What are Powdered Eggs:

Powdered eggs are eggs that have been dehydrated and made into a simple powder, with a texture similar to that of powdered milk. While some brands of powdered eggs utilize the whole egg, others will only include the yolks or the whites, and may add other ingredients to enhance the flavor or the texture of the reconstituted eggs. Generally, it is possible to purchase powdered eggs in bulk, making them ideal for use in food storage programs.

Advantages of Powdered Eggs:

Dehydrated eggs have several advantages over fresh eggs.

First, powdered eggs have a longer shelf life. With proper storage, dried eggs can easily last for the better part of a decade. It is not necessary to store the eggs in a refrigerated area; all that is required is a cool to moderate temperature and a dark cabinet or cupboard.

Eggs that have been dried require much less storage space. This means substantial supplies of eggs can be kept on hand in a relatively small space. Re-hydrating the eggs for use in omelets and to make scrambled eggs require nothing other than the addition of a liquid, usually water or milk. In powdered form, the eggs can be added to baked recipes without the need to mix them with a liquid ahead of time.

Another benefit offered by powdered eggs is the price. A pound of dehydrated egg products is significantly cheaper than purchasing an equivalent number of fresh eggs. This makes the dehydrated eggs very cost effective.

Using Powdered Eggs:

Today, powdered or dry types of eggs are packaged in several different ways. Whole eggs may be dehydrated and later used in many recipes where whole eggs are needed. It is also possible to purchase powdered egg yolks as well as whole eggs. For use in recipes where the whites are all that is used, such as in meringues, packages of powdered egg whites are available, although there is some difference of opinion as to how well powdered egg whites work and taste when utilized in some recipes.

History Lesson:

The production of powdered eggs is usually traced back to the first half of the 20th century. The eggs were extensively used during World War II, especially in countries where food supplies were airlifted in to feed civilians displaced by occupations and bombings. In the United States, powdered eggs were often used as a substitute for fresh eggs during periods of rationing, allowing fresh eggs to be routed to provide nutrition to people serving in the military. Even with first call on fresh eggs, many branches of the military also utilized the powdered versions as a matter of expediency.

For more information on Cooking and Buying powdered eggs, visit our sisters sites!

Today we are revealing the 7th piece of our Seven Day Challenge puzzle: BINDER UPDATES FOR LIFE!

For those of you who have purchased our Food Storage Made Easy DOWNLOADABLE Binder- you may have been worrying: “What happens when Jodi and Julie do updates to BabySteps, or great new posts!?!?! I want those in my binder too!”

Well we’ve been waiting for the right moment to tell you, but when you purchased a copy of of the Food Storage Made Easy Binder, you qualified to be emailed* in pdf format:

• BabySteps Pages as they are revised
• Extra special posts that we publish new since the binder was created
• Updates to any checklists or recipes we have in the original binder

The first set up updates will be emailed* to you as pdf’s after the summer crash course is finished and will include:

• All 10 BabySteps sheets REVISED!
• Shelf Life handout
• Water Evaporation Still post
• Copies of our Bucket Labels
• What To Do With Extra #10 Cans Post
• AND more!

So, if you haven’t already purchased your DOWNLOADABLE Binder, hurry up- buy it, start using it to get ready for the Seven Day Challenge, then enjoy it forever as you will always have the newest and most up to date information sent right to your email* (and we will always format them nicely to match the rest of your binder — no more ugly website printouts!)

***IMPORTANT NOTE: PLEASE PLEASE READ BEFORE YOU EMAIL US***

If you have already purchased a Food Storage Made Easy Downloadable Binder, you will be sent an email in the next few weeks with a link to sign up for the binders for life updates. By signing up for the list, you will automatically get the updates forever.

If you were given the Binder as a gift by someone who purchased multiple copies, we will not have your email address- to sign up to receive the binders for life bonus, see the “Upgrade Option” at the bottom of the Binders in Bulk page.

We decided it would be good to revise each BabyStep as part of our Summer Crash Course. So jump in and get started … it’s not too late! This week we are covering BabyStep 4: Long Term Food Storage Education (click here to view the full step)

• Updated the key points and split them into categories
• Added tutorial video for Food Storage Calculator
• Added printable pdf version of the Food Storage Calculator
• Added numerous books and websites in the resources section

Food Storage Made Easy Recipes Page
Food Storage Shelf Life
Food Storage and Money Savings
Long Term Calculator Q&A (scroll down to read more about our milk recommendations)

Stay tuned for a more advanced post on this topic coming later this week

Awhile back, Jodi made a post called From Chaos to Clarity where she organized all her long term food storage. She made these cute labels for her big buckets and since then we’ve had a lot of requests for them. Well, we finally are getting around to making them available for you to download.

We made labels for red wheat, white wheat, flour, oats, rice, pasta, black beans, red beans, sugar, milk and a blank one for the items you store that aren’t necessarily “the typical” items.

To access the pdf, simply click here or click on the image below:

Simply print out how many you need and tape them to your buckets…Hope you like them!

How to “reuse” your #10 cans

• Decorate them with printed paper, ribbon, and anything else to make them cute. FIll them with fun stuff (candy, lotion, soaps, etc.) and give them out as presents.
• Decorate them and then fill them with flowers for center pieces at a party.
• Use them to store all sorts of things like flour, and wheat from the big plastic buckets, trail mix, homemade crackers, gluten flour, etc.
• Have your kids decorate them and make drums out of them.
• You can use them to store buttons, sewing, pencils, crayons etc.
• Make tin can ice cream in them.
• Refalange it! (I’m not sure that’s how you spell it). There is a falanger which will take that rim off the top of the can and make it ready to seal again.
• Put your first aid kit in it, and put it in your 72 hour kit (with a lid).
• Put vitamins, hair ribbons, cooking spoons, or rolled napkins with silverware for picnics in them.
• Put contact paper on the outside to make it more decorative.
• Recycle them!
• Use it for pre-made mixes in your fridge.
• Use your #10 cans as containers for gifts –maybe an FHE kit all containing contents all about food storage.
• Use them to put nails, screws, and other small objects. They help keep things cleaner in a shop or garage.
• Use them while changing the oil in dirt bikes or the car.
• Take #10 cans and paint them to match your kitchen. Then make vinyl stickers to label the contents of each can. They are decorative as well as FUNCTIONAL! Refill out of big buckets when needed!

Thanks again to everyone who shared their ideas with us. Please feel free to leave a comment with any more ideas you might have. The more of your ideas we read, the more excited we got to try some of these out ourselves!

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!

We updated the calculator to allow you to define the number of months of food you wish to store. It now not only includes # of adults and # of kids, but it also includes # of months desired.

Julie also tells you how to use, and now alter the spreadsheet. In the training tutorial, she goes through how to:

-Add foods
-Change foods
-Delete foods
-Change quantities
-How to use the cost/unit field
-General tips on the NEW spreadsheet

So if you have had a question about any of those things, go ahead and watch the tutorial.

Milk Recommendations:

Many of you have asked about why we recommend storing so much milk. There are basically two schools of thought on long term food storage. One recommends a 2300 calorie diet with 300 lbs of grains and 75 lbs of powdered milk. A more recent recommendation has been to increase the calories to 2400, raise the grains to 400 lbs, and lower powdered milk to just 16 lbs.

Either way you go will provide enough nutrition for you to sustain life. However, for families with nursing mothers or small children it is important to use the higher recommendation for milk in order to provide adequate nutrition. If you only store 16 lbs that is only enough for one cup of milk per day. Another reason we use the higher milk recommendation by default is because if you were unable to find ways to cook your food, you can actually sustain life by ONLY drinking powdered milk for quite some time. So all you would need is to add water and you could survive.

Feel free to modify the calculator to fit your family’s needs, but that is the reasoning behind our recommendation in comparison to some other calculators you might see. For more details on this topic click here.

To help you help your special someone come up with a thoughtful and fun gift for you we have put together a little handwritten note you can pass along telling them what you really want is a Food Storage Made Easy Downloadable Binder.

You can send your special someone this link, or print the note itself – whatever works. If your spouses are anything like ours, you’ll enjoy the letter. We finally decided hinting at things does not work so well. Read on…

Also to those of you have been asking, we finally have our bulk pricing for the Food Storage Made Easy Downloadable Binders. We had a lot of people ask about making multiple copies to share and we came up with a way to make it affordable to purchase additional “copies” of the Food Storage Made Easy Downloadable Binder. See the bulk orders sheet for more info.

Food Safety Throw Away Guidelines

As food ages it naturally will change in flavor, odor, and texture. The worse these conditions are the less likely we will be to eat a particular food, but if it were safe to begin with, and it passes the following food safety test now, then it should be safe. A good rule of thumb is “When in Doubt—Throw It Out.” (This list was taken from a handout produced by the Utah State Extension Service)

The following chart gives throw away guidelines.

1. Food was not processed properly. If improper processing times, methods, and/or recipes were used for home canned vegetables and meats, the jar may be sealed, but the product deadly—DO NOT TASTE—discard.

2. Look for the following signs of spoilage—DO NOT TASTE—discard:

• Bulging lid—lid must be definite concave, and seal cannot be lifted with fingers.
• Milky appearance to liquid—as food ages the liquid will become more cloudy and a residue will begin to form in bottom of jar—this is the food sluffing off, but the appearance should not be milky.
• Mold growth of any kind.
• Slimy appearance or texture.
• Rancid odor—especially in foods which contain any amount of fat, like dehydrated protein.
• Corrosion on inside of can, especially along seam (particular problem with canned foods older than 10 years or so.
• Rust—especially on seam or seal of can.
• Frozen can or bottle—freezing produces hairline fractures in seal and allows spoilage to begin.
• Off-smell—food generally changes in odor as it ages, if the smell has developed to the point it is undesirable.
• Food stored in non-food grade container—the container was not meant for food or once contained a non-food product (garbage bags, garbage cans, cleaning bottles or buckets, kitty liter containers, etc.).

In light of the current economic situation, we wanted to share with you some ideas on how having your food storage in place can help you financially in both the short term and long term.

Short Term Food Storage
Your short term food storage consists of getting a 3 month supply of foods that you eat on a day to day basis. Once you have this in place you can start to grocery shop from your food storage and only replenish those items when they go on sale and/or you have coupons. This will actually reduce your grocery budget as you will only buy things that are deeply discounted. But those few dollars a month will not mean as much to you as the food will if you have a short term emergency. For example, my husband took a pay cut for several months and we were able to spend less than HALF of our usual grocery budget for those months because we had stockpiled so much of our every day foods.

Long Term Food Storage
Your long term food storage consists of getting a year’s supply worth of life-sustaining foods that have a long shelf-life. These are items such as wheat, white rice, dried beans, powdered milk, etc. Since the shelf life is so long you can gradually purchase the items when they are on sale and work up to a year’s supply. If you get brave enough to start using your long term food storage items in your everyday cooking, you can also save some money in the short term. Homemade bread is significantly cheaper than store-bought, especially if you grind your own wheat. Making other items from scratch such as muffins, pancakes, etc. can also save you money over buying packaged items.

In times of economic trouble you can rely on your food storage for long periods of time while other people are begrudging the high prices of rice and wheat. Prices will most likely come down before you deplete your stores. Lastly, if a major disaster, economic melt-down, or other long-term emergency were to occur, you can feel confident that your family will be able to survive with basic food and water for quite some time.