plan dinners ahead of time to use more of my long term foods
• I want to find a way to help people who hate excel do an effective 3 month food supply plan even though the current excel file ROCKS! But I know, I know you don’t all love excel