Sundays. Sometimes I love them and sometimes I don’t. This was a don’t love Sunday, Sunday. Pagey woke me up at 7:30 am asking me to make gnocchi for breakfast. Like I said yesterday, anything goes when you are living on your food storage. So gnocchi it was for breakfast. I also had a batch of naturally leavened brown rice waffles batter, for those who didn’t want gnocchi for breakfast, like me. I used the very last drops of the maple syrup. Every last drop.

Remember how I said I was going to really test myself during this last week of living on my foodstorage? Well for today I decided I was going to attempt fruit leather. I had a quart of bottled pears that no one was going to eat. They had been sitting in my cupboard for nearly 2 years. And I want to fill my quart jar with something we like better. So I scooped out the pears with a slotted spoon and added about a half a cup of freeze dried raspberry powder from the end of my raspberries. I pureed it in my blender. Below is the play-by-play in photos.

Pureed pears and raspberries, that is all the ingredients.

My food dehydrator bit the dust a couple of years ago. So I made this fruit leather in the oven. I covered a jell roll pan (mine is ceramic) with plastic wrap. Then I sprayed it lightly with non stick cooking spray.

I spread the puree as evenly as I could over the plastic wrap. Then I set this in the oven at 175 degrees for 6 hours.

The pureed fruit shrunk of course as the moisture evaporated. I didn’t realize this photo was so blurry. I didn’t take any others. I let this cool for an hour or so. The brown parts are a bit over done. The red parts are just right. All of the fruit is dry.

When the fruit leather was cooled I cut it into rectangles and put one piece in a snack size zip lock bag. I got 10 pieces of fruit leather from that quart of pears. Easy to grab snack or to pack in Gigi’s lunches. They are about the size of Fruit Island fruit leather, if not a little bigger.

For lunch I made chicken and rice. I used my Thrive Instant Brown rice. I am getting tired of all the white grains we are eating – mostly white rice, pasta, and flour. I have other options available but these are open and handy. I really want to rotate through the cans and buckets that I have opened. I added a half of pint of my canned chicken and a can of cream of chicken soup. I know, not exactly healthy. I was going to add freeze dried broccoli but didn’t feel like listening to the complaints about it. And I really just wanted everyone to eat it.

Remember those addicting doughnuts I made yesterday? Well Gigi was asking for those again. Begging might be the term. The oil was still in the cast iron pot. Plus I really wanted to verify the amount of each ingredient one more time before I finalized the recipe. So heck, I mixed up a batch of donuts! I let the dough rise in the fridge to slow it down a bit. Then right before church I rolled out the dough and cut them the same way as yesterday, because it worked so well. Then I put them on cookie sheets and covered the raw doughnuts with plastic wrap and let them rise again while we were at church.

As soon as we got home I turned on the oil and started frying up those yummy pieces of dough. Let me tell you, when you don’t roll the dough out so thin, about 3/4 of an inch or so and then let the dough rise and fry a thicker doughnut, well, they turn into heaven. Fluffy, soft, goodness in the middle of crispy golden outside. Put powder sugar or frosting on them and you’ll never be the same again. They really should be illegal.

Dinner. I had to put myself in a time out. Too many doughnuts or something, but I was in a mood and no fun to be around. I locked myself in my room. Mr. Incredible did dinner. Egg noodles with pasta sauce or butter. The kiddos like it. I got out of my mood after a nap and a conference call with Family Humanitarian Experience. I am on the steering committee. We are planning a trip to Guatemala this summer. Its going to be an incredible experience.

When all the kiddos were in bed I let myself out of “time out”. I made a Thrive Express, the Creamy Garden Vegetable Chowder. Its one of my favorites, I added some of the left over egg noodles to the soup. It was perfect. Then me and Mr. Incredible watched shows together and ate some popcorn.

Whew. I made it through the day. This food storage experience wasn’t very fun today.

Doughnuts made out of food storage, of course! I didn’t want to wake up at 5 am on Saturday morning to make doughnuts so last night at 11:00 pm I mixed up a batch of dough and let it rise in the fridge. This morning I was so eager to get rolling and cutting that I didn’t take a photo of the perfectly risen dough. A few months ago I got a hankering for cake doughnuts. Those hankerings seem to always fall on Sunday. So I tried my hand at them. The cake doughnuts turned out terribly. They tasted like rings of white cake soaked in oil. I felt my gall bladder working over time and cursing me for ingesting them. Most of the cake doughnuts went in the trash. These doughnuts on the other hand are yeast doughnuts, way easier for me  to make at home.

Last night these are the ingredients from my food storage that turned into these delightful things the next day.

The recipe makes 26 doughnuts and 26 doughnut holes.

I don’t own a doughnut cutter. My mother in law does. I do own a small bottle of aspirin and a wide mouth canning jar. They worked like champs. I dumped the aspirin in a bowl while I borrowed the bottle’s mouth.

My candy thermometer was so handy to keep temp on the oil. I usually don’t keep temp on my oil when I am frying. But I have learned if I don’t let the oil over heat I can save it and use it again.

These are the doughnut holes just sprinkled with powder sugar.

I could have made this picture so much more presentable except the kiddos were downing the doughnuts so fast I didn’t know if I would get a picture at all. So this is it. Gigi asked if we could make these everyday! No way honey. These are akin to illegal drugs and probably should never be made again. I had 6 myself. These doughnuts were very addicting. This afternoon I was having a fried, white sugar, white flour, doughnut withdrawal. Don’t make these unless you want to start a bad habit.

This was my food storage new venture for today. Last night was gnocchi, and this morning glazed doughnuts.

Lunch

Mr. Incredible made an egg scramble. When eating from food storage anything goes for any meal of the day. I made taco soup. Our Tostitos are long gone so no chips on top.  But it was dumping snow today so I  thought something warm and chili-like would be cozy. It was. I ate 3 bowls. Plus I still had two quarts of black beans I pressure canned last week. I wanted to make something that called for black beans. Taco soup does. Now I only have one quart to go.

Dinner

Julz babysat while Mr. Incredible and I went to the rec center to play wally ball with some friends. We never had played before and we had a blast. Julz made some bow tie pasta and heated up a jar of pasta sauce. We have lots of jars of pasta sauce in our cold storage.

We are not starving by any means. But Gigi did have a little melt down about not having oranges, apples, or anything she could fix by herself. I understand it’s hard, especially when I am not a very scheduled food eater. I can eat a lot at 9:30am and then not think about food until 3:30pm. That has worked before since there were things available my kiddos could just grab and eat when they felt hungry. This experience of planning and cooking 3 meals a day is certainly an adjustment for us all.

This morning was pancakes on the outside grill. Both of our syrups are running low, Mrs. Butterworth’s high fructose corn syrup and the 100% pure maple syrup. I think to remedy the syrup situation for a longer term supply, I am going to purchase real maple flavoring. Then I can flavor whatever sweetener I have stored, honey, agave, or sugar made into a syrup. I also had a batch of naturally leavened brown rice waffles ready to mix up. They are so good to me. I ate those instead of pancakes. I also ate a waffle at lunch time too. My. My.

For lunch I warmed up the left over chili Thrive Express I made on Saturday night. Mr. Incredible and I each ate a plate of lettuce, thank you Amy, with the chili on top. Like a taco salad, minus the chips, guacamole, sour cream, salas, and cheese. It was filling and felt good to eat a big plate of greens.

There is an angelic look to my chili salad photo. My body is so happy to be able to eat some fresh greens.

Pagey wanted macaroni and cheese again. I was afraid this was going to happen once I started making mac and cheese. Its fine to eat if a few times a week while we are limited on our choices. But mac and cheese is wreaking havoc on my butter rations. I suppose next time I make mac and cheese I should use olive oil instead of butter and see how it turns out.

The kiddos were hungry after school today. Imagine that. I fixed them left over soup and Julz had lettuce with sunflower seeds and dressing. There was quite a bit of griping after school about our food storage challenge. I don’t want any of you reading this to think that this has been a really easy adjustment for our kids.

For dinner tonight I made black bean and rice tacos with shredded beef. I made tortillas. Its hard to have tacos or burritos without tortillas. We used the last of the very appreciated romaine lettuce. We didn’t even mind that the edges were brown from being cut with a knife. 

Julz wanted bagels for tomorrow so she could make a chicken salad sandwich on a bagel for lunch. Reese has been wanting to make pretzels again. Gigi wants grab and eat food. Tonight I made double batch of our bagel recipe then split the dough in half. Half of the dough was turned into bagels and half was twisted into pretzels. Gigi and Reese had fun staying up late and molding the dough.

Reese said, “Mom, we should get some hair nets.” Gigi, “What are hair nets?” Reese, “They keep hair out of the food. Girls should wear them because of their long hair. I would wear one if I had long hair.” He is a cutie. Reese gets it from me.  I am quite particular about how my food is handled.

The kiddos were home from school today for the holiday. Mr. Incredible made scrambled eggs and cooked up the sausage links that I had pulled out of the fridge on Sunday to defrost. I freeze sausage links in dozens so everyone can eat two sausages each when we use them. That is enough meat and keeps us from eating too much meat. Mr. Incredible added freeze dried mushrooms, freeze dried onions, and a few mixed bell peppers (all freeze dried vegetables). He uses 2 cups of scrambled egg mix every time he makes eggs for breakfast. That makes plenty of eggs. Everyone gets what they want and there are still leftovers.

For lunch I made chicken tacos. I had about 8 hard taco shells in a box in the pantry. So I heated them in the toaster oven to crisp them and warm them up. Then I used one can of chicken that I added the rest of my green tomatillo salsa to, along with some other spices, chili powder, onion powder, and cumin. My good friend Amy had a huge party at her house on Sunday, her daughter is going on a mission to San Antonio, and they had left over cut romaine lettuce. She had a couple of bags and knew it would go to waste so she gave us a bag of it. Yay!

Julz said they would be better with cheese. I wasn’t in the mood to rehydrate cheese. I have its so easy. Imagine milking a cow, skimming the cream, and making cheese that way!

Dinner

We ate left over vegetable beef soup from Sunday night. I added macaroni noodles to add variety. Also Pagey wanted macaroni and cheese. I haven’t made mac and cheese during this experience yet. I have a lot of macaroni noodles store in my food storage. I love Thrive’s cheese blend. One #10 can makes a lot of macaroni and cheese. Probably 3 cans is a year supply for my family. We could use up a #10 can in 4 months. I have mentioned this cheese before because we sprinkle it on our popcorn too. Its great for au graten potatoes, and a cheese sause for broccoli and cauliflower.

This morning I made waffles. I know I have lost count how many times we’ve eaten waffles during the past 3 weeks. These waffles turned out extra yummy today for some reason. I used half whole wheat flour and half white flour. I used the whole egg powder and powder milk. Maybe its the mexican vanilla. Easy breakfast before church. No photo of the waffles.

Some of the kiddos ate bread and butter on the way to church. I took out my frozen sausage links to defrost in the fridge so we could eat those this week. We are winding down. We have 10 more days on our food storage challenge.

Tonight I told everyone that when we go grocery shopping on March 1st everyone can pick out 3 items they have really wanted during the challenge . Pagey says she wants shrimp. Reese says mega stuffed Oreos. Apparently one of his friends at school gave Reese a mega stuffed Oreo at lunch. Gigi says ice cream. I am getting used to living on what we have on hand. What I am anxious to do is buy all of the things we are lacking or have used up during the challenge. I will share those things with you all.

This evening Julz had her book one recital at my sister in laws house. I made french bread, my wheat bread, and two soups. A vegetable beef soup and the mulligatawny soup. I almost caved in last night late when I went to put gas in the car. I couldn’t think of anything sweet to bring for dessert after the recital. So I thought it would be okay to pick something up at the grocery store. But as soon as I decided that no, I was only going to use my food storage ,I remembered the Thrive brownies and macaroons! Perfect. I made both of those and brought a yummy easy treat. When I was mixing up the batter, the kiddos who do eat sugar were putting dibs on licking the bowls and spoons. Ahhh. That’s how you know its a treat when everyone wants to like the spoon. I remember as a child always wanting to lick the beaters from the whipping cream. Because it was such a rare occasion that my mom was baking anything sweet.

The vegetable beef soup was one that I just started throwing things in the pot. I used a beef base with bouillon but just added whatever else I wanted until it tasted good enough.

My mom brought a salad tonight to go with the soups and bread. Aunt Kyla gave us some of her fresh oranges to bring home with us. She has an abundance of them. We also ate apples at Kyla’s too. Yummy fresh fruit and vegetables.

Grains

44 1/4cups flour
Did you know there are about 4 1/2 cups of flour in 1 pound of grain? 1 cup of wheat will grind into 1.5 cups of flour.

3 cups rice

3 cups macaroni noodles

1 cup other pasta

1 cup rolled oats

1/3 cup popcorn

Oil

4 tablespoon butter ( I am not really keeping track of butter, because I know we are consuming 5 pounds of butter over the entire challenge)

3 2/3 cup corn or olive oil

1/2 cup butter powder

Salt

19 teaspoons

Meat and Beans

2 cups lentils

2 can beef chunks

6 cups dry black beans

1 cup FD sausage

3 pints of chicken

2 cans of black beans

1 cup thrive FD ground beef

1/3 cup chopped chicken FD

Milk

2 3/4 cup

2 cup cheese

3 tblsp dry powder milk

4 tbsp dry instant milk

1 box shelf stable cream

Egg

5  1/4 cup Thrive scrambled egg mix

2 fresh eggs

Sugar/ Sweetners

1/3 cup powder sugar

1 teaspoon of honey (actually we have consumed 4 cups of honey through out this challenge so far)

1 3/4 cup sugar

1 3/4 cup brown sugar

2 tablespoon agave nectar

3 tablespoon cinnamon and sugar

Yeast

6 tablespoon

Fruits

pineapple powder 2/3 cup

9 1/4 cups dehydrated apple slices

1/2 cup strawberry powder

1 cup FD stawberries

1 quart apple sause

1/3 cups raspberries

Vegetables

1 cups broccoli fd

3 2/3  cup fd onion

2 can corn

1 cups frozen green beans

3 cups freeze dried vegetables, a variety including mushrooms, onions, celery, cauliflower, zucchini, peas

3/4cup dehydrated carrots

1 cup fresh chopped carrots

2 2/3cup fd celery

1 can diced tomatoes

1 can green beans

2 cups of potato beads

Other

Thrive cheese blend 2 Tbsp

4 teaspoons baking powder

Baking Soda 4 Tbsp + 2 1/4 tsp

Peach drink 1/4 cup

1 packet Shirley J universal sauce

2 tsp garam masala

5 teaspoon curry powder

1 tablespoon garlic powder

2 bay leaves

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 1/2 teaspoon oregano

3 Thrive Express pouches

1/2 teaspoon thyme

1/2 teaspoon basil

1 tablespoon italian seasoning

2 tablespoon chicken bouillon

8 teaspoons beef bouillon

2 cans chicken broth

1 can cream of mushroom soup

3 500 mg vitamin c tablet

I started out the morning baking an apple crisp for breakfast. I know its a dessert. But you only live once and heck we are living on food storage so we have earned dessert for breakfast! Plus apple crisp had a cup of oatmeal in it, and that is a breakfast cereal. Mr. Incredible and I were going out on a date and Grandma was coming over to hang with the kiddos while we were gone. I took a photo and then put the crisp in the oven.

When we got home about 4 hours later there was only some crisp around the edges left. I should’ve taked a photo but I was hungry and instead just scraped what was left onto a plate and stuck it in the microwave. Here is what was left.

It was really sweet. The recipe I adapted it from called for fresh apples and I used dehydrated apple slices. The recipe called for 2 cups of sugar! I cut that back a little bit. By 1/4 cup but really could have just added 1 cup of sugar and would have been plenty sweet. I didn’t use any butter in the crisp topping, I substituted in corn oil.

Grandma brought with her some fresh strawberries and bananas and some grade B maple syrup to dip the sliced bananas and strawberries  She knows how to get into her grandchildren’s hearts. Especially when they have been eating freeze dried produce for the last 14 days. When we came home from our date, Pagey told me she likes to dip mini carrots into maple syrup too.

Today was a random day for cooking. My meals were all over the place and whenever. I pressure canned black beans the way my cousin Jill taught me. So easy, so good.

We ate left over soup and bread from yesterday.  I made bagels! Yes chewy plain bagels. I have a brick of cream cheese in my fridge. I have been saving for cream cheese frosting for my cinnamon rolls. But I decided to make bagels too. I still haven’t made cinnamon rolls with yeast during this challenge. The bagels we relatively easy and fun to make. Check out the recipe here. And some photos so you can see parts of the process.

This was really easy. After letting the dough rest for 15 minutes I cut the circle of dough into 8 pieces like cutting a pie. Took a wedge of dough and rolled it into a ball. Stuck my finger through the center and made a ring out of each piece of dough.

While the bagel rings were rising I boiled 16 cups of water with 1 tablespoon of sugar. Then I placed 4 bagels in the boiling water. I flipped them over after 3 1/2 minutes so each side was boiled. They bagels rise more in the water. I crowded these bagels a bit. Next time I will use a larger pot.

I removed the boiled bagels with a slotted spoon and let them drain for a second before placing them on a ceramic baking sheet sprinkled with cornmeal. I baked them for 30 minutes.

They aren’t the pretties bagels. But they sure tasted good and the texture was wonderful. We used less then half our brick of cream cheese. I can still make frosting!

Fastfood when living on food storage is ready to cook entrees. I have in my food storage some Thrive Express. These are so so so easy. Boil water, dump in the contents of the pouch, stir and cook for the allotted time. We made three Thrive Express meals tonight:

The rice dishes went over the best with the kiddos. The chili was too tomatoey. I added some of my freshly pressure canned black beans to the chili to bulk it up a bit. Its quite meaty, but I wanted more beans in it. I have left over chili for tomorrow.

Here is a photo of my beans just out of the pressure canner. I use my used lids when I pressure can beans that I don’t intend to store on the shelf. I just need a lid to keep the product in the can. I plan to use the last 3 quarts of beans this week in meals. Its so convenient having the beans already cooked and ready to go, no hassel with soaking and draining and rinsing. I can customize the amount of salt I add to the dry beans in a jar. And it is much less expensive than canned beans.  The beans are still boiling that is why there are all those bubbles on top.