This morning I mixed up some pancake batter and cooked them on the outside grill for the kiddos. I felt like oatmeal. I have about a cup of almond butter. A friend of mine loves to eat peanut butter and oatmeal. I really like almond butter so I tried it with my steel cut oats this morning and it is really, really, good. I think I may eat it every morning for the next week.

Lunch: left over spaghetti, black bean and cheese burrito, and chicken curry with rice. I really enjoy the chicken curry recipe, its the coconut milk. I am storing a lot of canned coconut milk.

Snack/Treat: Birdseed Treat. What? Is that for humans or birds? Stumbled upon this recipe when I was looking for something sweet to make this afternoon. In my health food cupboard I had all sorts of seeds. Not much of any particular seed but enough to make these Birdseed Treats. The kiddos loved them. The recipe makes a small batch but just enough. With only raw honey Julz could eat them too!

Gnocchi for dinner tonight. I continue to amaze myself with the recipes I find that I can make with what I have on hand. We love gnocchi but I usually buy it in the freezer section on the grocery store. I do not care for the shelf stable gnocchi. But onces I made it myself I will never buy store bought gnocchi again. Never is a strong word. Seriously this is easy and the ingredients are so simple. Thrive potato beads, egg, salt, pepper and flour.  Gnocchi is a potato dumpling.  An Italian food. My kiddos have a smidgen of Italian blood from Mr. Incredible’s side of the family. And they seem to really enjoy Italian food because of it. Normally gnocchi is not made with potato beads but with real potatoes boiled, peeled, and mashed. Let me tell you that potato beads are way faster. And I am out of fresh potatoes anyway.

Below is my play-by-play photos of food storage gnocchi after I have made the dough.

Roll it like a snake and cut into 1/2 inch pieces.

Drop the gnocchi into a pot of boiling water. When they float to the top scoop them out. It takes a couple of minutes for the gnocchi to float.

Pile them in a bowl while the other gnocchi are boiling. One batch I added some italian seasoning to the dough. Just for fun.

Pagey and Gigi couldn’t stop snitching them out of the bowl. I love gnocchi with a good white cheese sause. I had on hand a white cream sause mix that I whipped up. I added 1/4 cup of Monterey Jack cheese (I know its not Italian, but it was handy) to the cream sauce.

I served the gnocchi with rehydrated asparagus. With fresh ground pepper its so good! I can live on food storage and love it.

I doubled the recipe but should have tripled it for my family tonight. This is a winner.

Happy Thrive’n!

I have mention my friend Heather before. But this morning I made her Mix and Match Muffins for breakfast and they were a hit! I even had a little snag mixing them up this morning. I followed the recipe to a T.  But I have this issue with my brown sugar, its rock hard.

The brown sugar was rock hard until I smashed the bag on the counter to break it up a bit. Now its all sandy like. My Julz says it would make perfect sand for a beach scene cake. She loves watching Cake Boss. Anyway there are big chunks and small pieces. Its a quite inconvenient to work with especially when I know I have moist, soft brown sugar, sealed tight in my Thrive cans down stairs. But I am being thrifty and don’t want to throw away seven pounds of brown sugar because its hard as a rock. The best by date on the side of the bag is 10/2012. I am only a few months off. But its been rock hard for ages. It still tastes fine and cooks fine, its just dried out. I sifted the sugar this morning through my salad spinner strainer part. I do not have a sophisticated kitchen here. It works well for the application.

Back to the muffins. I mixed up the dry ingredients but was out of white sugar upstairs. And since everyone was sleeping and it was 7 am I didn’t want to go downstairs into the cold storage. I wanted to enjoy the peace and quite while I mixed up the muffins. Also since you can see my brown sugar isn’t the friendliest to bake with. I forgot to add the sugar to the dry ingredients!

Heather is not kidding when she says this is thick batter! Its like dough. Really really thick. I rehydrated 1 1/2 cups of freeze dried blueberries in 1 cup of hot water. And let that sit while I mixed up everything else. This is the point when I remember I didn’t add the sugar! Now I am going to have blue batter blueberry muffins because I now have to mix the sugar in with the blueberries already in the batter. I grab the “sifter”, salad spinner inner strainer and sift a cup of sandy brown sugar. I mix it in the best I could. I really could have used Mr. Incredibles muscles for the job. But he was still in bed.

Here they are baked and blue. But oh so good. My Gigi asked if they were store bought! How about that as a compliment from a 6 year old. I told her that was the nicest thing she could have said to me.  The half mixed in brown sugar gave the muffins an outer sugar crust. This recipe make 12 regular size muffins and 10 mini muffins. They bake for 25 minutes.

Spaghetti and a Southwest Chili Lime Thrive Express for lunch today. Easy and fast.

We ate dinner late tonight. The kiddos had left over California Casserole after school. We also snacked on freeze dried peaches and passion fruit yogurt bites.

For dinner I made curry chicken so I could use the other half of the coconut milk that I had saved in the fridge since Sunday. I love coconut milk. I am going to store a lot of it! This chicken curry recipe is so easy with Thrive food, it takes a 45 minute recipe and cuts it into a 15 minute recipe. By the time the rice has steamed the chicken curry is ready. Love that. I am not taking photos of duplicate recipes.

Tonight at dinner we talked about how next Thursday will be our last day eating from our food storage. I am really enjoying it now and think I could go on for quite awhile longer. I have sure learned a lot through this experience.

Seven more days here we go! Maybe I will get crazy and try seven new recipes. Maybe.

Yes we ate in that order today.

As you know I baked bagels last night. Julz wanted to bring one in her lunch with chicken salad. With Thrive food chicken salad is a cinch. Julz makes it herself. She just used the left over salad she made last week. The ratios I use are 1 cup chopped chicken (fd), 1/2 cup celery (fd), and 1/4 cup chopped onion (fd). Rehydrate in 1 1/4 cup hot water. Let the sit until all the water is absorbed. After 10 minutes drain off any excess liquid. Chill for and hour in the fridge then add a couple teaspoons of mayonaise.  Those ratios are enough to make two large chicken salad sandwiches. And that is what Julz brought for lunch today, well one on a bagel.

For breakfast I used 2 fresh eggs, 3/4 cup sausage crumbles (fd) rehydrated with 1/2 cup hot water, and 1/2 cup Colby cheese (fd) rehydrated in cold water.  This made 4 bagel breakfast sandwiches. Reese really enjoyed these this morning. He doesn’t particularly care for ham, egg, and cheese sandwiches but he loved sausage egg and cheese on a bagel. Yay! Add it to the list of things Reese will eat happily.

These bagels are made with half whole wheat and half white flour.

Thrive freeze dried cheese will melt much better than this but it needs time to rehydrate. I only had about 5 minutes to let it soak in cold water, not enough time to rehydrate fully.

On Wednesdays Paige and I go to a play group. We packed apples, blueberries, raspberries, pineapple all freeze dried in a snack bag and a bean and rice burrito to eat for lunch. We also mixed up some Thrive peach drink and took it along with us. No photos of our lunch but it was good. We also snacked on our pretzels we made the night before.

I organized my recipe binder. Can you believe it? Its been a jumbled mess for so many years. About 4 years ago I attempted to organize it but this time I really did it. There is something about living on your food storage that makes “impossible” tasks become easy. There has got to be some universal law at work here. I am not sure which law it is. The law of provident living? I have also organized my cooking/baking utensil drawer and my bathroom shelves during this challenge.

I found a recipe I received at a crock pot recipe exchange over three years ago.

Here is the play-by-play photos for this recipe.

I used Thrive Instant milk in this recipe instead of fresh milk. So I just added 1 tablespoon of instant powder milk to the dry ingredients. Then added 1/2 cup of water instead of milk.

I went a little crazy with the non-stick cooking spray. Thats kinda gross.

This part of the recipe I had to read twice. Since my brown sugar is very hard and dry I boiled 1 1/2 cups of water and added the brown sugar so it would dissolve and the cocoa. I was a little leery about pouring this sugar water mixture over the batter. But it works. Trust me I’ve tried it.

The crock pot is set to high. My crock pot cooks hot. After an hour and a half. I took the lid off and took the crock out of the heating element/melt part. Then I left to scouts.

Here is what it looks like after its baked and cooled. My family is so good. They didn’t touch it until I came home and took a picture. That hole there on the right is a vent hole the “sauce” made on its own. No one snitched.

When you scoop the cake out there is this chocolate “spooning sauce” beneath the cake. I read the recipe 4 times trying to find the recipe for the “spooning sauce”. The cake was really good. Not too sweet. I would have liked a little more chocolate umph. But I had everything on hand and it was easy. It doesn’t call for any eggs. Yes ice cream would be good. Pagey keeps asking us to make ice cream. She is sure we can with the food we have on hand. I tell her we need cream and we’ve used all the cream. We do have freeze dried ice cream. 🙂

Tonight we ate dessert first. Living on your food storage puts things in perspective. After cake we had california casserole again. Pagey’s request.

This is tougher than I thought, keeping track of the food we eat through out the week.

Flour/Grains

Rolled Oats 1.5 cups

Steel cut oats 2 cups

popcorn 1/4 cup

rice flour 3 cups

wheat flour 11 cups

rice 4.5 cups

pasta 3 pounds

Oil  2 cups oil of corn or olive oil not including the butter

Beans 1 can of black

Vegetables 1 can of corn, 1 can of green beans, 2 cups of freeze dried onions, 1 cup of mushrooms, 1 can diced tomatos, a large #10 can of crushed tomatoes, 1 small can of tomato sauce, lots of freeze dried  vegetables.

Fruits we opened #10 cans of bananas, pineapple, mangos, grapes, fuji apples. We all snack on these and add them to smoothies.

Cheese 3.5 cups freeze dried cheese

Milk 3 cups instant

Eggs  4 tablespoons whole egg powder, one fresh egg, 3.5 cup scrambled egg mix

Meat 1/2 cup sausage freeze dried, 4 pints of canned chicken, 2 cups of seasoned freeze dried chicken, 1 cup of freeze dried ground beef, one can of beef chunks.

We are down to 2 pounds of butter

Salt and Bouillon 1/4 cup

Sugar white and brown 3 cups, 2 cups of honey

Other Items 

opened a can of freeze dried ice cream sandwiches

opened a #10 can of peach drink mix

1 cup of sunflower seeds

4 tablespoons of sprouting seeds

sesame seeds

1 can of coconut milk

1 box of whipping cream

3 cups of brownie mix

6 teaspoons of mexican vanilla

We are going through the syrup too.

This morning I made steel cut oats. To mix it up a bit I added freeze dried blueberries just before serving the hot mess. It was good after adding the brown sugar, maple syrup and cinnamon. I also made a smoothie with the kefir that was really ready to be used. Kefir is a probiotic. Similar to yogurt. When you buy these little kefir grains you can use them indefinitely as long as they are taken care of. I asked Julie the owner at Cultures for Health how kefir grains do with powder milk (reconstituted of course). Julie said the kefir grain disintegrate in powdered milk and disappear. I was sad to hear this.  I am currently feeding my kefir grains the milk delivered by our milk man.

Lunch: I get working and don’t like to stop what I am doing to make something to eat. So at lunch time I heated up some leftover spaghetti and sauce from our Friday night dinner. I made 2 pounds of pasta that night for us and our guests. It was plenty. I had nearly a pound of leftover fettucini noodles. I popped popcorn for Pagey and her friend who was playing over. I also made some toast and butter.

For after school snack today I whipped up a pasta salad, it had freeze dried asparagus, red bell peppers, onions and mushrooms then fettucini again and some vinaigrette Julz mixed up for our sprout salads. The pasta salad was okay, I added a bit of goat cheese from the fridge. That gave it a gourmet taste. Oh and some salt and pepper.

I was hungry tonight. Its cool how fast dinner can be to fix when eating from food storage. I whipped up chicken and dumplings in about 15 minutes. I boiled several cups of water added freeze dried peas, dehydrated carrots, celery, onions, chicken bouillon, a can of green beans, a can of corn, a pint of my pressure canned chicken and some potato beads to thicken up the broth. A few herbs, thyme and sage and some pepper. Whipped up the dumplings, flour, oil, milk, salt and baking powder. Let those cook in the boiling soup and served. Everyone enjoyed it. It was filling and loaded with vegetables.

Pancakes for breakfast. Used my Thrive whole egg powder and instant milk in the batter. My brother-in-law found these outdoor grills that use propane. Anything and everything we cook on it tastes excellent! I am so glad we bought the grill. We will cook breakfast outside in 18 degree temps. We can make like 14 pancakes at a time! When its Sunday and you want to get to church on time that is a very handy thing. No one has to yell, “I get the first one!”. They still do yell it but everyone gets the first one.

I have had this binder I use for my recipes I am given or find and print from the internet for 10years. Its a mess. It works for me. I think its important to have hard copies of recipes incase you can’t access the interent for some reason. So I keep my tried and true recipes in my binder.

The chicken curry is a tried and true. I have never made it with food storage though until today. I had about a cup of coconut milk in the fridge from my last recipe I made, the chicken mango stir fry. It was just the right amount for my chicken curry.

I used my pressure canned chicken for the curry. I dumped it with the liquid along with all the seasonings the recipe calls for: cumin, garlic, ginger, turmeric  curry powder, and pepper. I also added freeze dried green chilis and freeze dried onions. I stirred it around and then added a can of chicken broth, the coconut milk and the freeze dried tomatoes. I was amazed how the freeze dried tomatoes held their shape. When I use fresh tomatoes they cook down and disintegrate in the curry, so Reese will still eat the curry. With identifiable tomatoes he wasn’t willing to even taste it. Reese ate rice with soy sauce and butter for dinner.

When I was making the curry chicken tonight I thought I was out of curry powder. I have been in a stock up (not stock pile) mode and I added about $100 worth of herbs, spices, and teas to my food storage last June. I purchased the herbs in 1 pound packages. Yes so nearly a life time supply. I love Mountain Rose Herbs, they have high quality products and the prices are a very good value. My mother in law is an herbalist and recommends all of her clients to purchase from Mountain Rose or Star West Botanicals. I have a half of pound of curry powder in my freezer. I store most of my herbs and spices in my freezer or in my cold storage. I want the freshness to last as long as possible.

Who doesn’t love a treat on Sunday night. I got out my Thrive brownie mix and made brownies in a muffin tin. I saw a pan that bakes individual brownie squares so everyone can have an edge piece. I figure a muffin pan would give me the same result but in a circle share rather than a square. Plus I have the muffin tin already!

German pancake, FAIL. My sister in Seattle loves German Pancakes. I thought I would give it a try. I used the scrambled egg mix in this recipe. It never really puffed up and was burnt around the edges  I am not sure where I went wrong.

It was very dense. The good news was, since I have never made a German Pancake before my kiddos didn’t know what to expect. Pagey called it a “pancake pie”. I had a piece too. It tasted good, the result just wasn’t what I knew it could be. We all ate it with syrup and butter. Nothing went to waste.

Scrambled Eggs were a hit. Mr Incredible loves scrambled eggs. So he whipped up a batch using the scrambled egg mix. Reese and him ate them all. I am cool with that. I don’t care much for eggs.

The kiddos ate Cup O Noodle for lunch. Does anyone else buy these cases of noodle cups when they are on sale for the case lot, or at Costco? I know it is NOT nutrient dense food. More like nutrient non-existent.  They are quick and easy and cheap. As long as my family doesn’t have them everyday I am good with it.  I ate left over spaghetti from last night. We went to the Young Ambassador performance at the Conference Center’s Little Theater. The whole family enjoyed the performance. Its so fun to get out and do out-of-the-normal activities.

Beef Stroganoff to the rescue.  I needed a quick dinner tonight. Mr. Incredible and I went out with some friends. Mr. Incredible has been wanting to see Skyfall, the latest James Bond movie. We missed it in the first run theaters. I really like paying the cheap theater prices, $2 a ticket! Four of us went to the movies for the price of one at the big theater. The seats are decent and the theaters are clean. Its not the old gross second run theaters. We enjoyed the movie.  This is where I need to confess. I bought movie popcorn and 2 treats! I fell off the wagon.  Well actually Mr. Incredible did and I ate them too. We made a fast dinner for the kiddos but didn’t have time to eat any ourselves. I am not sure if this is really breaking the rules or not. I think it does technically. We are not suppose to eat at restaurants or go grocery shopping during this entire challenge. Movie popcorn and candy? I go to the theater to eat the popcorn. The kiddos loved the beef stroganoff. I used Thrive sour cream powder and freeze dried mushrooms. My canned beef chunks are wonderful. The sauce is done by the time the noodles are through cooking.

I made an egg scramble this morning. I had 4 potatoes left and shredded two of them for breakfast. I mixed up the equivalent of 5 eggs using the scrambled egg mix. I chose to add mixed bell peppers. I have fallen in love again with Thrive’s mixed bell peppers. They are so good. And a #10 can lasts forever! I also added freeze dried onions, and freeze dried sausage and some freeze dried green chilis. All Thrive of course.

I walked away from the hash browns to help Julz order some photos for a school project. The potatoes burned pretty bad in the center. I cut out the burnt part and the rest was okay. I have no resources to waste. I added the scrambled egg mix and the veggies and the rehydrated and drained meat. I used the left over liquid to deglaze the pan and then dumped in the eggs and veggies. The skillet was excellent. I am slacking on my picture taking. It looked similar to the skillet I cooked last week. This one was not as greasy.

For lunch I made chicken soft tacos with our left over chicken and tortillas from our enchiladas last night. After school Reese had a friend over. Reese’s friend wanted waffles. I swear waffles are our go-to food. We snacked on freeze dried pineapple, and freeze dried fuji apples. Oh we opened a can of freeze dried ice cream sandwiches. Reese really loves them. I really love Thrive freeze dried double chocolate ice cream bars.

Last week I invited my friend Rachel and her family over for dinner for tonight. She has four children and her husband and my husband are in a similar line of work. Rachel brought a yummy guacamole dip, fresh bell peppers and celery sticks. Loved it!

I made spaghetti, a dinner staple. We eat spaghetti all the time. I was amazed when I realized its been 12 days and we have not had spaghetti for dinner yet. Tonight was the night.

We used all Thrive vegetables. This is a recipe Mr. Incredible found in the summer and made a batch using fresh vegetables. Mr. Incredible does not normally cook up recipes in the kitchen. I was thrilled with how well it turned out when he made it this summer. Tonight I asked him to dig out the recipe again so we could make it for our pasta. This time it was even better because the prep time was cut in half since we used all Thrive veggies. Mr. Incredible said, “I like cooking with Thrive.” Marvelous I tell you! I have canned crushed tomatos and tomato sauce  in my food storage. I also used and love the versatility of the Thrive tomato powder. I make it into tomato paste all the time.

I am storing many pounds of Italian organic whole wheat pasta. The sauce  was served on fettucini tonight.

After school today I made the kiddos a tortilla with cheese. They also ate Thrive mangos, and a smoothie. I keep kefir grains and make the kefir into a smooth when its ready. I save the powder from the bottoms of my fruit cans to mix into the smoothies. The freeze drying process removes 98 % of the water from the food. Some of the fruits have turned into powder at the end of the can from jostling around during shipping.

Today we added strawberry powder and peach powder to our smoothie. Gigi helped me make it.  I have some mango powder and more strawberry powder to add to the next smoothie. Normally I add frozen berries and other frozen fruit to thicken it. With the food storage exercise going on, I am adding ice instead. I add a quarter cup of Thrive fruit drink and a cup of water and ice, ice baby. I like my smoothies cold and thick.

This is not cheating. On Tuesday I invited my brother’s family over to dinner for tonight. My gracious sister-in-law offered to bring something to the dinner. She is such a doll. I asked her how she felt about bringing a green salad.  She did and it was fabulous because she is fabulous herself. We got to eat fresh green salad tonight. And my brother’s family got to eat yummy chicken enchiladas from our food storage. Even Stevens.

Enchiladas start with tortillas. At 2:30 this afternoon I started dinner.  It needed to be ready by 6:oo pm. Don’t you just love slaving away in the kitchen?  I am totally kidding! The more familiar I am getting in cooking with my food storage the easier, yummier and quicker it becomes. Its like my creative mind starts working and I have ideas about making this or that with what I have on hand. It is amazing!

While the dough rests I make the filling. Its a cinch because is all shelf stable. I use cream of chicken soup. I know some of you are rolling your eyes at cream of chicken soup. Its not the healthiest choice but it is shelf stable and its for company. And it is for company. Honestly this is how I make my creamy chicken enchiladas, with cream of chicken soup. Sorta lame-O but totally yum-O. I add some spices and green chilis. I added two pints of my canned chicken. My cousin in Arizona taught me how to pressure can chicken. It is wonderful! And so easy. Promise. As long as you have a pressure canner. When I find chicken for a song I load up and pressure can several pints. Normally a pint is plenty for a dinner for my family.

At 4:45 I do need to start the tortillas which I whip up in 5 minutes. The dough I mean. Then I enlist Julz to help me roll or cook the tortillas. I have learned it is best to give my kiddos choices, they love to choose the task they do. And honestly I appreciate the help so which ever she wanted to do would be marvelous. She chose rolling the tortillas. She doesn’t like working next to the hot stove. She is rolling the dough and I am baking the tortillas.  I tell her we need to have the enchiladas wrapped up in the oven by 5:30, we have 20 minutes to get them done. Ready, set,  go. Its like Cupcake Wars and Julz loves that show.

With the enchiladas in the oven, I make refried beans with the rest of my pinto beans. Beans are a residual food in so many ways. The refried beans are okay. I will have to explore other recipes. Cheese we used Thrive Colby cheese tonight. We are a cheesy family.

It was a good day livin’ on our food storage. This is a great exercise for me in all sorts of ways. I am so happy my family rocks and is willing to do it with me! No photos. With company it threw everything off and I forgot to get my camera out when we were eating.