This morning I woke up and made biscuits. I found a recipe last night that looked simple enough. I had four pounds of butter in my freezer plus part of a pound in my fridge.  I am rationing the butter.  I used a 1/3 cup for the biscuits. Generally through this challenge I am saving the butter for spreading on top of toast or bread and vegetables. I would rather use oil when I am baking.  I used a packet of gravy mix and some freeze dried sausage. It mixed up fast. The best by date was in August of 2009! I had that packet in my cupboard for quite some time, over three and a half years! Another reason to use your food storage.

I have no idea why its called California Casserole. This is a stand by recipe from Mr. Incredible’s family. Every time I make it all my kids love it. It was the perfect lunch for a Sunday afternoon. I store olives in my food storage. We always serve California Casserole with a bowl of black olives on the side. It’s really a version of chili macaroni. The California Casserole has ground beef. I used Thrive freeze dried ground beef.

For dinner I made tortillas. I am opening cans of meat.  I live in Utah where I canned the beef at the local wet pack cannery the LDS church owns for their welfare program. I occasionally volunteered there. When you work as a volunteer you have the option to purchase a few cases of the product you help can, in my case chicken chunks. A volunteer can also purchase what is available, which happened to be beef chunks when I volunteered. I have a few cases of each in my food storage. On the tortilla I put sweet beef and cheese. It was a hit. No one even thought “food storage” dinner. But it all was. I shredded the beef, added a half of cup of medium salsa and a quarter cup of brown suger. Its like the sweet pork I make. Its easy and yummy.

Sundays are good days for treats. We are a popcorn family, I have a 50 pound bag of popcorn I bought at Sam’s club. It takes us a few years to work through 50 pounds of popcorn but its a good grain to store. I also grind the kernels into cornmeal.  I made popcorn balls. A Paula Dean recipe. It was sweet and snacky, just what we were looking for. And food storage compliant.

For breakfast this morning I made waffles, an easy no fail meal. Sticky sweet syrup and peanut butter. Its a stick-to-your ribs breakfast. Everyone mostly likes waffles in our family except the oldest, but she ate them too.

Earlier in January I bought a box of oranges, 38 pounds of oranges! The kids and Mr. Incredible love oranges. I don’t care for them myself. It was a fantastic deal, $.38 per pound. We finished the oranges up today. Aaah fresh fruit, we will be seriously craving it I’m sure come March.

Lunch was late. I made minestrone soup from our home store. I am sticking to vegetarian meals this week to see how well they are received. My Reese took one look at the soup, saw zucchini and said, “I am not hungry”. My Julz enjoyed it and my little girls each had a bowl. This recipe makes a huge batch, so I have leftovers for tomorrow.

The french bread is a hit. I am starting to incorporate whole grain flour into the recipe. Tonight I added one cup of whole grain flour and four cups of white (organic) flour.

I turned half the dough into a pizza and half of the dough into a loaf of french bread. It turned out wonderful. I love having freeze dried cheese in my home store. The minestrone soup was best with some cheese sprinkled on top and some fresh ground pepper. I make my pizza sauce with just a regular jar of spaghetti sauce. I thicken the sauce with tomato powder, which is wonderful stuff and lasts forever. I love the versatility of the tomato powder from shelf reliance.

Growing up, breakfast was my least favorite meal of the day. As I am  getting older I appreciate breakfast foods more. This morning I whipped up an egg scramble. I have a few fresh potatoes in my pantry. I grated 3 or 4 for hash browns. I always use hash browns as my base for a breakfast skillet. The rest of the scramble came from my food storage. Sausage crumbles, onions, and scrambled egg mix. I rehydrated the sausage and onions and added those once the potatoes were crispy. Then added water to a half of cup of the egg mix. This is a high calorie breakfast especially since I use a fourth of a cup of oil to fry the potatoes in. I served this scramble with some salsa in the fridge. Mr. Incredible couldn’t tell the eggs weren’t fresh eggs.

For lunch we had bean and cheese burritos. Its a great stand by and one of Audrey’s favorite foods. She ate one on the way to afternoon kindergarten.  Paige and I each had a burrito too while we studied letters and the sounds they make. I had a pack of whole wheat tortillas in the fridge from ages ago. But they had neever been opened and were still good. I used the rest of the can of refried beans from Wednesday and some of the fresh cheese block. I have about four ounces left of fresh cheddar cheese.

I spent the rest of the morning and afternoon baking. Tonight we had a dinner party to attend. I told the host I would bring french bread. It turned out quite well and was so easy. I am being modest. My Julz said it was the best bread she’s ever eaten. I think this food storage thing is helping. We all ate a loaf after the kids came home from school and I brought the second loaf with us to our dinner party.

I had 3 bananas that desperately needed to be made into banana something. I decided on banana bread. I used some yogurt (which made me think about learning how to make yogurt from this greek plain yogurt so we can have it throughout our challenge) and powder egg whites instead of fresh eggs. I cut back the sugar and ground a mix of whole grains: spelt, hard white wheat and hard red wheat. This is a good time to explain that I have organic unbleached white flour, in a 50 lb bag. Not all of the bag would fit into the 6 gallon bucket I have for it. So I have been working out of the bag to get rid of the left over. Lately Reese has been chanting “the whiter the bread the sooner you’re dead!”. I know whole grains are a better option but I had my reasons of using lots of white flour in my recent recipes. Now the bag is empty and all my remaining organic white flour in tucked away snug in a bucket with a gamma lid. Not too far away.

My fear of cooking and cleaning and cooking and cleaning is coming true. I have been cooking in and cleaning my kitchen all day! I told Mr. Incredible I may not be leaving my kitchen for a month! The sad part is the kitchen is the only room left to clean as I type this post.

Dinner. We went to the dinner party tonight. Amy made a beautiful spinach salad and lasagna. Julz and I were in salad heaven. Spinach and strawberries and blueberries with chevre and candie walnuts. Delish! I am hoping more friends invite us over for dinner. She even sent us home with some left over lasagna. Amy is such a dear.

Food Storage Used Today:

• Freeze dried sausage crumbles
• Freeze dried onions
• Scrambled egg mix
• Egg white powder

I have planned 15 breakfasts, okay planned it not the right word. I brainstormed with my family 15 breakfasts ideas we can make two times each while we are on our food storage challenge. The challenge, within this challenge, is time. Everything takes longer when dealing with dry goods, like beans, and whole grains that need to be ground up or soaked. My Reese said tonight, “if dinner takes 6 hours to cook, I am done with this food storage thing!” I was making chili with dry beans. I did the quick soak this morning around 11 a.m. The beans soaked for a solid 4 hours or longer. I forgot how long dry beans take to become soft and yummy to eat. I soaked three cups of beans, some for chili and the others to make refried beans later this week. Half of me is thinking ahead, while the other half of me is playing catch-up.

Here are the 15 breakfasts we brainstormed :

• pancakes
• biscuits and gravy
• breakfast casserole
• german pancakes
• muffins
• quiche
• fruit oatmeal
• fruit and oat bars
• scones
• cinnamon rolls
• egg scramble
• french toast
• waffels
• egg and sausage sandwich
• smoothie

Durning this 30 day food storage challenge, the family will more or less eat these breakfasts twice. Hopefully, that’s not too boring. This morning my Julz made pancakes with Thrive 10 grain pancake mix. They were yummy and easy, just add water and stir. Heat up the pan and viola! For other meals on the list like the biscuits or the quiche, I am spending quite a bit of time researching a recipe or several recipes that I can modify to the ingredients I have on hand. All the recipes I cook during this challenge are available for you to check out in our food storage recipes section.

We are on early out schedule all week long for parent teacher conferences. My goal is to have  a prepared snack for my kids when they get home from school. Like a good mom should. Normally I don’t have something prepared because we have so much quick food available for them to choose from when they get home. Since I don’t have a lot of prepackaged processed food around, I am finding this to be tricky having something yummy and ready for my kids to eat when they walk in the door. I found a peanut butter cookie recipe that is made with honey instead of sugar.

My Julz is eating no sugar for a year, she started in September. No sugar means, no white, brown, or powdered sugar. Also no corn syrup. She can eat raw honey, pure maple syrup, and agave nectar. No artificial sweeteners like, Splenda or aspartame either.

These peanut butter cookies were really yummy and satisfying. Just sweet enough. Plus Julz compliant! We would have like them more peanut buttery, I suppose we could spread more peanut butter on top after they baked. They would have also been delicious with my home made raspberry jam spread over them. Hmmm, will have to bake them again so we can eat them with jam.

I already decided earlier to make a chili for dinner tonight. I wanted something vegetarian although I do have meat in my home store. Lately ground beef has given me the heebie jeebies whenever I think too much about it. I found a sophisticated yet simple recipe on Epicurious. I made modifications as necessary. When my Reese saw I put sweet potatoes in the chili he didn’t want anything to do with it. I bribed him. I offered him $1 if he ate his whole bowl of chili. His tongue touched the spoon and he said it wasn’t worth a dollar. All my girls ate the chili and my Julz had two bowls. She’s always had such an adult pallet. My 6 year old did well with the chili and my 3 year old had two bites and she was all done. Click this link for the food storage chili recipe.

I was having major anxiety today about living on my home store. My fridge and stand-bys are dwindling quickly, crackers, frozen fruit, and other quick frozen snack foods. My children were heading home from school and I wanted to have something yummy for them to eat when they got home. My oldest daughter is not eating sugar, so I am always mindful of that. I thought of making pretzels, but I didn’t have enough time. All my kids like tortillas so I thought I would give it a shot.

The dough was a cinch to whip up. Check out the tortilla recipe here. I didn’t even need to use my mixer. I let the dough rest for about 30 minutes and was rolling out the balls of dough when they walked in the door. My oldest washed her hands and helped me cook the tortillas while I rolled the other balls of dough out. They were easy to roll, I was practicing making them round. Its pretty tricky to get the tortilla evenly round. I still have fresh cheddar cheese in my fridge so we grated that and I heated a can of refried beans. I made bean and cheese burritos for their after school snack and cinnamon tortillas for those who wanted them. It turned out yummy. I guess that was another fear I had with living on my home store, I would make a lot of new recipes and they would be gross or wouldn’t turn out, so no one would eat them. Beans and rice with tortillas is something we can eat that fairly often. But I am going to do better than beans and tortillas.

Three friends came home with my kids after school today and they loved the tortillas too! Here is the recipe for easy, no lard tortillas.

This will be fun!

I had been contemplating living on my home store for 30 days since last October. With the holidays around the corner I thought better of the idea. I considered January to do this challenge but with a vacation planned to Florida and then babysitting my nephew for a week after, January was shot. Plus my son has a birthday in January and I didn’t want him to have to have a food storage birthday cake. (Which would have been awesome, of course!) Holidays are over, vacation was wonderful, my sweet little nephew is back with his mom and dad, and my son is now 9 years old! I am out of excuses of why I can’t live on my home store for 30 days.

Home store: “Its a space in your home where you have all the food your family eats, so you don’t have to run to the grocery store anytime you are out of eggs, milk, mushrooms, onion, cheese, or anything else you need for the recipe you are fixing at the moment.” It can be a large pantry, or closet, a room in the basement, or under several beds. A home store can be tucked away anywhere in your house. I have a cold storage room beneath my garage. That’s where my home store is.

I have not shopped at the grocery store since Saturday January 26, 2013. I was there just to pick up a few basics, not to do a huge shopping trip. To the left is a photo of inside my refridgerator so you can see that it was not at all stocked before this challenged began.

Honestly I was feeling some major anxiety about relying solely on my home store for a whole month. Because it means my days will be filled with cooking everything from scratch! And cleaning and cooking and cleaning and cooking. Will I have time to do anything else? We will see. I want this to be a good experience for my children so I have done some planning for breakfasts and dinners, but I am not sure about lunches.

I decided to set some ground rules for my challenge:

1. We can use anything that is currently in our refridgerator or freezer.

2. We have a our milk delivered to us every Monday by Rosehill Dairy. I will continue the milk delivery, but not add any other groceries to the deliveries. Sometimes I have Rosehill leave cheese, cream, eggs, bread, or juice along with the milk delivery. Did you know I love having milk delivered to my door? I do. During this challenge I can only have my milk delivered.

3. My Thrive Q will come in February. It is my qualifier to receive my commission check from Shelf Reliance, and like my milk man, I love groceries delivered to my door. Thrive is groceries to my door. My daughter is already requesting Thrive freeze dried grapes in February’s Q. The grapes are like candy!

4. My children’s lunch accounts at school are loaded with money so they can get school lunch if they don’t want to bring a lunch from home. Normally my kids prefer to bring home lunch, but living solely on food storage? I am not sure. So I put enough lunch money in all of their accounts for them to buy school lunch everyday if they want. It will be interesting to see how this part of living from of our homestore plays out.

5. We are water snobs. I know this can be an issue in an emergency with water shortages and bad tasting water. You should see all of the filters I have on hand. But since this is not a water exercise, I am going to still fill my 5 gallon water jugs at the water filter machine at the grocery store.

Those are the rules and I am keeping them all month long. My son is the pickiest of all my children. I asked him if he would be willing to at least try all the meals I prepare this month. He didn’t promise.