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3/27/24

Food Storage Meal - plus some fresh greens from the garden Santa Fe Salad

Living on 100% food storage: Last real grocery shopping trip was November, 2023.  Today is March 27, 2024.

 


Tonight's dinner - Santa Fe Salad. 

Thankfully spring is starting to show its face and a family member has a greenhouse... and too much lettuce that was 'ready' and she can't use it all.  Win/win.  We got fresh greens and she got rid of it.  With gardens and warmer weather I'm excited about adding some new foods to the rotations.

I mentioned in a previous post I was making the sauce last night to use today.  All pantry items - as we have mayonnaise on hand yet.  Chicken - you can use freeze-dried, fresh, canned... what you have.  Normally I marinate and grill it but no time, and stormy cold weather so this time I cooked it in the instant pot in the marinade, refrigerated it until I needed to top the salad with it.  Lastly, the salsa - homemade with canned tomatoes. 

Already posted this marinade a LOT of times since 2008-ish.  But, here it is again so you don't have to go searching for it if you are interested.

Marinade:

1 cup water
2 T soy sauce
1 1/2 T sugar
1 T salt
1 T vinegar
1 t powdered chipotle pepper (could use cayenne, if it's all you have)
1 t hickory smoke flavoring
1 t paprika
1 t garlic powder
1/2 t onion powder
1/2 t round black pepper
 

 

 

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100% Food Storage: Fettuccini Alfredo from the Auguson Farms Italian Bucket (long term storage)

Last real grocery shopping trip November, 2023.  Today is March 27, 2024.


 


Last night I didn't really have plans for dinner - it was a busy day and before I knew it, it was 6pm and I had no idea what I was going to make.  I was the only one home last night at dinner time and I had plans to make something else as well (for the next day) so Mr. Husband would have it to take to work for his lunch/dinner. 

As I stood in the kitchen making the sauce for Mr. Husband and I to have to with our dinner the next day, I saw this package I had left on the counter from the day before when I had taken out the 2 pouches from the Italian Bucket storage from Auguson Farms.  (Posted about that below the day before yesterday - the lasagna).

Perfect, because Mr. Husband isn't a fan of fettuccini alfredo like I am (he likes red sauces, I prefer white) and this package uses ONLY WATER.  No work. 


Not the healthiest if you had to eat them daily as in a real life emergency situation.... look at the list of ingredients!  SO LONG.  I would prefer it to simply be fresh milk, butter, Parmesan cheese, cream cheese, parsley, garlic, pepper.... 



This is from the Italian food long term storage bucket I bought in... the spring of 2017 I believe. 
The best by date is November, 2042.


It was completely as expected - you add 4 1/2 cups boiling water and simmer and stir for 15 minutes.



Reminded me of camping.  
The taste is... fine.  Very much a 'mix' which is never good compared to fresh but all in all was completely fine.

I liked that the spices and milk ingredients in this one were loose and did not all clump up like the tomato products in the lasagna pouch.  This was loose and exactly like the pouches in 2017, etc.  It other words, time hadn't changed it at all.   I fully suspect it will be exactly the same in 2030 or 2040.  Well packaged and assuming no holes or critters would get into the pouches, this is a storage item that seems to do well with a test of time compared to the 'tomato' powder items.

It was good enough to finish off - and I was full and satisfied but I also felt 'too' full in a 'not really healthy' dinner kind of way.  But I suppose a big dinner full of pasta does that to you anyway.  A bit gassy from it as well, but all in all, it's a good product from storage.
 
 
 
Literally a picture of my dinner, as I was eating it...  Ha ha.




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3/26/24

100% Food Storage: Homemade - Airheads and Skittles

 100% Food Storage - last real grocery trip was November, 2023; today is March 26, 2024.

 


Prior to working our way through some of this food storage, we were a low-carb, keto family - so while I did store non keto and low carb items for 'just in case' I wasn't storing a lot since I knew we would have to rotate and use them, but we don't normally eat them.  Even if we like them... like flour for breads, sugar, and... Skittles.  
 
While my husband and most of the universe likes chocolate, I do not.  I don't crave most candy or even sugar or desserts, but Skittles... I do love them.  And I DID store some.  But they were used over the past 4 months as The Littles love Skittles and they are a special treat they enjoy as well.
 
I've been craving them big time this week. 

Being well stocked, I knew I had the ingredients.

Basically just 'taffy' but flavored with some citric acid as well as whatever flavors you wish.  
 
Since I keep a well stocked pantry, I have citric acid.  I also have LorAnn flavors like cherry and grape oil extracts.  I have organic orange extracts and raspberry and strawberry emulsion.  I had a couple packs of cherry and grape Kool-Aid.  I also have some 'True Lime' flavor packets.  Lemon extract?  I've got that too.  Freeze dried strawberries and raspberries?  Yep - I can pulverize those as well.

In the end the taffy was made.

Divided into 2 parts.

One flavored like red Skittles (I used a whole mixture of things to do so - and just kept taste testing).  Mostly strawberry and raspberry emulsion flavoring along with black cherry Kool-Aid and bit of cherry oil flavoring from Wilton.

The other was colored white and I used orange extract. 

(The final orange color and bright red would be after they were coated with a hard shell candy glaze.)


The hardest and most mind-numbingly boring part was making the tiny dots to become Skittles.
To make the little candies, let them dry and then I have to make the hard candy shell.

After awhile I just decided it was really like Air Heads tangy taffy (or a really tangy Laffy Taffy) if I left it in larger pieces so right now on the counter we have both.

I also realized I cooked the red version about 2 minutes longer than the white version, as I was adding flavorings while they were in the saucepans.  The red is just a tiny bit more firm - and the white a little too soft.  But when I tasted them together I realized I had a huge 'hit' of taste on my hands so now I've mixed most of them together anyway as the flavor is incredible.

It started raining and storming yesterday - STILL raining and the humidity level is so high the little Skittle dots aren't getting hard yet anyway... so I'm in no hurry to finish and coat them with the hard candy shell yet anyway.

Considering everyone loves them and keeps grabbing some of the taffy every time they walk through the kitchen, I'm pretty sure if I leave it all out sitting there for a couple days until the sunshine warms things up and the humidity level goes down, it will be mostly gone and I won't have to keep  making tiny little homemade Skittles after all.   :)



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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3/24/24

100% Food Storage: Auguson Farms Lasagna from their Italian Pail

 

 
 
Tonight I used our 'daily bread' dough from the refrigerator (many, many previous posts about that one) to make pizza and cheesy garlic bread.  The pizza for Mr. Husband, and the garlic bread for me and he to eat with another food storage item from our long term level - the Auguson Farms Italian Pail bucket.

I bought this bucket kit at some point prior to a camping/hiking trip I was taking in 2017.  One of my daughters and I were doing a 2 week cross-country camping trip and were bringing everything we needed for 2 weeks (food, water, power, etc).  I bought two buckets - an Italian version and their Mexican version. 

We also had other freeze-dried food options so we only ended up using a few things from the Mexican bucket and making a pizza from this one.  We weren't impressed by either of them.  That's another reason we came home with most of the bucket items intact.

Today was the day to drag one of them out of storage again and see if we can use some of these up.

I opted for the lasagna package.  What I had in mind (wrongly, I found out) was the delicious cheesy lasagna sold by Mountain House.  This was... nothing like it.


 
One thing to mention is how great these are for long term in the fact they are good for at least 25 years.  For example, this packet of lasagna is 'best by" December 14, 2042.



The instructions are awesome because they are so easy (compared to a lot of the pouches in these buckets).  Simply add the contents to 5 cups boiling water and simmer for 20 minutes.

See the big blob in the photo?  That was the primary tomato powder and spices as they had solidified into a lump in the package.  No worries, as it broke apart and dissolved as the water simmered.

The meal however was, disappointing.
It tasted almost completely like chili powder and water with a little bit of pasta thrown in.

It needed help.
After simmering about 10 minutes (half the time) I removed 1 1/2 cups of the liquid and replaced it with a cup of bottled spaghetti sauce from the pantry and 3/4 cup water.  I added some salt to taste and then after more disappointing taste tests, added some cheese powder from the Mexican bucket and still needing help, added about 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese as well.

After simmering to complete the cooking cycle, served with the homemade garlic bread... and it was good.

On it's own however?  It would truly have to be an 'emergency' situation in order to eat it without being able to help it out with bottled sauces, salt and cheeses.  Not a winner... and we have 2 more packages in the bucket yet to use.












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3/20/24

100% Food Storage Breakfast: French Toast

 


Breakfast a couple days ago... French Toast.

Bread:  The homemade 'daily bread' I've posted about a hundred times already
Egg Powder
Powdered Milk
Vanilla
Syrup (can be homemade but I have bottles of it in the pantry storage)
Butter is home canned 2021










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