Food Storage Friday: Sweet Pepper Rice

I found this recipe on Skinny Bovine's Kitchen. She says this rice is drool-worthy. I have a hard time drooling over anything that isn't cheesecake, but it was definitely yummy. And unlike the Sweet Chilean Rice that I did a few weeks ago, it was actually sweet, but not too sweet. I served this with burritos, but it would lend itself well as a side to anything Mexican.

Sweet Pepper Rice
Food Storage Ingredients:
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups white long grain rice
3 cups chicken or vegetable broth

Fresh Ingredients:
1/2 yellow onion
1/2 red bell pepper
1/4 cup cilantro
1 Tablespoon butter

1. Finely chop onion, pepper and cilantro. (Or if you're lazy like me, pulse them in the blender for a few seconds.) 2. Melt butter in a large pan and cook onion mix until onions are soft. 3. Add salt and garlic powder, cook for one minute 4. Add rice and cook for another 5-10 minutes. (Until most of the moisture is gone.) 5. Dissolve sugar in broth. Add to rice. 6. Bring to a simmer and then turn to low and cover. Cook for 25-30 minutes. Fluff with a fork. Serves 6.

Notes: I used half of an onion, instead of a whole onion, to increase my odds that my children would eat this. They tried it, but they weren't fans. My husband said that even half an onion made his eyes burn. I tried it with some peach salsa and that was yummy too. At some point I'll have to experiment and try this with brown rice.

Food Storage Friday: Sweet Chilean Lime Beans and Rice

Recently I got a recipe exchange chain email from a friend of mine. I passed it on to several people in my address book including an old nursing instructor. She's currently serving a mission so declined to participate, but did give me this recipe for Sweet Chilean Lime Beans and Rice. I tweaked it so it worked well in my crock pot and had a stronger lime flavor. My husband (one of my toughest and most important food critics) loved it. This with a side of fruit makes a complete meal, but it would also go great as a side with enchiladas, tacos or chipotle seasoned and grilled meat. The lime and sweetness is subtle, but gives it a nice flavor. Honestly it has more of a pepper, garlic and onion flavor than sugar and lime.

Sweet Chilean Lime Beans and Rice
Food Storage Ingredients:
4 (15 oz) cans of black beans, rinsed and drained
7 cups broth (chicken, vegetable, whatever)
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
3 Tablespoons white sugar
2 cups brown rice or 3 cups instant white rice
salt to taste

Fresh Ingredients:
2 green bell peppers, seeded, 1 diced
2 yellow onions, quartered
2 cloves garlic 
1/4 cup lime juice
1/2 cup champagne (I used sparkling red grape juice)

1. Put 6 cups of broth, beans and diced bell pepper in crock pot on high for one hour. 2. Blend onions, remaining pepper, black pepper, cumin, sugar, 1 cup of broth and garlic until smooth. Add to beans. 3. If using brown rice, stir into beans and cook for three hours. If not, just cook for three hours and add instant white rice ten minutes before done. 4. Half an hour before finished slowly pour in champagne (or juice) and lime juice. Makes 10 servings.

Notes: The original recipe called for instant rice. I really prefer brown, so that's what we used with my adjustment, but the instant white rice should work.

Food Storage Friday: Plum Sauce

 Several weeks ago we found ourselves with a surplus of plums from our Bountiful Basket. I remember when I was growing up my mom and grandmothers canned plums and I thought that they were gross. But I decided that there had to be something delicious that I could do with these. The answer: Asian Plum Sauce.  Now this recipe itself calls for both fresh and food storage ingredients, but the real beauty of it is that once prepared it makes preparing quick and healthy meals  with food storage a snap. It goes well over stir-fried vegetables and rice.

Asian Plum Sauce
Food Storage Ingredients:
3 Tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon canola oil
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 cup brown sugar
1 Tablespoon cornstarch + 1 Tablespoon water


Fresh Ingredients:
3 lbs plums, pitted and chopped
5 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 oz ginger
1 small onion, minced
2 cups water
1/4 cup lemon juice

1. Puree fresh ingredients. 2. Combine all ingredients except cornstarch and Tablespoon of water. 3. Bring to a boil and simmer 30 minutes. 4. Mix water and cornstarch, add to sauce and simmer until thickened. 5 Can in a water bath according to canner directions. (The recipe I found said 10 minutes, I felt more comfortable with 20.) Makes 4 pint jars

I served this over brown rice I had prepared in my crockpot and four cups of chopped and stir-fried mixed veggies. My husband added some stir-fried tofu to his, but you could just as easily stir-fry some chicken or pork and add that.

Food Storage Friday: Stir-fried Green Beans with Rice

Sometime in the last month we got green beans in our Bountiful Basket. My husband has a tendency to turn his nose up at green beans and my kids won't try them either. One day I mentioned that we should eat them and my husband said "I can't imagine that there is anything you can do to green beans to make them delicious." I took this as a challenge. Heather has a tendency to be fairly irritated when someone tells her that she can't do something. When I was in college my department counselor laughed at me for a good 15 minutes when I told her I was thinking about graduating with University Honors. I did it and in less than four years too, so there.  So I turned to How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food  for ideas. I found a recipe for Twice-Fried Green Beans, that sounded like it had potential, except it involved deep-frying, which I am pretty aversive to. So I took all of the ingredients, stir-fried them and served them over rice. My husband loved it and admitted that green beans can taste good as long as they don't come from a can. He liked it so much that I caught him multiple times sticking his finger in the empty pan to scrape out the remains of the sauce. Mission accomplished.

Stir-fried Green Beans with Rice
Food Storage Ingredients:
rice, prepared per package directions
4 Tablespoons of oil
1/2 cup cashews
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 Tablespoons soy sauce
1 Tablespoon sugar
dash of salt

Fresh Ingredients:
1 1/2 lbs fresh green beans
1 Tablespoon chopped garlic
1/2 cup scallions, chopped*

1. Stir-fry green beans in oil for ten minutes on medium heat. 2. Add cashews and cook until they just start to brown. 3. Add garlic, scallions, and red pepper flakes. Cook until onions turn clear. 4.  Add soy sauce and salt. 5. Sprinkle sugar evenly over vegetables. Saute until evenly coated with sauce. (It will be thick and sticky.) Serve over rice.

*The original recipe called for scallions, but I used the small red onions that I had just harvested from my garden with very satisfactory results.

Food Storage Friday: Chili and Rice

This week I have been out of town, come down with a nasty cold and have generally felt tired, busy and achey with all that comes with pregnancy and mothering small children. So when I was trying to come up with what to eat for dinner this week I was not feeling super creative. I just wanted something quick and easy that would satisfy my family. I thought of something that my mother sometimes made when I was growing up: chili and rice. She got the idea from her friend who grew up eating chili this way in Louisiana. Considering I got the chili on sale for 17 cents per can (after coupons), I can easily feed my entire family of four for about 50 cents and have leftovers. It takes less than 20 minutes to prepare, and if you add a side of fresh fruit, is a fairly well-balanced meal.

Chili and Rice
Food Storage Ingredients:
Chili of your choice (I found that one 15 oz can makes about 2 & 1/2 servings)
3/4 cup of prepared rice per person

Fresh Ingredients: (optional)
grated cheese
chopped green onions

Pretty self-explanatory, chili over rice. Add toppings if desired. If you are feeling a little more ambitious than I, make your own chili from scratch and add some cornbread on the side. Enjoy.

Food Storage Friday: Honey Mustard Chicken

I originally found this recipe in a grocery ad and added a few veggies to it. Although the recipe was for marinated chicken kabobs. I don't own a grill and I am not interested in broiling things in my oven. (Here in the desert it is already summer time.) So I threw everything in my crockpot, and I didn't bother to cut the meat up as small. I'm sure that if I had it would have looked more appealing, but I'll admit sometimes I'd just rather throw it in the crockpot and forget about it. It was still tasty.

Honey Mustard Chicken
Food Storage Ingredients:
2 tsp steak sauce
4 Tablespoons of mayonaise
2/3 cup dijon mustard
1/2 cup honey
salt and pepper to taste
3 cups prepared rice

Fresh Ingredients:
2 lbs chicken, cut into chunks
1 yellow onion, cut into chunks
1 green bell pepper, cut into chunks

1. Mix first four ingredients. (If you are making kabobs, use half to marinate chicken and half to dip chicken in after it's cooked.) 2. Throw all ingredients (except rice, salt and pepper) into a crockpot. 3. Cook on low for 6 hours. 4. Serve over rice. Makes 4-6 servings.

This was a total crock pot meal. I cooked the brown rice in my small crock pot, the chicken and sauce in my medium and baked the sweet potatoes in my large. 20 minutes of preparation, a whole bunch of leftovers and I didn't have to heat up my kitchen.

Food Storage Friday: Winging It

Last Friday morning I decided that I wanted pulled pork sandwiches for dinner. So before my husband left for school I ran to the grocery store for a small pork roast. I didn't get far when I started having car trouble. No funny noises, but a check engine light. I couldn't accelerate very well and could not get up past 20 mph. So I turned around and had him look at it. Fortunately he has one of these babies to diagnose check engine light problems. (Worth every penny)

 Unfortunately the problem was not something he could fix. Fortunately he managed to get it to the closest auto shop. Unfortunately it was not something that they could fix either. It required a part that they didn't have and couldn't even order, only the dealership could. Fortunately it was a part that had had a safety recall. Unfortunately, they weren't able to even look at it before Monday, and as it turns out it wasn't a part that was recalled in the state we live in, so we still had to pay for it. The upshot is there were to be no unnecessary trips to anywhere last weekend. Fortunately I had enough items in my food storage to throw together something for dinner that my family was happy with. And when I say throw together I mean I literally grabbed a few items from my pantry and dumped them in my crock pot in an experimental fashion. Food storage saved the day again. Enjoy.

BBQ Pork and Rice

Food Storage Ingredients:

2 cans (14.4 oz) cooked pork chunks

1/2 of one 20 oz can crushed pineapple, not drained

1 bottle (18 oz) BBQ sauce

1 Tablespoon dried diced red and green bell peppers

2 Tablespoons minced dried onions

4 cups prepared white rice

1. Dump first 5 ingredients in a 3-4 quart crock pot and stir. 2. Cook on low for 2 to 3 hours. 3. Serve over rice.

I served it with fresh green beans that I rubbed with olive oil, seasoned and roasted. (The yellow stuff is an onion vinaigrette.) If you don't happen to have canned pork chunks handy, I'm certain that this recipe would work very well (probably even better) with a small pork roast or boneless ribs, but you would have to drastically increase the cooking time and then shred the meat into the sauce after it is cooked.

Food Storage Friday: Thai Vegetables and Rice

Last week I decided to try out the Asian pack when I ordered my Bountiful Basket. It came with Napa cabbage, bok choy (another kind of cabbage that is very large), fresh ginger, basil, garlic and snow peas. I don't think that I will get it again, because that is just a whole lot of cabbage.

Regardless, I tried to make good use of it, the other fresh produce on hand and incorporate my food storage too. I found this recipe in How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman (possibly my new favorite book), and made a few modifications. It's kind of like a Thai-style curry. I don't know if this recipe will make it into my standard repertoire, because it called for a wide variety of fresh ingredients that I may or may not generally have on hand, but I like it and will probably make it again on occasion.

Thai Vegetables
Food Storage Ingredients:
2-3 cups prepared white rice
3 Tablespoons oil (canola, peanut or corn)
1 dried chile
2 Tablespoons soy sauce
1 1/2 cups coconut milk

Fresh Ingredients:
1 plum tomato, diced
1 medium yellow squash, cut into chunks
6 green onions, diced
1 cup snow peas
2 medium carrots, diced
2 Tablespoons garlic
1 Tablespoon minced fresh ginger
zest of 1-2 limes

1. Add oil to a wok or large skillet. When hot, add onions and carrots. Cook until softened, about 5 minutes. 2. Add garlic, ginger, chile and squash. Adjust heat so that vegetables are cooking quickly without burning, about 10 minutes. 3. Add tomato and snow peas and cook for another 10 minutes. 4. Add coconut and lime zest and simmer for about 5 minutes. 5. Add soy sauce and salt and pepper if necessary.

Here's what it looks like in the wok when finished.

There are tons of variations you can do with this. You can increase quantities of or change  for different vegetables. Some of his suggestions were eggplant, zucchini, celery or potato. I think water chestnuts  and bell peppers would also be good. You can add chicken, pork or tofu for more protein or fresh basil, mint, or cilantro for different flavors. And because some like it hot, you can increase the amount of chiles you put in. I used half the amount of chiles that the original called for.

Fresh bok choy

In case you are wondering what that green and white stuff on the side is, it's quick cooked bok choy. Another recipe from How to Cook Everything. I was not as pleased with it as other recipes of his I tried. I think I may just blame the vegetable here. The stalk (white part) is good, it becomes creamy and tender, but the greens tastes like boiled spinach, even though that part was cooked for half as long. Bleh. Thing 1 was willing to try it, but I couldn't blame her when she spit out the green part.

Food Storage Friday: For The Little Ones

As I have mentioned before, my kids are picky eaters. Ridiculously picky eaters. And just because I feel I have found something that is delicious, healthy and uses my food storage doesn't mean that my kids will try it. I would say that most of my greatest food storage recipes are for things that my kids won't eat. And how useful is my food storage if half my family won't eat it? So we make adjustments. You have to store things that your family is going to eat, or it isn't that useful. I generally make things far less spicy than I would like, in hopes that my kids will try it and then pour the Tabasco on mine. I also have several recipes that call for some kind of meat, sauce and vegetables over rice. My kids turn their nose up at meat, sauce and veggies (unless it's modified Hawaiian Haystacks). So I use this simple recipe to at least get them used to eating rice and let them have fruit on the side. Yes, I know it's not really a complete meal, but it's a starting place for the ridiculously picky and it gets my children familiar with food storage without me having to make a completely separate meal for them. If we're having sweet and sour chicken, this is what they are having.

Cheesy Rice for Kids
1/2 cup prepared rice
1 heaping tablespoon of shredded cheddar cheese
1 teaspoon of chicken broth

1. Mix ingredients together in a bowl. 2. Microwave until cheese is melted. (Approximately 30 seconds) Serves 1.

Other food storage items that I have found to be winners with my kids:

1. Craisins (For Thing 2, but not Thing 1)
2. Popcorn (It's a grain, stores for a long time and if you prepare it right, it doesn't have to be bad for you.)
3. Canned mandarin oranges (which I store anyway for Hawaiian Haystacks)
4. Canned pineapple (Haystacks and smoothies)
5. Canned peaches
6. Canned pears
7. Canned corn (store it anyway for Wheatberry Salsa and Taco Soup, Thing 1 loves it, but not Thing 2)
8. Macaroni and cheese (My favorite is the homemade variety with pureed cauliflower mixed in, but I can only get them to eat that on occasion. They prefer the box variety. I have also come to the conclusion that it is worth the extra money to get the Kraft variety, it just tastes so much better.)
9. Annie's shells and white cheddar cheese. (I generally see organic and think expensive, but these are decently price and everyone in my family loves them.)
10. Ramen noodles (I'm not sure why they love this so much, but they do and it's super cheap and easy.)
11. Cookies made with oatmeal 
12. Muffins made with oatmeal (which I can also sneak powdered milk, dried carrots and dried apples into.)
13. Fresh bread with jam
14. Pancakes/waffles (Recently I made a whole wheat and orange variety that was a hit, I'll have to make it again so I can take pictures and post them.)

What food storage items (or recipes) have you found to be the most effective for you and your little ones?

My Weekend: Feeding a Crowd on a Budget without Spending All Your Time in the Kitchen

This weekend my in-laws came to visit. My sister-in-law and mother-in-law enjoy doing triathlons and on Saturday there was one about a mile from my house. They did a sprint distance while my husband and I just did a beginner triathlon. (You have to start somewhere, right?) With our house occupancy growing from 4 to 11, this meant that vast quantities of food was to be consumed, and I needed to find some way to do it that didn't involve vast quantities of money or me spending my weekend in front of the stove, because frankly I'd rather spend time with my family while they were here. So here's the menu plan from the weekend.

Friday night
Fajitas- About a month ago there was a sale on petite sirloin. I bought 5 lbs, cut it into cubes, put it into plastic bags with marinade and dried onions and froze it. Mid morning I threw the contents in the crock pot and cooked it on low for 8 hours. Half an hour before they arrived I chopped one large red onion, 2 green, one red, one yellow and one orange bell peppers and stir-fried them. The red onion and tortillas came from my Bountiful Basket. I also learned that you can get a 3 color bell pepper pack at my local Walmart for $3.50, whereas to buy the colored peppers individually costs about $1.70 each.
Cafe Rio Style Cilantro Lime Rice & Black Beans - I made these in my crock pot ahead of time and froze them. The night before I transferred them from the freezer to the fridge and microwaved them while I cooked the veggies.
Fruit Salad- I used 3 persimmons, 1 lime (juiced), 1/2 banana, 3/4ths of a pomegranate, 1 cup of black grapes, 1 pear, 3 kiwis, 1 mango and a few strawberries. All but the last 3 ingredients came from my Bountiful Basket. I chopped this up the night before.
Birthday Cake- Pink cake with chocolate pudding frosting. All ingredients came from my freezer or food storage.

Saturday
Fruit and cold cereal for breakfast
Lunch @ Five Guys to celebrate after the tri (paid for by my in-laws)
Saturday afternoon we climbed all over Pioneer Park. When we came home everyone was tired. So as soon as we got home I popped a couple of these in the oven for 20 minutes: Buffalo Chicken Calzones- One weekend when I was filling ambitious I made a few of these and froze them. When I made them I used cauliflower puree and spinach from my BB. 2 of these babies was enough for 9 people with a small amount of leftovers. (Neither of my kids would consider eating anything so spicy, they had sandwiches, and those 9 people had all had a very big lunch.)
I served them with Pink (because it is my little sister-in-law's favorite) and leftover birthday cake. (There was a lot of leftover birthday cake because everyone was so full from the fajitas, rice and beans.)

Sunday
Saturday night I prepared a Blackberry French Toast Bake and set it in the fridge overnight. The recipe needs some tweaks, so I'll share it later, but I used one loaf of 9 Grain bread from my BB, one cup of frozen blackberries, one package of Kraft neufchatel (that I recently got for free using coupons), powdered eggs, powdered milk and spices from my pantry. Sunday morning when I was only semi-conscious I put it in the oven and went back to bed. I served it with a 3 packages of sausage that I had gotten a ridiculous deal on. In retrospect it would have been nice to have a few more servings of this because there were no leftover french toast stuff, but people filled in the difference with fruit and more leftover birthday cake.

I estimate that all of these meals cost me about $44 (with about $29 being for Friday night's meal). I consider this a victory. I love my extended family, however several of them are somewhat averse to what they call "healthy food", which sometimes makes meal planning a challenge. I managed to plan meals that everyone enjoyed, incorporated lots of fruits and vegetables and feed 11 people for a reasonable sum of money while still spending lots of time with them instead of in the kitchen. It was a good weekend. :) (Yes, perhaps I should have taken pictures of some of these meals, but they never lasted enough for such actions. Sorry.)

Food Storage Friday: Lentil Soup

So this week I tried something different, lentils. Lentils are high in protein, iron, fiber and folic acid. They cook faster than beans and when stored in #10 cans have a shelf life of approximately 30 years. Not to mention super cheap, I bought a pound bag for 98 cents. They're pretty much a super food, and a great way to add protein to your long-term food storage. Why is it that I've never had these things before? This recipe seemed like a good one to try because it includes so many food storage ingredients and it cooks in the crock pot.

French Lentil Rice Soup
Food Storage Ingredients
6 cups chicken or vegetable broth
1 cup lentils, sorted and rinsed
3 Tablespoons uncooked rice
1/3 cup dried onions
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/3 cup dried carrots
1/2 teaspoon salt
dash of pepper

Fresh Ingredients
1/2 green bell pepper, diced
2 Tablespoons minced garlic
3/4 cup water
sour cream (optional)
pesto (optional)
parsley (optional)
dried Italian seasoning (optional)

1. Stir all but optional ingredients together in crockpot. 2. Cook on low for 8 hours or high for 4-5 hours. 3. Remove 1 1/2 cups of soup and puree until almost smooth. Stir back into soup. (Make sure that the blender is vented when pureeing hot liquids.) 4. Garnish as desired.

I will be the first to admit that this is not something that I'm going to crave in the middle of the night. I felt the fresh pesto improved it, as did the dried Italian seasoning. My husband likes it and has even chose it over leftover pizza for lunch one day. Sometimes you cook with food storage not because it tastes better than your alternatives (and sometimes it does) but because you're just getting comfortable with your options so if it comes down to "We are eating only food storage" you know what to do. I feel like this is one of those meals, but at least it's packed with lots of nutrients which makes me feel a little better about it.

Food Storage Friday: Taco Salad

The point of eating your food storage is not self-deprivation. You should incorporate food storage in your diet on a regular basis, so if you do have to live off your food storage, you are familiar enough with it that it's not a shock. And I'm not just talking about bowel upset. If you use food storage on a regular basis you will feel comfortable experimenting with it and making adjustments so you can make it work for you and your family. For example, today's recipe is Taco Salad. If I were in a pinch I could forgo the fresh meat and veggies, add some canned tomatoes and meat and some more rice and have Mexican Haystacks. Yes, I'd rather have the lettuce, but if we had to I feel confident that we could make do.

Taco Salad
Food Storage Ingredients
2 cups cooked rice
1 can black beans, rinsed and drained (kidney also work)
1 can corn, drained
salsa
ranch dressing
taco seasoning

Fresh Ingredients
iceberg lettuce
fresh tomatoes
1 lb ground turkey, cooked and drained (or meat of your choice)
tortilla chips
dash of lime juice
shredded cheese

Optional Ingredients
canned olives, drained and sliced
avocados
cilantro
guacamole
sour cream

1. Prepare meat according to taco seasoning instructions. 2. Assemble as desired.
A head of lettuce, a few tomatoes, 2 cups of rice and the other listed ingredients makes approximately 6 servings.

After I started eating this I realized I forgot the cheese. Oops!

Food Storage Friday: Hawaiian Haystacks

Food storage can make your life easier. One way to start out is to pick a recipe that your family enjoys that incorporates food storage and buy enough ingredients to make that meal 3 times. Once you have 30 recipes, multiplied by three, you will have a 3 month supply of food. Keep these ingredients where you will use them. Case in point: My family loves Hawaiian Haystacks so I purchased all the ingredients to make at least 3 meals worth (It's one of the few meals that everyone is willing to eat, anytime). One Sunday when I was at work my husband decided to make dinner and looked in the pantry. 'Ah-hah! Everything to make Hawaiian Haystacks in plain view.'  I came home to the pleasant surprise of finding not only that dinner was on the table, but that my husband had used food storage to make it. And this works not only for coaxing husbands to cook, but for helping you on those evenings when you're feeling uninspired in the kitchen. If you have a recipe that you're familiar with and you keep the ingredients on hand, you can get dinner on the table quickly without resorting to fast or instant food.

Hawaiian Haystacks

Food storage ingredients minus coconut

Food Storage Ingredients
3 cups of prepared rice
canned pineapple chunks or tidbits, drained
chicken gravy, prepared as directed
slivered almonds
chow mien noodles
shredded coconut
canned mandarin oranges,drained

Fresh Ingredients
2 cups cooked chicken, chopped (canned chicken can be substituted in a pinch)
shredded cheddar
1 green onion, sliced

Optional Ingredients
golden raisins
sliced water chestnuts
shredded carrots
diced bell peppers

1. Prepare ingredients (gravy, chicken, etc.) 2. Assemble as desired.

For me, this is comfort food.

For my family, 2 cups of chicken & 3 cups of rice is sufficient for the four of us and even yields some leftovers. One package each of chow mien noodles, almonds and coconut is more than enough for three meals, but we always use an entire can each of the fruit.

Food Storage Friday: Pepper Steak

After reading I Dare You To Eat It: Designing Food Storage You Would Actually Want To Eat by Liesa Card, (who btw is awesome, really she's my hero) I was inspired to make my own book of food storage recipes, which I would share with the internet in a free download form, to encourage anyone who needs ideas on making their food storage work for them. I've started this project almost a year ago, but between work, vacations and just life in general, it hasn't happened yet. The solution: Food Storage Friday. Every Friday I will post a new food storage recipe with a picture and any hints that I found helpful. When I have forty successful recipes, I'll compile them into one document for your easy downloading pleasure.  (Because what good is a food storage recipe if  no one is willing to eat it?) Plus this way you can see pictures for each one.

Food storage is more than just storing grains. You have to know what to do with it. You have to incorporate it into your diet on a fairly regular basis, so if/when you have to use it, it's not a shock to your system. You have to have a repertoire of recipes that you can easily refer to and use often so that you can rotate through it. If you can do these things eating food storage can improve your diet, save you time and dramatically decrease the amount you are spending on groceries.

On a recent trip to the grocery store I noticed that there was an amazing deal on both steaks and bell peppers, which inspired me to make this meal for dinner. The recipe I found and modified said that it serves 4. Is that four Sumo wrestlers? I got more like 8-10 servings out of this recipe and I didn't change it that much.

Pepper Steak Stir-fry and Rice
Food Storage Ingredients
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 Tablespoon cornstarch
1 (14.5 oz) can diced tomatoes, drained
1 (4 oz) can of sliced mushrooms, drained
1 (8 oz) can of sliced water chestnuts, drained (optional)

1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 catchup
1/2 cup water
4 cups of prepared rice (I prefer brown)

Fresh Ingredients
1 lb steak, sliced into 1/4" strips
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
2 large bell peppers, diced (I used red & yellow)
1 cup green onion, sliced

Combine soy sauce, garlic, and ginger. Add beef. Mix and set aside while preparing vegetables. Heat oil in large frying pan or wok. Add beef and stir-fry over high heat until browned. Turn heat up and add  fresh vegetables. Cook until vegetables are tender crisp, about 10 minutes. Mix cornstarch with water. Add to pan; stir and cook until thickened. Add tomatoes & catchup and heat through.

Because this recipe yields such a large quantity, I froze half of it.

Here we are, frozen & reheated, still good, although the yellow peppers look less appealing.

Here are a few other successful food storage recipes that I have already done:
Fat Free Pumpkin Apple Muffins
BBQ Chicken and Wheat Salad
Beef and Bean Burritos
BBQ Baked Beans
Mac and Cheese with Cauliflower

Book Review: The Essential Mormon Cookbook

I received The Essential Mormon Cookbook: Green Jell-O, Funeral Potatoes, and Other Secret Combinations by Julie Badger Jensen as a wedding gift and in the years since then it has served me well. I find it amusing that so many times I have found a "new" great recipe in a cooking magazine, at a church function or from a neighbor and as it turns out the same or nearly identical recipe  to what was in this book all along. It's like this woman has been to every LDS ward function everywhere and taken note of all the good stuff.
 I love this quote from the intro "Written to gladden the heart, this book is meant to strengthen families and friendships and to encourage and inspire both new and seasoned cooks with confidence in their own abilities and creativity and to celebrate the good things which come of the earth..." Yes, that is what I believe cooking should be about! There are lots of great recipes in here, however I will put in the disclaimer that many of them are not what I would consider "healthy" or "low-fat". More like "comfort food". (But not all are like that.) A favorite recipe from this book that has been a hit with even some very picky eaters, is one that I've come across in at least four other places. That means it has to be good right? I changed it in that I put in the crock pot, because I love my crock pot. It makes my life easier.

Apricot Chicken
4-5 lbs of chicken (You can use boneless skinless chicken breasts, drumsticks, whatever you like)
1 cup of Russian dressing
1 cup of apricot jam
1 package dry onion soup mix
1. Combine last three ingredients in a bowl.2. Put all ingredients in a crock pot. Cook on low for 4 hours.3. Serve with brown rice. Serves 8.
If you don't want to make this in the crock pot you can bake uncovered in a casserole pan @ 350 degrees for one hour. I generally only make this when someone comes over because it makes way more than my little family can eat.