Lessons Learned from Food Storage February

This bread rose so much it hit the top rack!

1. Food storage meals usually take longer to prepare. We've been eating dinner an hour later than usual this month. 
2. I'm not a big fan of cream of chicken soup or cream of mushroom soup. We will not be restocking those items. 
3. Progresso soups should definitely be in our food storage. It's an easy lunch for me, so I go through at least one a week. 
4. I am now very confident in my bread making abilities. I like baking way more than cooking. Also, I can bake in the evenings when Dash is sleeping and Matt is working, so that keeps me busy.
5. We've eaten less meat overall, but more cheese. Or maybe that's just because Dash likes to snack on cheese...

It's been an adventure this month! I don't think we'll repeat any of the 'food storage' recipes we tried for dinners, but we will be having cinnamon rolls and homemade bread again.

Rhetorically,
Rebekah

Food Storage Cinnamon Rolls

I made cinnamon rolls three weeks in a row and I think my recipe is ready to share! The food storage items I used were: dry milk, crisco, yeast, sugar, salt, and flour. This recipe is a combination of several recipes, with instructions taken primarily from this site.

Dough:

1c milk (1 c water + 1/3 c nonfat dry milk)

1/4 c crisco
2T yeast
1 egg

1/4 c white sugar

1t salt

3 1/2c flour

Filling:

1 1/2 T cinnamon (I used the pampered chef cinnamon plus blend)

2T butter

2/3c brown sugar

Frosting:
4 oz cream cheese (nonfat)
1/4 cup butter
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 c powdered sugar


Preparation:
Combine milk and crisco in a glass measuring cup. Microwave on high in 20 second increments (where you stop to stir) until crisco melts and mixture is hot. Let stand (stirring occasionally to release heat and keep crisco combined) until liquid becomes lukewarm. Add yeast and let set for 5-10 minutes. Combine dry ingredients in a separate bowl. Add egg to wet ingredients. Mix all ingredients together until dough is no longer sticky. Knead for 7-10 min and let set for about 20 min in a covered bowl.

Roll out dough into a rectangle. Spread on butter using table knife. Combine cinnamon and brown sugar and sprinkle mixture evenly over butter, leaving a 1/2 inch border. Starting at one long side, roll dough into log. With seam side down, cut dough crosswise with knife into 16-18 equal slices. Spray two 9 inch pie pans with nonstick spray. Place rolls in pans and cover with plastic wrap. Let dough rise about 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375F. Bake rolls until golden, about 15 min. Meanwhile make cream cheese frosting by beating softened cream cheese and butter together. Add vanilla and then powdered sugar, 1/2 c at a time. After rolls have cooled, top with frosting and enjoy!

Rhetorically,
Rebekah

Food Storage February

This is a follow-up post from my Provident Living post in 2014. As Matt and I have built our food storage, we realized that the handy-dandy sheet we used wasn't as awesome as we thought, mainly because we don't ever use half the stuff we bought (flour, yeast, powdered milk, etc). So now we have pounds and pounds of stuff that's going to expire shortly.

So, I've decided that February will be food storage month. I'm going to make bread from scratch! I'm going to try new recipes that actually use tomato soup or cream of mushroom soup! We won't be eating through everything, but hopefully we can make a dent in our storage before it's too late. Then we'll be building up a whole different food storage based on things we actually eat on a regular basis.

I started out on Sunday by making cinnamon rolls from scratch for the very first time, and they actually turned out okay! Not perfect yet, though, so I'm going to have to give it another go. Then maybe I'll post the revised recipe.

If you have any good bread recipes or ideas on how to use up 5 pounds of peanut butter, let me know.

Rhetorically,
Rebekah

Provident Living

I gave a talk today about Provident Living. One of the things Matt and I have been working on over the past year is building our food storage based on this easy list:

We modified it to fit our needs (for example, as grad students in a tiny apartment, we really don't have room for all the flour and sugar it recommends) but it's been great to get into the habit of buying something extra with every shopping trip and building our own food storage. We've also worked on our own 72 hour emergency kits, which are also almost complete.

My first real-life encounters with emergency preparedness came when I was on my mission. In the Dominican, you don't have electricity all the time, you may not have running water all of the time, and there is a higher likelihood of emergencies and natural disasters. Through experience, I learned to always have candles, water, food, and extra money on hand. You never know when the mission president would call and tell you about a hurricane warning, where you have to stay inside for several days and survive off of what you already have. I hope that even though I'm living in a 1st world country, I can still remember that sometimes disaster can leave us living in 3rd world conditions, and that it's important to store up what we can to be self-reliant.

Rhetorically,
Rebekah