Today we are highlighting our Books We Love board. This board is full of books we love and like to keep on hand in case of emergency. While the internet is great, you can’t always count on it being there in case of emergency!

To see the whole board, click here.

• PIN 1: We’ve pinned our ebook to our Books We Love board, since it’s been such a great resource for helping people plan, buy, and use their food storage.
• PIN 2: The book that changed Julie’s outlook on using beans in her everyday cooking. It has so many easy, and healthy recipes.
• PIN 3: This is one of Jodi’s favorite food storage cook books. It’s so fun, and cute, and it has EASY to use recipes.
• PIN 4: A great book to help you learn how to make your own food storage meals in jars. This is a great guide and can help get you started on making your own per-made food storage dinners.

Make sure you check out the rest of the items on the Books We Love board. We’ll keep adding to that board as we find great stuff, and we’ll see you tomorrow to highlight another one of our boards!

Don’t forget you can Follow us on Pinterest so you don’t miss any of the great stuff we will be pinning in the future.

One great way to have information off line is through books, printed recipes, and your Food Storage Made Easy Binder.

Food Storage Books

We have done a number of Food Storage Book reviews that we wanted to remind you about, and encourage you to figure out which books would best fit your needs. These are great things to ask for as gifts, or to give as gifts. Here are some of our current Food Storage Book reviews, along with some books we will be reviewing in the future:

Emergency Food Storage in a Nutshell – REVISED review to reflect the new edition
Country Beans – Amazing book on all things beans
Cooking with Food Storage Made Easy – Cute book with tons of easy recipes!
Jan’s Fabulous Food Storage Recipes – Treasure trove of great information
Dinner is in the Jar – A different approach to food storage

It’s in the Bag – COMING SOON
The Dehydrator Bible – COMING SOON
Cooking with Sunshine – COMING SOON

Food Storage Recipes

Recipes is probably one of the MOST important things to have in print format. Not only will it save your laptop from tomato slime by having it in the kitchen, but you’ll be able to cook without power and internet!

For some great tips about building your recipes offline see these posts:
How to Organize Your Recipes – Jodi shares her approach to compiling recipe binders with a great little tutorial
FREE Shelf Stable Cookbook – Compilation of over 200 shelf stable recipes you can print out and add to your binder

Food Storage Made Easy Binder

As a part of our Food Storage Made Easy ebook binder, we’ve included tons of informative articles and recipes you can turn to in times of need. We also encourage you to print other resources you find online or at classes you may attend and put it into your binder. Use the binder as your main go-to resource for building and using your food storage.

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.

*Please Note: 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)

 
Our class was for people who were “Getting Started”. We were happy that was our topic because we by no means feel like experts. We’re just sharing what we do with our Food Storage in our own experience. We thought since everyone couldn’t be there, we would share our slideshow notes with you… We really ought to make each one of these slides its own post, but for now you’ll have to just enjoy the cliff notes version.

So here goes it – this was our

	This is where we introduced ourselves and told people how we got started.
	For this slide, we made a little disclaimer – while we live and sleep food storage, we’re not total experts – but what we are good at, is helping people get started and excited about their food storage.
	Here we talked about all the SCARY food storage words that paralyzed us when we first got started.
	We weren’t afraid to show where we were 2 years ago, so the audience could see we really have come a LONG way.
	This is where we started talking about the common stumbling blocks. The first stumbling block is having NO IDEA where to start. Our checklists solve that problem.
	The NO SPACE excuse is so OLD! We solved this a long time ago with the help or our readers in our “Small Storage Spaces Solutions” post and handout
	No Time? No problem. Use food storage as a time-saver and cook things ahead of time like pizza pockets and pre-made smoothie mixes
	No Money- No problem. Jodi shared a lot of her lessons learned about how people with small budgets can use food storage to SAVE money.
	Now we get into the “Strategies” – Sometimes you just have to snap and get something done. Pick a day each month to work on things.
	Recommit… If you fall off the Food Storage train, remember you can always come back on and work little by little.
	If at first you don’t succeed- try try again. Like Julie tried again and again to finally fall in love with beans.
	Ever think getting things done with kids around is too hard- plan on things taking an extra 15-20 minutes and involve them. You’ll make great memories and teach great lessons.
	Like Jodi and Julie, get a friend to try all the new and exciting things in the world of Food Storage. Messing up is so much more fun when you have someone to laugh with.
	Make a plan, and use our ebook binder to help you stay organized!

We really had so much fun and met some cool companies and vendors at the fair. We’ll be reviewing some of Peggy Layton’s books, along with Emergency Food in a Nutshell by Leslie Probert and Lisa Harkness. We felt so excited and honored to meet these Food Storage experts.

We also met companies who have all sorts of different types of foods we want to learn more about. We also saw some cool solar ovens/ battery packs we’ll be researching.

Jodi also will probably dedicate an entire post to the lady selling honey of all sorts of varieties and flavors, while Julie tells you how much she drooled over some awesome storage containers – but alas this post is TOO LONG!

See you soon,

Dinner Is In The Jar Quick, Easy Dinner Mixes in Mason Jars or Mylar Bags by Kathy Clark

Background: If you know Jodi and me, you would be surprised at how much we differ, while being very similar at the same time.  When my husband and I met, he told Jodi (his sister) – “I met a girl I know you’re going to like- she’s just like YOU!” When it comes to cooking, meal planning and recipes however; the only thing we have in common is our deep and abiding love for Cadbury mini-eggs- which you would know about if you were a Facebook Fan.  Anyways, I’m SO not into recipes. I wing meal planning, make things up, and barely measure stuff.   Since incorporating food storage into my daily cooking however, I have found myself using more recipes and was even EXCITED to review this book.   “Dinner Is In The Jar” is filled with meal mix recipes that can be easily stored in mason jars or mylar bags.  By following the instructions, recipes, and guides you can create a suppy of easily prepared dinners using food storage ingredients for emergencies and convenience.  A lot of the recipes have add-ons like meat, or cheese for when you are actually making them, but most of the ingredients are in fact “In The Jar”.

What I Liked: What I liked most about this book is the simplicity and instructions.  Each recipe has a list of ingredients to put in your mason jar or mylar bag.  With each recipes comes a page with labels you can photocopy that have the instructions for actually cooking the meal when the time comes.  I also liked a lot of the meal ideas.  They were meals that you would like eating and that sounded N-O-R-M-A-L.  I’m not into fancy hard recipes.

Favorite Tip: My favorite tip is the step-by-step instructions on how to use mylar bags instead of mason jars.  Mason jars can be expensive and using mylar bags is a great alternative.  Kathy even suggests giving these as gifts and I could totally see myself decorating the labels, tying ribbons around them and using them as neighbor gifts come Christmas.

Feedback: If I had one suggestion for getting the most out of this book, I would plan on preparing the mixes in a group with friends, family members or neighbors. Some mixes require a lot of different spices or ingredients and I imagine buying the stuff in bulk would make it more cost effective.  If you don’t plan on making these in a group setting, then probably plan on making large quantity of a few recipes, rather then a few of each kind of recipe – did that makes sense?

Summary: For someone looking to make pre-made mixes and have easy to use instructions, recipes, and labels “Dinner In A Jar” is AWESOME!

If you haven’t purchased your Food Storage Made Easy eBook Binder yet, we are currently offering a $5 off promotion if you do an educational “assignment” related to the Seven Day Challenge. Click here for more details on how to get the discount! Just think for only $12 (or $17) you get our full binder download plus great updates like these for free FOR LIFE!

If you have already purchased a binder but haven’t signed up for Free Binder Updates For Life yet please email us a copy of your PayPal confirmation or the name/email address you used when you purchased your binder. We will then send you details on how to get your free updates. If you purchased a bulk copy of the binder at a discount you will need to pay for the updates for life upgrade in order to be added to the list. Let us know if you have any questions about the process.

Thanks to everyone who has been patiently waiting for us to put these together. It was a lot of work and we were a bit burnt out from getting through the Seven Day Challenge.