Well we have been working on ways to answer that question. On our BabyStep 8 page, we talk about growing, canning, dehydrating, and freezing. Storing fruits and vegetables can be such a road block for so many people in food storage- ourselves included.

Today, Julie is going to share with you some things she is doing to get closer to having that part of her food storage under control. It involves GREEN SMOOTHIES, AIRPLANES, AND I TOLD YOU SO’S.

So for awhile now I have been into “Green Smoothies”. I got introduced to a website “Green Smoothie Girl” by my neighbor, and am just scraping the surface of some of the great stuff on her site. For those of you who make these, you know how amazing they make you feel, and how frantic you get when you don’t have your daily dose of fabulous fruits and vegetables. When thinking about WHY FOOD STORAGE, there are many reasons I have food storage. I choose to have food storage for emergency situations, but ALSO for situations where I might not have access to stores, or if money is tight. Having said that, I do a portion of freezer food planning in my food storage. Ideally I’ll have a nice, and fancy generator to power my freezer in case of no power situations, but we’re doing this ONE BabyStep at a time – remember!

Anyways, about a month ago, my sisters were trying to find airline tickets for a trip they were taking. I had a couple of free flights from points I haven’t been able to use for FOREVER, and offered to sell them my free flights for a discount of what they were going to pay for their tickets anyways. My points were good for something after all! So, I did something I rarely do- I SPLURGED! I have been drooling, and I mean DROOLING over Blendtec and Vitamix blenders for months. Each morning when I had been making my smoothies, I told myself- one day- one day- I would have an AMAZING blender. Well to make a long story short, with my free flights money, I bought a Vitamix (I did some SERIOUS research and debating on which one to buy, and finally went with Vitamix , but there are bonuses to Blendtec that might make it the right blender for you, I’ll do a post on just that later).

So with my Vitamix , I make so much fun stuff, smoothies being one of them. I went out of town without it, and barely survived – Ok- I’m being dramatic here, but seriously I LOVE it. Since I’ve made making smoothies a part of my daily life, I thought – I NEED to figure out how to store for this. This is where the “I TOLD YOU SO’S” come in. When I was a girl I would get SO embarrassed when I was grocery shopping with my mom and she would buy TONS of stuff on sale. Well, I’m going to confess. I’m turning into my mom. I am using Deals to Meals to buy my produce for so much cheaper then Walmart prices (I told you about this a few weeks ago). Earlier this week, I found myself buying huge amounts of fruits for freezing and I just had to laugh. Freezing this fruit when buying it for so cheap is a great way to build up my fruit storage, and save money at the same time. My plan is to keep buying 3-4 times the amount of produce I normally buy, when it’s at great prices, and keep on freezing. Ideally I would love to have fresh always, but just in case…

So here are some tips I have learned from readers about freezing fruits. Please share your tips in the comment sections below:

-Clean, wash and dry fruit first
-Place fruit on cookie sheets or platters to freeze (this avoids clumping)
-Put the powder that keeps fruit good on things like peaches
-Freeze for a few hours
-Place in ziploc bags
-Label the bag with the date (I need to do that part still)

A few weeks ago, I tried Quinoa for the first time, it’s a grain that is high in protein and super yummy! I ate it plain and decided to ask on our Facebook page, how you guys, our readers ate it. The response was awesome… We got 29 responses with ideas, links to recipes, tips on places to buy it cheaper and more. Here is just a little screen shot of some of the responses:

Seriously – if you’re not on our facebook page you should be. We have great discussions, get questions answered, and do facebook only giveaways (merely because it’s SO easy to do there, and all you have to do to enter is hit a “like” button).

Anyways, back to grains. I’m sure I don’t have to mention eating WHOLE grains is so GOOD for you! Check out this little display we bring to classes we teach. We got it from Pleasant Hill Grain. It shows how many of the GOOD parts of wheat are EXTRACTED when turning whole wheat flour to white flour. The process essentially removes all that is good…. sob.

So on my journey to learn about more grains this summer (more then just wheat, rice and oats), I decided to invite you along and make a fun little game of it. I have purchased a bunch of grains already that I have been grinding in my WonderMill (Click here to buy – They are on sale for the summer!). I have used all types of grains, barley, millet, sweet brown rice in pancakes, breads and pizza dough. It’s been really fun.

So here’s the game. Here are 10 pictures of different grains. Just for kicks – if you want, send us an email, leave a comment, or even jot down on a piece of paper your guesses as to WHAT each one of them are. I’ll post the answers in a couple weeks after you have had a chance to guess. After that… Ready, Set, Go – I’ll be telling you how I’m “throwing” them into my recipes

• See how Julie is CONSTANTLY re-organizing her food storage [View Post]
• Jodi and Julie “argue” over how to plan a three month supply [View Post]
• Julie discovers that food storage is NOT only for desserts! [View Post]
• Jodi shares her adventures with canning, sprouting, and more. [View Post]
• Julie shares the BEST food storage recipe ever. [View Post]
• Jodi divulges two amazing cornmeal recipes. [View Post]

SURPRISE GIVEAWAY

We are so excited we have ALMOST hit another milestone in our blogging journey as we are approaching having 5000 “fans” on our facebook page. We are going to be announcing a FACEBOOK ONLY giveaway as soon as we hit the magic number of 5000 fans so if you aren’t already a fan make sure you go to our page and click the “like” button. You MUST be a fan in order to get the notification about the giveaway and find out how to enter (it will be easy we promise!)

UPDATE: We already hit 5000 fans so make sure to check out the Facebook Note for details!

Being a facebook fan gives you more of a day-to-day look into what we are doing to learn more about food storage and using it in our daily lives. We also announce special sales and events, ask and answer lots of questions, link to other great food storage information sources, and post our latest blog posts so you can read them right on facebook and never miss a post again. It’s been a great way to get to know our readers better and to learn from all of you as well. Hope to see you over there!

HERB CLASS SALE

Julie attended a “healthy food storage” class over the weekend (her class notes are coming later this week) and had to share this great offer with you (before it’s too late). One of the suggestions for people that are into more whole, natural types of foods and herbs was to make sure to store herbs for medicinal purposes. Dr. Christopher’s School Of Natural Healing was giving a special for conference attendees only, that they said we could pass on to our blog readers. They do a Family Herbalist course that is normally $500 but if you go to this link by TUESDAY (tomorrow), you can get the conference special of $100. If this is something you’re interested in learning more about, click here.

My favorite recipe I’ve made since venturing into cooking with Food Storage is an Enchilada Pie recipe. I told you all about it back in my cooking challenge post.

Since then, I’ve added another twist on the recipe. I realized I was out of enchilada sauce MID RECIPE a few weeks ago. I had gotten far enough that there was no turning back, but I DID not want to run to the store. Does that EVER happen to any of you? I somehow got confused about how much enchilada sauce I had stored (My husband forgets to tell me we’re down to 2 or 3 left when I get him to get one out of the basement for me).

Anyways, I found this recipe on allrecipes, and to my amazement it turned out great, and used ingredients I always have on hand. Now I wont need to bother buying Enchilada Sauce.

Ten Minute Enchilada Sauce
(anything with the title “ten minutes” in it, is my kind of thing)

Ingredients

1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoons self-rising flour (I used regular)
1/4 cup New Mexico or California chili powder
1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce
1 1/2 cups water
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon onion salt
salt to taste

Directions
Heat oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Stir in flour and chili powder, reduce heat to medium, and cook until lightly brown, stirring constantly to prevent burning flour.
Gradually stir in tomato sauce, water, cumin, garlic powder, and onion salt into the flour and chili powder until smooth, and continue cooking over medium heat approximately 10 minutes, or until thickened slightly. Season to taste with salt.

So go ahead, give yourself a challenge! Try this out with the NEW twist!

As we have been discussing some of the things Jodi and I have learned over the last 2 years of blogging about food storage, my favorite thing has been somewhat of an unexpected thing. I know I’ve been harping on this a lot lately, but it really excites me that food storage can be healthy. I really had no idea how many hidden treasures of knowledge I would gain on this journey.

When we first started, I told Jodi there was no way I would even store beans because they were to hard to soak, cook, and use. I said I would stick to tuna for protein and call it good. Who knew I would be the biggest fan of all things beans just 2 years later. I love using them to make a way healthy cream of chicken soup, to put in all sorts of recipes, and to eat as a healthy side.

It seems like just yesterday that we came up with this crazy idea to blog about food storage when we had absolutely ZERO food storage and had no clue where to even start. In fact according to our very first blog post, we originally wanted to call this blog “Food Storage For Dummies … and We’re the Dummies”. hehe.

We have come a long way since we started two years ago and we wanted to celebrate this anniversary with you by taking you on a humorous journey of our successes and failures. So let’s get started!

We didn’t fully understand blogs, the blogging community, or blogging software in the beginning. We were both web designers but didn’t catch the blogging vision yet. Needless to say, our first site design left much to be desired

We have to admit that we have a lot more fun with the blog now that it is PINK! (Sorry to our men readers, it’s just the truth)

Check back every day this week as we walk you through some of our hidden archives to highlight what we have learned about food storage over the past two years. There will be some funny stuff you do NOT want to miss!

	January 2009 - We launched our free BabyStep Checklists to make it even EASIER to accomplish our Ten BabySteps. We were so excited to give people tangible lists to follow as they gathered their food storage including what to learn, what to buy, and how to use it.
	Spring 2009 – We started a facebook fan page. We had no idea at the time how much fun it would be. We all get to know each other through status updates, fan pictures, and success stories. One of the biggest perks of the fan page is all our reader experts out there who help answer questions. We learn so much on the fan page through sharing and great discussion.
	April 2009 – As people began completing the individual checklists, we got numerous requests from people wanting to get all the checklists at once so they could move ahead faster or make substitutions depending on what was on sale. We launched our Food Storage Made Easy eBook Binder which includes all the checklists, and the majority of our site content in one printable file.
	September 2009 – The Seven Day Challenge was a mock emergency that we put together in September of 2009 in honor of it being Emergency Preparedness Month. Our readers all participated with us as we went through seven days of different emergency situations and we shared feedback and learning along the way. We’re excited to do it all again this year!
	June 2010 -One of our favorite additions is our Newsletter program that we JUST started this month! We now offer recipes, food storage news/events, blog features, tips, and information about giveaways to people who are in our checklists email lists (whether you’re done, or still in the middle of them). Just in case you only want the newsletter and not the checklists, you can sign up for that here.

We’re so excited for the posts this week. They will be fun for you to go down memory lane, or if you’re a new reader to get to know us better (just don’t laugh at us – we were REALLY just beginners when we started this).

For those of you who have followed our blog for long you would know I LOVED couponing, I DID couponing, couponing SAVED me a lot of money – UNTIL:

• I had another baby last winter
• Albertsons closed down (my primary store to coupon at)
• Red Plum (one of the coupon booklets) stopped coming in the newspapers
• I feared my neighbors got irritated at my piled up newspapers on my driveway
• I got super busy with life, blogging, life, etc

So for the last 8 months, I haven’t couponed. Each time I went to the store – I cringed because I knew I was wasting money. If couponing is still working for you, more power to you – keep doing it – and I applaud you. For anyone out there who needs an easier way -that you’ll actually do- without training, I have to tell you what I’ve been doing lately. I’ve been using a site called Deals to Meals, it’s so easy, I’ll tell you how I do it in 3 minutes.

In case you don’t like watching videos, or your computer is slow, here’s the summary of how I use Deals to Meals:

• I sign in and pick my state
• I choose the best deals from all 12 grocery stores in Utah
• The items are added into a grocery list
• I print the grocery list and bring that one paper to Walmart
• I price match and get the best prices from all 12 stores at one store
• DID I MENTION I ONLY GO TO ONE STORE!
• I pat myself on the back because I save a lot of money with virtually no work!
• I even sent my husband with the list once… and it WORKED?1?!?

*Check your Walmart for their policies -it’s worked for me at 3 different Walmarts

Like I mention on the video, there are a ton more services that Deals to Meals offers, like making meal plans based on sale items, and letting you know which food storage foods are on sale that week. Jodi will share with you how she uses them (after she recovers from having her baby any day now! I can’t wait to meet my darling little nephew…) After trying the service for just TWO WEEKS we both were so impressed we knew we had to share it with you all. Here’s how it works:

When we first heard of Deals to Meals, they were only in Utah, but now they are in 12 states! We hope they become national, because they are awesome. Even if you don’t live in one of the 12 states, the meal plans can be used wherever you live – so go and check them out FOR A FREE TRIAL, and don’t forget to tell them we sent you –

p.s. We became affiliates for Deals to Meals because we love their service so much and are way excited about promoting it!

Remember our “Why Food Storage?” series we did awhile back. Lately I have been learning a LOT about two of the reasons for Food Storage that would surprise you. It’s not the natural disasters, economic, or even every day reasons. What I’m learning about more lately is the health benefits and religious reasons but it’s shocking to me how intertwined they actually are!

In our series we mentioned that the Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints counsels it’s members to build a food storage. On our facebook discussion page, we were thrilled to hear from readers who are not members of the LDS church who likewise have been encouraged by their faith to be more prepared.

For those unfamiliar with the LDS faith the church also counsels it’s members to live by a “Word of Wisdom”. A lot of people know the Word of Wisdom to be abstaining from alcohol, cigarettes and other harmful substances. What a lot of people don’t know however is it also has nutrition guidelines. The doctrine states to eat fruits in their season, eat meat sparingly, and that grain is the staff of life. Whether members or not, these are some great guidelines.

In an attempt to eat more aligned with these guidelines I have been learning so much about healthy eating and I’m so excited to share them with you – but one thing at a time – first up is this cookbook.

“A World Of Wisdom” by Amy Cox Jones is a cookbook full of recipes organized seasonally! She goes through each season, Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring (and has a year round section) and gives you recipes for meals that use foods that are in season. Not only is this cost effective, but it also is good for you – did you know that a lot of foods provide you with certain nutrients that are needed for that time of year. She also gives you tips on how to start eating healthier.

What I liked most about this cook book is that I actually know what the ingredients are! Often times healthy cookbooks have all these ingredients that intimidate me. She also uses wheat berries in some of the recipes – which is great for people without grinders. Oh and there is a section on basics with milks, sauces, and dressings that are healthy and easy to make! Here is a recipe Amy told me was one of her family favorites (it’s “healthy” for a dessert at least):

1/2 cup of honey
1/2 cup of almond butter
1/2 cup of peanut butter
2 teaspoons of vanilla
1/2 cup grain sweetened chocolate chips
3 1/2 cup whole grain cereal (like crispy brown rice, puffed wheat etc)

Combine honey and nut butters in a large pan and heat on low until melted. Add vanilla. Separately combine cereal and chocolate chips. Pour cereal mixture into honey mixture and stir well to coat. Pack tightly into a 7 x 11 pan, cool and cut into squares. You may have to adjust cereal measurement to get the bar consistency just right.

To learn more about the book and to order, go to the website or order directly from Amazon.com.

While I have loved going through Amy’s book, and her site… I am even more excited about an LDS Holistic Living conference she is organizing. I mentioned on our Facebook how excited I was about this conference because one of the classes is a HEALTHY FOOD STORAGE CLASS! Let’s be honest, I know how to make tons of cakes, and cookies with my storage, but there is still a lot to learn about some of the healthier sides of food storage. Other classes include: homeopathic 72 hour kit, the hows and whys of backyard egg production, essential oils, vaccination, understanding herbal meds, cold is the cure, pain relief w/out meds.

I will be there and think you should be too! The website for the conference is here. The early bird registration expired yesterday, but she’s going to let OUR READERS still in for the early bird price (which is $47 instead of $60). To get this price, after you click submit on the registration page – there is a link that says “click here if you have a coupon” – It will ask for a password. The password is: nogreenjellohere (no spaces). Once you’ve put the password in, you’ll get to the payment page.

p.s. I have made a goal to keep learning about all this healthy stuff, and will continue to share it- if people don’t find it too boring. Let us know what you would like to know more about.

*We are not affiliated with the conference – or the cookbook – I just am that excited about all the new stuff I’m learning! (We do make a tiny commission if you purchase the book through our Amazon link though)

Anyways, as my little picture story will show, I hadn’t put my food away since I bought it… ahem ahem over a month ago. I finally got around to it this weekend and I also got around to building (or having my husband build) these awesome cardboard rotating racks from Can Organizer. Check Them Out!(I like the shorter ones for my size shelves, but they have different options) My son shoots hockey pucks in our basement and is CONSTANTLY tipping over my neatly organized cans and it drives me crazy! I am just getting started on turning the tipsy stacks into perfectly sound racks and I love it already!

I’m also happy to report that while I was watching the news this weekend, I realized I actually do have a few things going for me! They were saying that the people should evacuate because of the tsumami threats and to take only important documents and GO! In our emergency plan we suggest this and even have a whole plan for creating an emergency binder. I was happy to know in case I needed to evacuate, I would have all my important stuff together – all ready for me to go!

IMAGINE – you have to make a wedding cake and you only have food storage items as ingredients – well YOU CAN! Last summer I forced myself to try fondant icing after wasting hours upon hours watching the cake decorating shows thinking it looked so totally cool.

Well it turns out I found this great recipe with really great instructions and it uses SHELF STABLE (that’s how I am making this post relevant) ingredients. The only 3 ingredients are marshmallows, powdered sugar, and shortening.

So I tried a little for fun cake and then my sister got engaged and she thought I should make her wedding cake -my very first wedding cake -. HELLO SCARY! Well it actually turned out and I had a blast doing it.

No one warned me how sad I would be when the bride and groom took the knife to my very first wedding cake masterpiece and RUINED IT!

If you’ve been following us for awhile, you know at the beginning of the year we had some New Years Resolutions. Well now is the time we TELL ALL about how we did. We’re excited about how this year went, and can’t wait to share our goals for 2010 in a few weeks!

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• I want to save up enough money to buy a wheat grinder so I don’t have to borrow Julie’s any more


Yay! This one was easy for me! When I wrote my resolutions last year my husband was out of a job so a wheat grinder purchase seemed far off. However, he was able to become employed in January and we got a little bit of money for Christmas and we decided that a wheat grinder would be a good investment since we used our food storage so much when he was out of work. The electric mills are on sale this month, so if you have extra Christmas money this year, now is a great time to get your own!



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• I want to plan my summer garden specifically with canning in mind


This one SHOULD have been an A+ as I started with a great plan and the best of intentions, but I had some setbacks along the way. You can read about my failures on my “lessons learned from gardening” post. However, I WAS still able to can some delicious applesauce and strawberry jam this year. Yay!


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• I want to create a recipe binder full of meals that use my long term food storage items and cook from it frequently


While I haven’t completed my recipe binder yet, I HAVE accumulated a TON of recipes and I use my food storage almost every day. I am still constantly pulling my laptop into the kitchen to follow recipes so I definitely still have room for improvement here. Next year it will be complete … I SWEAR!

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• I want to cook more with dry beans and quit being so afraid of the soaking concept


I have to admit, I put this goal as a way to FORCE me to get into beans. I was SO scared of them. I can’t believe how much I have learned this year about them. I learned to use them to make hummus, cream of chicken soup, and to replace my canned beans.


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• I want to plan dinners ahead of time to use more of my long term foods


I have done pretty well on this goal, but have to be honest there is room for improvement. I use my long term food storage ALL the time in my meals now, but I admit, I don’t meal plan that much. I have a bunch of recipes I love and use often, but I think I’m giving up on the dream of being a meal planner – it’s just not my style.


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• 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


I was able to make a pdf for people to make their 3 month plan, and I think it’s worked out well… What I’d really love to do now is make a cooler simpler online way, but I’m not that tech savvy so… sorry about that!

Stay tuned as we unveil next years goals in the next couple of weeks. We’re gonna have some fun ones, and Julie is giving herself another one to FORCE her into something she’s scared of.

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 (see updated post how to make from scratch)
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!

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

The one part of getting started that we haven’t addressed until now is getting your computer backed-up. Chances are you have a lot of important stuff on your computer like financial documents, email, digital photos, music and more. Unfortunately, computers are vulnerable to hard drive crashes, virus attacks, theft and natural disasters, which can erase or destroy everything in an instant. I want to share with you my absolute favorite system for backing up files. It’s an online back-up system called Mozy. There is a free version that gives you a limited amount of space, but I HIGHLY recommend Mozy Unlimited Backup for $4.95/Month. Most of the time the free version of a website or program is good enough, but let me tell you in this case … so not true. $4.95 a month to back-up my ENTIRE computer! WORTH IT!!! Use coupon code SEPTEMBER in September 2010 for an additional 10% off your subscription!

Mozy is a simple and safe way to back up all the important stuff on your computer. A copy of your data is stored in a secure, remote location for safekeeping, so that in the event of disaster your data is still retrievable.

When you sign up for Mozy, you tell the system what files or folders you wish to have backed up (like “My Documents”). After the initial sign-up you never have to do anything, your files are backed up automatically daily, including the new files in those folders. IT’S SO EASY!

I am Mozy’s BIGGEST FAN! 2 computer crashes will do that to you! Sorry this video is a little corny, but if you have ever had a computer crash you will understand!

I really thought the amount I ground up would last me for months and months. Truth be told I’ve already used more than half of it. I’m so excited because I REALLY never thought I could get into the whole rotating, everyday cooking thing as much as I have. Here are the ways I have been using my wheat, for real!

BREAD: So for the past few weeks I’ve made my bread – haven’t bought bread in over a month. I have tried lots of recipes for bread machine breads (Ok I’m not that awesome, I use a bread machine).

PANCAKES: Next, I have been making pancakes from our friend over at everydayfoodstorage.net She teaches how to make the famous blender pancakes. The picture is from her blog, I’m not going to claim that I can decorate food that cute. My husband LOVES these.

Side note: I just used the wheat flour since I already had it ground. I substituted the oil with applesauce, and I use 2 egg whites with one yolk only. I “try” to be “healthy”. Even with the healthy substitutions they are amazing!

PIZZA: I’ve also gotten addicted to homemade pizza. I throw ingredients into my bread machine, hit dough setting, then 90 minutes later I roll it out, top it, and bake it at 425 for about 20 mins -I like the crust crusty. AMAZING and totally healthy because I try to top it with mostly veggies, turkey pepperoni – my FAVORITE!, and just a “little” cheese. The recipe is easy even:

3 Cups of whole wheat flour (I use hard white wheat)
1 Cup of water
2 Tablespoons of Oil
2 Tablesppons of Sugar
1tsp of Salt
1 Tablespoon of Yeast

(So tonight, I actually just threw these all into a bowl, mixed it well by hand, and let it rise for an hour- worked without the bread machine).

GRANOLA BARS: Last but not least I am on a quest to find the perfect EASY granola bar recipe. I found one at allrecipes. com that had whole wheat and oats it in. I made it and liked them pretty well, but they weren’t super healthy (lots of sugars). I’m not sure if it’s totally possible to make a super healthy granola bar, so if anyone has a recipe for this PLEASE share. I’m kind of a health nut, kind of. Anyways, here are pictures of my granola bars. They were good all week, didn’t get dried out or anything.

GRINDING WHEAT IS EASY, FOR PROOF WATCH OUR WHEAT GRINDER VIDEO

p.s.  Gift #2 is coming early next week.  Are you getting excited yet?

So today I woke up way too early with a sick child, and a husband who is out of town. I only got about 4 hours of sleep (the night before was around 2 hours). Anyways, I had to go to hockey practice and right when I got there my baby puked ALL over his seat. Luckily Grandma was there to tend and helped me clean it. Anyways, after hockey practice I got home and needed desperately to:

-shower
-bathe my child
-wash the car seat in the laundry machine
-run the dishwasher
-cook dinner

Well I turned my water on and within 10 seconds it trickled down to a dripping flow. I thought it was weird, and proceeded to call all my neighbors to see if they had the same problems. Well my house was the only one with the problem. Then I called the city to see if they could tell me anything. Nope it was MY problem. Then I called my mother-in-law, whose father told her it might be something with some pressure something. First question – is that something my baby could have done? We figured it wasn’t.

So I waited a few hours, still needing to shower, still needing to boil water for dinner, still needing to wash a puked up baby and car seat. During that time it dawned on me WHAT WOULD I DO WITHOUT WATER FOR REAL? I became very relieved as I realized I at least have my 14 day supply. I mean you need water for everything! I’m not saying my water supply would run my washer, but at least my basic needs would be covered. Anyways, I thought it was a good chance for a friendly reminder… How are you doing with your water storage? Do you have it? GET IT!

So now for the ending of the story. My husband finally was able to call me on the phone and I said OUR WATER IS BROKEN! He said, oh that’s an easy fix. I guess our baby has been playing with the main on and off levers for our house since he saw my husband turn off the outside water valve in the basement for the sprinklers. My husband had seen him do it the other day. Anyways, I went down to the basement and sure enough, when I had been in the basement putting away some cans earlier, he had pushed the knob to almost all the way off, because it’s fun to climb!

I’m working on developing BabyStep 9 right now- comfort foods- let me tell you I could have used lots of those today!

So last week I started on a mission … to get my emergency plan ironed out, including the disaster kit and 72 hour kit food items. Back in July when Jodi bought all the ingredients to update our 72 hour kits, I put mine in a bag in the closet (the truth comes out). I started to think, if I had to evacuate my house I would be in big trouble. All my food was in a bag in one closet, the emergency supplies I DID have were scattered around the house, and another thing – my important documents binder wasn’t made and I had no cash in case credit card systems were down. How would it have worked for me if I had to evacuate my house quickly – ummmm not so well!

It’s been about 5 days of me focusing really hard and now I finally have my emergency bin all put together! We are going to be focusing a whole month on Emergency Preparedness early next year, but for now I wanted to fill you in on a couple things I did and learned.

1- I bought a car kit ($20 at Wal-Mart). If your Wal-Mart doesn’t carry something like this, we found this Emergency Road Assistance Kit that is very similar and is great because you can toss in a water bottle and some snacks into the bag as well.

2- I PUT my binder with important documents together (passport, birth certificates, social security cards etc). When doing this, I asked myself one simple question – if my house burned down – would I be annoyed I didn’t have this document? If so, I put it in.

3- I went to the bank and took out $200 cash – and asked for small bills. In Hurricane Ike, a lot of people commented on how they wish they would have had small bills so they weren’t paying too much for stuff when stores didn’t have change.

4- I put my 72 hour kit food in a nice old big plastic animal cookie bin. It fit perfectly and was easier than using milk jugs (I like easy).

5- I gathered up all the items in the disasters supplies area of our Emergency Preparedness Plan and purchased the things I didn’t have.

6- I placed ALL this stuff in a big bin in my front hall closet. I was sad because I had a cute little shelf all arranged in my basement for this, but then learned that it’s best to keep your kit somewhere that you can access it easily if you have to evacuate quickly.

p.s. My wonderful sister sent me a list of things she compiled for HER emergency kit. Some of the items were not initially on the list that we posted under Getting Started. I have recently added them to our Emergency Preparedness Plan and uploaded the revised list so you may want to print off a new copy if you have been using the older version.

Have you done your emergency checklist yet? You can accomplish all of this within a few days if you just set your mind to it!

Here is the start of a great post on the site, make sure you click and read on.

Trick of the Trade #1: One of the things I teach at my classes is tricks of the trade with coupon usage. The first trick of the trade is:

Another site we like referring to is http://blog.totallyready.com/. The author shares money saving tips each Wednesday which can be helpful for whatever BabyStep you are on.

Here is what my food storage looks like after stocking up on a couple things each time I went grocery shopping, and after taking advantage of the case lot sales that are going on in local grocery stores around Utah.

TO PREPARE for the Case Lot Sales, this is what I did:

-Took my three month supply excel file, and figured out what I still needed to buy.

-Bought everything that was on sale that was on my list.

THAT’S IT! However I did already have my excel file all complete.

My next steps are to buy another shelf, wait for a cereal, pasta, and toiletries sale and then STOCK UP on those items. After that I will have my 3 months supply of normal foods and be ready to start buying the Long Term stuff. How exciting!

p.s – I know I know if there were an earthquake then I would probably have problems keeping all these rows of stacked cans all cute, but I’ll work on that plan later. We promised ourselves we would tackle this bit by bit so we wouldn’t get overwhelmed- Our research has officially surpassed our actions but we’re catching up!

SO- I printed out my little sheet that tells me how much I usually spend for things at Walmart. Since I had the sizes and price per oz, it was so easy for me to decide which items to buy at COSTCO vs. WALMART. Anyways, I was really excited it was so useful.

Make sure you take a closer look at the spreadsheet and the tutorial and get yours started today.