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How many dried bananas from a whole box?

4/15/2022

For details on how I dry these, see Chewy Dried Bananas.

...and by "whole box" I mean the 40-pound boxes you see the produce guy emptying to restock the banana shelf.

In other words, 40 pounds of fresh bananas will shrink down to what total space after dehydrating them? The short answer is 7-9 quarts. Around the volume of two gallons, give or take a quart.

It's hard to tell exactly because of a few factors. The first is that a box is rarely exactly 40 pounds. It's usually a little bit more, and sometimes a few pounds more.
The second is that it depends on how many bananas get eaten before they're tucked away for later. That could mean some were eaten fresh, some were made into banana bread, some were used in smoothies, and-- the easiest way to have a bunch disappear-- some (or many) were eaten after drying but before you whisked them away.

In my case, my family started with three boxes.

Yes, that's one hundred-twenty pounds. Or a few more.

Why?

Simple.

We love them-- they're great for snacks, car trips, and packed lunches; they store well for a year (or a few); I hadn't seen any cases at a good price for a long time; and our dried banana stash was getting low. Low-ish. AND-- this is important-- my neighbor who ran across them called from the store asking if I wanted any slightly-overripe bananas. For $3 per box. (No, that's not a typo.) Since my family was leaving town the next day, I said yes, to two boxes. One for me-- we could get them sliced and on trays that night, and dried just in time to leave town-- and one for my sister in Idaho, which is where we were going. (She dehydrates, too.)

The next week, I was at that store again -- with my kids begging to look for more because those fresh dried bananas were SO GOOD. Sure enough, they still had lots. The now more-overripe bananas were $1 per box.

Perfect. Buy food when the store wants it OUT, and FAST. And use or preserve it quickly.

From that 3 boxes, here's what our yield was:

18 quart jars tucked away, plus at least a jar or two’s worth eaten by my kids as they helped,
2 (12x18) trays of banana bars (one regular, with caramel icing, the other were chocolate banana bars, with chocolate icing)
one 11x15 pan of gluten-free banana bars (all the bars were for a youth dance)
three loaves of banana bread,
two loaves of gluten-free banana bread
1-2 pounds of bananas frozen in ziplock bags, for future smoothies

How can the bananas get dried before they get too ripe? Well, not all of them did. That's why there was so much banana baking going on. When we got to that last box, if something was too ripe, or bruised, it got tossed into the bake-with-it bowl, to be mashed.

In addition, I have two large dehydrators, with 12 trays each. (They were much cheaper when I bought them!) A 40-pound box of bananas, sliced, fits nearly perfectly on those 24 trays. It takes the dehydrators about a full day to dry them.

How did I get 12 trays each, when they come with only 8? You can buy extra trays, but they’re about $12 apiece (sold in packs of 2).

That's not how I got them.

My first dehydrator was the same type and size. That one was purchased through the local classifieds for $25. It still works, but the new ones are a little more powerful, so the old base is in the basement, on standby just in case it’s needed.

Also notice, in the photo at the top of this post, that when I say "quart jars," it doesn't necessarily mean canning jars. Oh no. These jars just need to be airtight. I use cleaned-out mayonnaise jars and pasta sauce jars too. If you're a canner, you've likely learned that if the rim of a jar gets chipped, that often prevents the canning lid from sealing properly. My solution now is to write a big X on the jar with a Sharpie, and use that jar ever after only for dehydrated foods. Waste not, want not.

Or at least 'want less.'

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Food Preservation-- Quick overview

3/20/2021

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This is the "Preservation" section of a presentation given at CSW 2021, the Convention on the Status of Women, typically held each spring in New York. Cathy Mauluulu of Big Ocean Women and I taught the "Four Ps" of greater self-reliance when it comes to food: Principles, Production, Preservation, and Propagation. (Our portion of the video begins at 1:23:45.)

No matter who you are or where you live, there’s a way to better use the resources around you.

A few years ago I read a report saying that in the United States, 40% of the food grown is wasted, rather than eaten. Some of that happens in the field, some in warehouses or stores, some in restaurants or homes. That’s awful. And it’s not just a problem in wealthy nations. Not even close. It turns out that in developing countries, 40% of the food grown is wasted rather than eaten. More of it spoils in the field, since it’s harder to get to market, or to preserve it for extended periods.

If you can get the food when it’s plentiful and in danger of spoiling if not handled quickly, preserving it is a way to not only save money and prepare for the future, but a way to reduce the waste in the world. And of course, reducing waste saves money. One thing I do fairly often is buy several pounds of food when it’s marked down because of nearing its sell-by date, take it home, and right away preserve it for later. It most often gets cooked, packaged in a useful size for my family, labeled, and frozen. If it's meat, sometimes I’ll pressure can it instead for quick meals later. Either way, whenever we eat it, we’re eating at last month’s or last year’s prices. And yes, in places where it’s legal to have a year’s worth of food on hand, getting that much basic food is not only doable, but saves you so much money! In times that the prices rise—whether because there’s a shortage, or because there’s high demand—if I have plenty of food on hand, I can hold off buying until the prices drop. This benefits everyone. It helps me because I’m eating on last year’s prices. And it helps my community because not buying the in-demand food then leaves more for those others who need it.

Waste less in your own home and garden, and don’t eat up everything right away. It’s the food version of “spending less than you earn.” See what you can preserve for later. Even storing away a tablespoon of rice per day will add up.

A cookbook from almost two hundred years ago explains, “The true economy of housekeeping is simply the art of gathering up all the fragments, so that nothing be lost. I mean fragments of time, as well as materials, … whatever be the size of the family, every member should be employed either in earning or saving money... and should be taught to consider every day lost in which some little thing has not been done to assist others.” (America Frugal Housewife, 1838)
One important aspect of preserving is to share, especially anything you don’t have time, space, or energy for. Whatever is around should be used to benefit someone.

Some of the methods of preserving include dehydrating or drying, pickling or brining, smoking, freezing, dry-pack canning, pressure canning, boiling-water canning, or ‘root cellaring’—which doesn’t actually require a real root cellar. Your area and circumstance will best fit with at least one or two of those. How can you learn what will be best? What are your area’s traditional ways of preserving? Find a mentor—the older and more experienced, the more wonderful it is on both sides. Create a ‘maternal economy,’ a sisterhood, a brotherhood, utilize the experienced home economists at your local extension office.

Some climates are warm and dry, which is perfect for drying foods. When I lived in El Paso,Texas as a little girl, we dried apricot halves up on our hot black asphalt roof, with the fruit spread out on clean window screens and covered lightly to keep off bugs. When we moved to a much colder climate, we dug a hole in the garden and buried a big, clean garbage can in which we stored our carrots through the winter. Eventually we bought an electric dehydrator—which is still one of my favorite tools. In my previous house, we had very limited space to store foods, so I started drying some of the foods that I used to bottle. Take tomatoes, for instance. Six quarts’ worth of tomatoes could now fit into a single quart jar, once the tomatoes were dehydrated and powdered. Tomato powder can be used in almost any recipe that calls for canned or cooked tomato products-- everything from tomato juice to pizza sauce to tomato paste. Now I make powders out of lots of vegetables- bell pepper, celery, tomato, mushrooms, pumpkin, zucchini. They thicken and flavor soups and sauces, or hide in smoothies or baked goods like bread or brownies. Powdered zucchini or pumpkin can be used in any recipe that calls for puree.

There’s so much that can be done to preserve and use food instead of wasting it! Links to instructions and resources for dehydrating, as well as the other preservation methods, are below, as well as on my "Favorite Resources" page.

►How to Waste Less food posts:
-Reducing Food Waste, and What To Do With Sour Milk
-Cutting Food Waste

►How to eat well and still spend less

►Canning 101 -  Free video trainings from the USU Extension Office, for lots of kinds of canning, from marmalade to meat.

►Canning Meat, from Backwoods Home Magazine

►"How To Can Anything"   You'll have to see this one to appreciate the treasure trove it is. It has step-by-step canning photos, how-to's, why-to's, why-not-to's, plus lots and lots of recipes. Also has links for purchasing what you'll need.

►Which foods can be safely bottled at home
There's also a great FB canning group, called "We Might Be Crazy But We're Not Stupid"-- they are careful to stay within USDA safety guidelines.

►Tattler reusable canning lids

►http://www.dehydrate2store.com/  - how, what, and why to dehydrate. Lots of videos, including one on building good-looking, shallow shelves for your storage jars.

►How to dry-pack foods  This link has several links within it.

►Making and Using Vegetable powders

►Storing Vegetables At Home --How to store them through the winter, even without a root cellar.

►Storing Fruits and Vegetables at home: see page 5 at this link for a chart of what foods prefer similar conditions.

►http://www.motherearthnews.com/modern-homesteading/root-cellaring-zm0z85zsie.aspx   Written by Mike and Nancy Bubel (who wrote the book on Amazon, considered the 'bible' of root cellaring!)

►http://www.nepanewsletter.com/cellar.html gives an excellent, detailed overview of what you learn in the Bubel's book

►“Return of the Root Cellars”-- great overview.

►hows, whys, recipes, and supplies for making consistent quality pickled (lacto-fermented) foods. I haven’t tried these yet, but I have been adding more fermented foods to our diet. Also this: https://myfermentedfoods.com/how-make-lacto-fermented-pickles/

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Week 40- Free Cookbooks for Using Food storage

1/19/2020

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To help with building your year's supply (this is Week 14 of 26), see this chart.

Do you have some food storage now, but need more recipes to use it? Check out these eleven FREE cookbooks, plus some extra resources like a book that teaches you how to can food, one on nutrition and one on REALLY frugal cooking and homemaking.

1. Bee Prepared Pantry Cookbook. 67 amazing pages.

2. New Ideas for Cooking with Home Storage (also found here)--
created to be used with the foods at the dry-pack canneries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You can no longer dry pack food there, but can still purchase products already packaged.

3. A Guide to Food Storage for Emergencies—compiled by the USU Extension Office. 120 pages.

4.The Wooden Spoon Cooking School collection- this was a pilot program by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The same ladies who created the Bee Prepared Pantry Cookbook were commissioned to create the class materials, so this is basically an expanded version of Bee Prepared. There are individual sections on the following topics:
Introduction (note that the ‘length of storage’ information is outdated, per BYU Food Studies)
Intro- Commodities, Family Assessment, Family Plan, Skills & Equipment
Legumes
Oats, Honey, and Sugar
Wheat
Rice and Pasta
Powdered Milk
Seasonings
A Meal in a Bag- quick meals with everyday, three-month supply foods

5. All Is Safely Gathered In: Family Home Storage Basic Recipes—compiled by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and sent with food storage boxes/kits. 4 pages, 11 recipes.

6. Shelf Stable Recipes-- family favorite pantry recipes submitted by readers of FoodStorageMadeEasy.net
58 pages. Uses long-term storage foods as well as some shorter-term ones.

7. Use it or Lose It— another “food storage cooking school,” compiled by the Utah State University Extension Office. 17 pages. About half of the pages have recipes, with a focus on wheat and dry milk powder; the rest is good information on how to obtain, store, and rotate your food.

8. Cooking with Dry Beans—compiled by the USU Extension Office. 13 pages.

9. Whole Kernel and Bulgur Wheat: Preparation and Usage—compiled by the USU Extension Office. 57 pages, so you know there’s a lot of variety. It doesn’t mention hard white wheat vs hard red wheat partly because white wheat had not quite hit the public scene in 1992.

Short term food storage rotation

10. 3x5 card/photo album cookbook—3x5-sized cards to cut out and fit inside a small photo album that holds 72 photos.

11. Crockpot Freezer Meals with Five Ingredients of Less, from TheFamilyFreezer.com. 25 main dish recipes to use your short-term (“regular food”) storage. Go to the main webpage, https://thefamilyfreezer.com/ for many more recipes.

Other great resources:

Nutrition and Diet—includes charts on vitamins and their role in the body. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 26 pages.

USDA Guide to Home Canning – a self-taught course in how to can.

Frugal pioneer recipes- ten recipes, printed in the July 1972 Ensign magazine.

American Frugal Housewife, 1838. The twenty-second edition.(!)
“Dedicated to those who are not ashamed of economy” and “Economy is a poor man’s revenue; extravagance, a rich man’s ruin.” The introduction begins, “The true economy of housekeeping is simply the art of gathering up all the fragments, so that nothing be lost. I mean fragments of time, as well as materials…and whatever the size of a family, every member should be employed either in earning or saving money… The sooner children are taught to turn their faculties to some account, the better for them and for their parents. In this country, we are apt to let children romp away their existence, till they get to be thirteen or fourteen. This is not well. It is not well for the purses and patience of parents; and it has a still worse effect on the morals and habits of the children. Begin early is the great maxim for everything in education. A child of six years old can be made useful; and should be taught to consider every day lost in which some little thing has not been done to assist others.”
__________________________

If you like old cookbooks, this website has more than 75 of them, all waiting for you in digital format.

Thanks to prepperssurvive.com for alerting me to the old cookbook digital collection!

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Week 33- Using and Storing Oats

11/23/2019

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To help with building your year's supply (this is Week 7 of 26 of building a year's supply), see this chart.

About ten years ago, the Church had a pilot program called the Wooden Spoon Cooking School, designed to teach people how to use their basic food storage items. The segment on oats has lots of great recipes, including Craisin Oatmeal Cookies, Oatmeal Bread, Oatmeal Spice Cake with a coconut-nut topping, No-Bake Oatmeal Peanut Butter Cocoa Cookies, Oatmeal Pancake Mix, Granola Bars. See here.

Rolled oats, quick oats, oat groats, steel-cut oats, and oat flour are high in many vitamins and minerals, including zinc, vitamin E, beta-glucan, and B-vitamins. They also contain soluble fiber, which is a prebiotic (=sets up conditions for probiotics to thrive), reduces cholesterol, and improves regularity. They have a great balance of amino acids (proteins), including a good amount of lysine.

Oat groats are the whole kernels
Steel-cut, or Irish, oats, are coarsely chopped groats.
Rolled oats are regular oats are old-fashioned oats; they are groats that are steamed and flattened. They take 5 minutes to cook, and hold their shape and texture better. They are chewier in cookies. Use either one in recipes.
Quick oat or minute oats are groats that have been flattened more, and take 1 minute to cook.
Instant oats have been precooked. They have the least nutrients.

About 15 pounds of rolled or quick oats will fit in a 5-gallon bucket. How long do they store well? As always, this depends on your storage conditions. Overall, they store longer than flour, but much less than whole wheat kernels. In my cool, dark basement, oats stored in 2.5- and 5-gallon buckets- with no treatment to remove oxygen- are still completely fresh after 3-5 years. I’ve used some that were 10 years old; they’re distinctly less fresh, but are still usable. (Lightly toasting them in a pan or oven helps remove some staleness.) And if they’re stored oxygen-free in a can or bottle, they can stay fresh for 30 years or more.

The classic use is, of course, oatmeal. I’m sort of OK with oatmeal, but it’s not my favorite. Once a week is about all I want to handle. But—and this was a big thing for me—it turns out the texture makes all the difference. I’m not a fan of thick and gluey, but do like soft and billowy. The standard recipe says to use 1 part quick oats to 2 parts water, but that’s pretty thick. I like it much better when cooked with a 1:3 ratio- 1 part oats to 3 parts water or milk. Or orange juice. Or a mixture of the two.

Of course, there’s also overnight oatmeal in lots of flavors. Check out this list.

Substitute up to half of the flour in pancake, muffin, or quickbread recipes. Use 2 cups of oats in place of each cup of flour. (A recipe calling for 2 cups of flour could be changed to 1 cup flour and 2 cups of oats.) See here for some options.

Since oats don’t have gluten, you can only replace up to ¼ of the flour with oats in yeast bread recipes.

Add a handful of oats to soup or stew to thicken it.

Use in meatloaf or meatballs to make them more moist.

You can even toast rolled oats and bake them in a pie—Use a pecan pie recipe, and replace the pecans with oats. I’ve seen it called both “oatmeal pie” and “mock pecan pie.”

You can make your own granola or 'honey clusters of oats.'

Make Instant Oat Packets.

Use oats in a crust instead of graham cracker crumbs.

There’s a coconut-oat crust here:

Use a blender to make oat flour; there are suggestions for using it in this post.

One option is these gluten-free chocolate fudge banana muffins.

Stir into Healthy Peanut Butter Banana Bars.

Just-the-Best-Breakfast Cookies-- Two cookies are about the same nutritionally as one homemade, normal-sized muffin, and much better for you than commercially-made muffins.

Use in the topping for Apple Crisp.

What is your favorite way to use oats?

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Preparing a pumpkin for recipes

11/2/2012

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Do you have carved - or not- pumpkins sitting around now? Or do your neighbors? Will they share?
If you have a pumpkin farmer nearby, even better. Their selling season is over. If you act fast, they're often happy to let you glean for free. If you wait, the pumpkins will likely get tilled into the ground.

If the pumpkins are not cut, you can store them for a couple months if you like- dry (NOT sitting on cement!!), cool (under 75 F), and dark is best. Most often my whole pumpkins stay firm and fresh until about January or February- this is at about 65 degrees F, stored off the floor and on a layer of cardboard or newspapers to absorb moisture- but I've had a Hubbard that stored until the next July, and a spaghetti squash from a year ago!

But let's say you have a pumpkin that you'd like to cook with.

Fresh has so much more flavor than the stuff in a can from the store.

Smaller pumpkins tend to be sweeter, bigger ones more watery. But you can always drain off extra liquid if you need to. Below is a slide show on how to make your own fresh puree. You can see here for another, more detailed post on making the puree, or see previous posts on finding,choosing, buying,storing, or dehydrating them.

Click on the "Pumpkin" category on the right for recipes.

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Cutting Food Waste- Does "Expired" mean "Dead"?

5/6/2011

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Rescuing food can help you rescue your food budget, too. The average American family wastes about 15% of the food they bring home. How much money could you save?

There are sites online, like stilltasty.com, that list the shelf life of foods. One problem with them, though: the sites give the 'best by' information. This means the manufacturer can guarantee the food is at peak quality and nutrition. Food doesn't automatically spoil after that; it's generally a slow deterioration. You control the speed of it, by the amount light, heat, oxygen, and moisture/humidity your storage conditions have. Because of this, all charts tend to give very conservative numbers in case storage conditions are less than ideal. Store something in the dark, where it's cool, and you can easily double its stated shelf life.
Another type of date you'll find on products is the 'sell by' date. Dairy and eggs are two products that have this. This date assumes you'll take a little longer to actually eat the food, so the 'sell by' date is about a week earlier than the 'best by' date.

Higher-fat items go rancid sooner.   Watch for that. How can you tell if it, or anything else has passed its useful life? Smell it. Your eyes, nose, and tongue can tell you a lot. Use common sense; if it smells bad or has gone moldy or foamy, there's no need to taste!! And if you are feeding people with low immune systems, err on the side of caution.

If a can squirts at you when you open it, that can be an indication of botulism growth. Boil the contents for 10 minutes. If food has started eating through the can, well, I wouldn't eat it unless I was starving. Even then, I might not. But the sealed Mason jar of peaches from ten years ago that you just found at the back of a shelf? Yeah, they've turned an interesting peachy-brown. Puree them and use as the liquid in a cake, make a smoothie, or some other creative use. Is ten years old ideal? No, of course not. You'll get better nutrition if you're rotating the food more often than that. But older food is still... food. Use it.

Cutting Food Waste at Home

My #1 tip! Before you cook dinner, look in the fruit basket, crisper drawer, fridge shelves, or freezer to see what needs used up first. Use that in your meal. Be creative if you have to.

·         My #2 tip! Don’t waste what’s on your plate. If you have small children, serve them very small servings (a couple of bites) of just a couple foods. Use a small plate. They only get seconds on anything after the firsts are eaten. As my kids hear, “Firsts of everything before seconds of anything.” They can learn to eat everything on their plate if the servings are small enough. When they’re older, progress in the teaching by letting them learn to serve themselves small/reasonable portions. If they have leftover food (either at home or eating out), SAVE it for the next meal; they “get to” eat that before any new food.

·         Freeze leftovers. You get instant dinners for later!

·         Use leftovers as a ‘variety pack’ meal: put all the leftovers on the table, and let everyone choose which they like best. Or pack them for take-to-work (or school) lunches.

·         Keep a bag in the freezer for celery tops, mushroom stems, bits of raw or cooked meat, leftover oatmeal, whatever odds and ends you have. When the bag is full, make it into soup.

·         When you have heels or crusts of bread, leftover toast, or stale bread, add it to a bag in the freezer. Use it when you need breadcrumbs, or to make bread pudding, poultry stuffing, or bread salad. I also save the breadcrumbs from when I slice homemade bread.

·         Trim away bad spots, eat the rest. Brown edges on lettuce can be trimmed away, same with black on cabbage, mold on apples or strawberries, etc.

·         Chop shriveled apples or other fruit and mix them into muffin batter. Or make smoothies. Find some way to use the food where looks don’t matter.

·         Freeze overripe bananas to use in recipes and smoothies. For simplicity's sake, peel before freezing.

·         when you have so much of something that it will spoil before you can use it all, freeze it, dry it, or bottle it.

·         Moldy cheese? Trim off the mold, use the rest or shred and freeze it.

For other ways to save money on food, see the post from Feb. 3, 2011.

When should you throw out food?

My general guidelines are to throw it out if it is:
-foaming (unless it's bread dough or batter, or if you're fermenting something intentionally),
-molding (except for cheese, and small bits on fruit or vegetables),
-turning slimy,
-developing unusual colors, or
-smells bad.


Learning how to tell when food is still good can really help out your budget. We waste huge amounts of food here in the US, the average family of four throws away just under $600 in food AT HOME per year! (See http://uanews.org/node/10448)   And total food waste, from the field to your stomach, runs between 40-50%. Really.

This higher number includes the following steps:

·         cultivation
·         harvest
·         storage/processing/packing/transport
·         supermarkets
·         consumption (restaurants/schools/home waste)

As a side note, so you don't think the US should be singled out for condemnation, total waste percentages are about the same in undeveloped countries- but they lose more between the field and the store, and less at home. (See http://www.siwi.org/documents/Resources/Policy_Briefs/PB_From_Filed_to_Fork_2008.pdf, pages 18-23)

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Water Storage, Powdered Milk recipes & notes

10/25/2010

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Powdered Milk from the Home Storage Center, $1.40/lb. The bowl holds yogurt. You can make plain yogurt as cheap as $ .42/quart, or $ .10/serving.

If you don’t have your water storage yet, what is a good price for water drums? Prices vary, but generally figure $1 per gallon of storage capacity. The 55-gallon drums, then, will probably be $55 or less. Once in a while they go on sale; I've found them at Macey's (our grocery store) for $40. They're even cheaper if you can find them in the classifieds. Only use food-grade drums. Empty pop bottles or juice bottles work great, but milk jugs break down fairly quickly and will leak. If you are using chlorinated city water, you do NOT have to drain and refill these every year. The First Presidency has asked us to store at least 14 gallons per person. This is one gallon per person per day for 2 weeks.
Attached are the recipes from yesterday's class on powdered milk. Here's a list of what is there, and a few notes on them. Sorry, it's a scanned-in document, so I couldn't go through and type in my notes.

Anyplace I've put cost of a recipe, it's based on the following: $1.40/lb for powdered milk, $13 for 25 lbs of sugar, $2 for a pound of butter, $8 for 25 lbs. flour.

For the recipes that give you whey (any of the cheeses, including the yogurt cream cheese), save the whey. It has vitamins, minerals, some protein, no fat, and some milk sugar (lactose- very low on the glycemic scale). I use it in pancakes, muffins, bread, etc. If your whey has vinegar in it (most of the cheeses use this), you can add 1 tsp. baking soda for every 2-3 cups of whey. This will neutralize most of the vinegar. Yes, it will foam up, kinda like those volcanoes you made in 3rd grade…

Go to http://everydayfoodstorage.net/training-cooking/powdered-milk for recipes for evaporated milk, Magic Mix, and Condensed Soups using Magic Mix. And she has a great little chart you can print out and tape to the inside of your cupboard so you know how much milk powder to use when you're baking with it:

http://www.everydayfoodstorage.net/handouts/milk-conversion-charts.pdf

The Wooden Spoon class handout has a TON of info on powdered milk. It is from some classes that the LDS Church's Welfare Square was teaching for a little while. The collection is not copyrighted; the two ladies who compiled it just wanted to spread the information.
    When I get a bunch of new recipes, usually most of them get ignored unless I'm already familiar with them. So let me familiarize you with all these possibilities....

The first couple pages include:

what the difference is between regular and instant dry milk

storage times- which are completely off! Ignore what it says; a BYU study shows that canned dry milk has been found to last 20+ years when kept at room temperature and below.

Mixing and drinking it- how to make it taste the best

Cooking with powdered milk

How much to store per person

How to determine if milk is past its prime shelf life

What to do with it if it's too old

Reconstituting chart

Now the recipes-

'whole milk' (powdered milk is powdered SKIM milk)

Buttermilk substitute

Evaporated milk- everydayfoodstorage link above gives quantities for a 12-oz can. This costs $ .25.

Sweetened Condensed Milk – for the closest version to a 14-oz can, use

1/2 c. (non-instant) powdered milk
1/2 c. water
1 c. sugar
0-2 Tbsp. butter

If you like to be precise, use 1 1/2 Tbsp. less than 1/2 c. water (this also gives a slightly thicker result, like the can), but the first way is very close (yields 14 3/4 oz)    Other recipes use more -or less- of any of those ingredients. Really, they all work. That said, the 'closest' version costs $ .39 if you use no butter, and $ .53 if you use 2 Tbsp. What a deal! One important thing to know- these recipes call for hot or boiling water so the sugar gets completely dissolved. Otherwise you get grainy condensed milk. I usually put my sugar with the water, then microwave and stir until the sugar dissolves. Then blend with the milk powder and butter.

Hot Cinnamon Milk Mix- from an old 'Friend' magazine

Hot Caramel Milk Mix- like hot chocolate, only not!

Hot Chocolate Mix- one of many options out there, this one you just add water to.

Strawberry Shake- with a touch of orange to pep it up. yummy.

Creamsicle Drink Mix- uses 3 Cannery products. And it is really good.

Orange Julius- uses the church cannery orange drink powder. You could use Tang if that's all you have.

Presoaked Wheat Blender Pancakes or Crepes- blender pancakes that are a little easier on your blender. You just have to plan ahead with these.

Whole Wheat Pancake Mix

Fruit Syrup- no powdered milk here- just a really handy way to make a fruity topping for your pancakes. The handwritten note says "Can use peaches canned in syrup and you just add cornstarch and cook" Use 1-2 tsp. cornstarch per cup of syrup/juice.

Basic White Sauce

Cheese Sauce Mix- uses powdered cheese, pdr. milk and pdr. butter. And onion powder. (Remember my method of making onion powder?)

Low-Fat Cream Soup Mix -replaces 9 cans of condensed creamed soup, at $ .30 per can!

Potato Soup Mix-   very very easy. (Well, they all are..)

Broccoli Soup- using all fresh ingredients except for the milk

Biscuit Mix- "Bisquick" where you add only water. Use for any Bisquick recipes. This makes as much as 2 40-oz boxes, at about $2.75/box

Honey Dinner Rolls

Whole Wheat Muffins

Weiner Schnitzel- not what you think, it's the old German dish. Uses noodles, cheese, hotdogs.

Macaroni and Cheese- using the little 5-oz jar of cheese sauce. This is a 'bag' recipe; everything can be put in a bag ahead of time and kept on a shelf (or given to a friend)

Microwave Caramels- mmmm

Whipped Topping- A little explanation here... Evaporated milk will whip like cream if it is ICY-cold when you whip it. This is glorified whipped evaporated milk, starting with the powder. They add a few things for flavor, some oil for richness, and gelatin to keep it from going flat. I think the gelatin gives it a strange consistency. Next time I'll use a couple teaspoons of Instant Clear Jel. Or cook some cornstarch with the water. Or forget stabilizing it, and just eat it fast- maybe just whip evaporated milk and add sugar and vanilla to taste.

Fudgsicles- don't these sound good?

Dry Milk Ice Cream- Bad name, but it uses sweetened condensed milk, which makes it really good. The recipe claims to make a gallon, but it's really more like 2 quarts.

Peanut Butter Chews- similar to Bit-O'Honey if you use the honey instead of corn syrup.

Vanilla Pudding Mix- fat free, and has variations for chocolate and caramel pudding. When you make it, you add a tiny bit of butter and an egg, so it’s still lowfat, just not fat free. If you cannot have wheat, substitute half as much cornstarch as the flour called for.

Plain Yogurt- really, this IS easy. The recipe says it makes 2 quarts, but part of the water got left off the ingredients list. Use 7 cups instead. If you use your hottest tap water, this will be about right to start incubating. You need the yogurt to start out between 105 and 120 degrees. The lower end gives sweeter yogurt, the higher end makes it more tart. Wrapping the jars in a towel help keep it warm. Some warm areas to incubate it are- on top of a heating pad (cover with a towel), an insulated cooler (I put in a jar of almost-boiling water to warm it up in there), a water-filled crockpot, a warm oven (an oven thermometer is helpful! Hotter than 130 degrees will kill those friendly bacteria.). Or get creative. This costs only $ .42 per quart if you are using your own starter.

Vanilla Yogurt- has gelatin in it, like most of the store-bought versions. This keeps it firm, even after stirring. (Yogurt with no gelatin will become drinkable after stirring.) If you want to use sugar instead of honey, use from 1 to 1 ½ cups. And dissolve (boil) it in some of the water first, or it will settle to the bottom. You could use a package of flavored Jello- a 3 oz box is just under ½ c. of sugar, and as much gelatin as one packet of unflavored.   Or use juice/syrup from canned fruit as part of your water. Stir in fruit after the yogurt sets up.

Almond Crunch Granola- also no powdered milk, unless you count what you pour on top when eating this!

Strawberry Banana Smoothie- uses the yogurt you just made…

Yogurt-Fruit Smoothie- Banana-orange; uses yogurt as well as powdered milk

Yogurt Breakfast Waffles- yogurt makes them extra moist. They also have a hint of orange and cinnamon in them. I love these using the lemon yogurt.

Yogurt Dill-Veggie Dip- close to Ranch Dip

Yogurt, Berries, and Pecans on Crispbread- self-explanatory

Ranch Salad Dressing- do you have any idea how much better fresh made is?

Fruit Yogurt Salad- uses vanilla yogurt and whatever fruit you have

Yogurt Parmesan Chicken- uses yogurt instead of mayonnaise or eggs to get the coating to stick. Very good.

Granola, Yogurt, Berry Parfait- kinda like those little ones at McDonald’s, only you sweeten plain yogurt with honey. You taste the fruit better this way.

Mock Mozzarella Cheese- about $1.50 per pound. It only takes 10 minutes to make! And it melts wonderfully. Do use a blender to mix everything, otherwise the oil won’t mix in with the cheese curds and you’ll end up with a layer of oil on top of the whey. (Make bread!) NOTE- the recipe doesn’t tell you about salt. Unsalted cheese is not very tasty. I use 1 tsp. salt for this; I mix it in after rinsing the curds.   Even wrapping in cheesecloth, and pressing (under whatever heavy thing I can find) overnight, this hasn’t ever been cohesive enough for me to grate. It crumbles, though. When I aged this for a couple months, it became very creamy and softer. If you don’t have cheesecloth, you can use a piece of cotton fabric- something that will let the liquid drip out. Cheesecloth can be found in some grocery stores in the kitchen tools section, or in fabric stores and Walmart over with the notions.

Parmesan Cheese- this is in already-crumbled form. Best flavor after aging in fridge for 3 months, but still good used right away.

Yogurt Cream Cheese, Yogurt Sour Cream- which one you make only depends on how long you let the yogurt drain. 16 ounces of yogurt will make just over 8 oz. of cream cheese, so it costs about $ .21 per 8 oz block.

Easy Homemade Cheese Ball- a cream cheese based cheese ball. Use your yogurt cream cheese.

Mock Ricotta Cheese- about $ .84 for the batch, using your homemade yogurt. ‘Real’ ricotta uses whey instead of milk, but normally you don’t have easy access to whey. If you do (from making mozzarella?), use ¼ c. vinegar in 2 quarts whey, heat to simmering, then let sit for several hours for the curds to form. Then strain through cheesecloth, salt, and press.

Jalapeno Cheese- variation on the ricotta.

Queso Blanco- this one does not melt; it holds its shape through cooking.

Homemade Cottage Cheese- this makes the curds. To make the creamy liquid the curds sit in, use a little yogurt, sour cream, or evaporated milk to the curds. I like it with ¼ tsp. salt. Add more if you like. The recipe makes about 8 oz. of curds and costs $ .36

Cottage Cheese Scramble- a form of scrambled eggs, only mostly cottage cheese, with chives.

Cheese-Stuffed Jumbo Shells- like Manicotti. For those of you unfamiliar with it, this is similar in flavor to lasagna, only you use shaped pasta and stuff them, instead of doing layers. The recipe calls for ricotta, cottage cheese, mozzarella, and Parmesan cheeses… but use what you have. When I made it for the class, I used only cottage cheese, with mozzarella just on the top. And only about a cup of spaghetti sauce.

Happy cooking!

-Rhonda

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The Challenge, and a story about old canned food

10/16/2010

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(note- this was originally sent as an email in January 2010)
Happy New Year!    I took a break last week to visit family, it was great. We only ended up with one bloody nose on the whole trip. That wasn’t even on one of my children, it was a cousin, though it really was caused by one of mine. Sledding. And no one got hurt when we went sledding on what my kids affectionately call "Death Hill" later in the week. Oh, wait, I did plow down a 3-year-old….   Oops. My sled went diagonally instead of straight.

SO…… onward and upward…...

How's your food storage?

With the new year, I have a new challenge for you:   If you haven’t got your 3-month supply yet, have it in place 3 months from now.

I promise that if you determine to do it, without going into debt, a way will be provided, and you will have more peace and security, knowing you are following the prophet’s counsel.

Those of you who are past that step, congratulations! I am so happy for you! What do you need to do next? See the Family Home Storage pamphlet. Set a goal and do it. If I can help you with anything, please let me know, I'd love to help.

Here’s the first mini-challenge to meet the 3-month one-

Sit down with your family on Sunday or Monday, during Home Evening works great, and get your kid’s input on their favorite meals. Plan a menu for anywhere from a week and a half to a month. Then go to the Three-Month Supply Excel Spreadsheet or video on how to use it. It will calculate all your quantities for you!

Did you know food is a great investment? You’ve may have seen this quote before; here’s a small piece of it, from J. Reuben Clark of the First Presidency (April 1937 Conference): “put your money in foodstuffs and wearing apparel, not in stocks and bonds…”

Now here’s what food has done over the last ten years: Corn- $215 worth of corn in 1999 was selling for $380 in 2009. Wheat- $261 worth in 1999 cost $540 in 2009. And that doesn’t even account for inflation! (if you want the source, it’s at http://futures.tradingcharts.com/historical/CW/1999/0/continuous.html )

In other words, buying your wheat for food storage was half as hard in 1999, only we didn’t know that at the time, did we? But wouldn’t you still rather pay today’s prices than next year’s? At the LDS Church Home Storage Centers you can still buy wheat at 3-years-ago's price. The price of powdered milk there was a good price fifteen years ago! See Current Prices list.   Or watch for sales at local stores, find a local grower, or check out sites like Walton Feed.

If you’re worried about not rotating through your food fast enough, people have found wheat in Egyptian tombs and granaries that still sprouted. And made good bread. The proper storage temperature certainly helps. And what about canned food? Here’s what I found online. (If you go to this site, they’ve got the history of canning, if you’d ever wondered about it…) from http://www.internet-grocer.net/how-long.htm

“In 1820, William Perry (Parry) took an expedition in search of the Northwest Passage, toward the North Pole. He took with him some canned meats. At the time, food canning was about a 10-year-old technology.

At least one can of meat was not used and wound up in a museum in England. In 1938, it was opened and found to be edible. It was fed to a cat which suffered no ill effects from eating the 118-year-old meat.

Now, we're not saying that our canned meats, canned cheese and canned butter will last 118 years, but we're pretty confident that you can get at least a 15-20 year shelf life out of them, in light of this article. (The manufacturer offers a 3 year guarantee.)

And another- The steamboat Bertrand was heavily laden with provisions when it set out on the Missouri River in 1865, destined for the gold mining camps in Fort Benton, Mont. The boat snagged and swamped under the weight, sinking to the bottom of the river. It was found a century later, under 30 feet of silt a little north of Omaha, Neb.

Among the canned food items retrieved from the Bertrand in 1968 were brandied peaches, oysters, plum tomatoes, honey, and mixed vegetables. In 1974, chemists at the National Food Processors Association (NFPA) analyzed the products for bacterial contamination and nutrient value. Although the food had lost its fresh smell and appearance, the NFPA chemists detected no microbial growth and determined that the foods were as safe to eat as they had been when canned more than 100 years earlier.

The nutrient values varied depending upon the product and nutrient. NFPA chemists Janet Dudek and Edgar Elkins report that significant amounts of vitamins C and A were lost. But protein levels remained high, and all calcium values "were comparable to today's products."

NFPA chemists also analyzed a 40-year-old can of corn found in the basement of a home in California. Again, the canning process had kept the corn safe from contaminants and from much nutrient loss. In addition, Dudek says, the kernels looked and smelled like recently canned corn.”

That said, don’t ever use a can of low-acid food that is bulging. That means bad things are growing inside- botulism, for instance. If you have a can of tomato sauce, tomato paste, or tomatoes that is bulging a bit or squirts when you open it, that is NOT from botulism: instead, it's from the electrolysis occurring between the acidic tomato and the can. (Not the best thing to eat every day, but okay occasionally.)
But don’t get stressed if you still have cans of green beans that are two years past the “best by” date. I’ve got some canned milk that was dated 2001 (in 2010); I can’t tell a difference between it and my newer stuff. Still, the goal is to “STORE WHAT YOU EAT, AND EAT WHAT YOU STORE”.   Not to just let it sit.   Just do your best, and, as President Kimball always said, "DO IT"! You will be blessed.

Sincerely,

Rhonda

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Need a Search bar?One day I may upgrade my website-- but until then, use your web browser search bar. Type in my web address and what you're looking for, like this-- www.theprovidenthomemaker.com pumpkin -- and you should get results.Author

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Need a Search bar?
One day I may upgrade my website-- but until then, use your web browser search bar. Type in my web address and what you're looking for, like this--
www.theprovidenthomemaker.com pumpkin -- and you should get results.

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