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

Baby Cereal Banana Muffin Recipe

As we're working on introducing solids, I wanted something that was soft and healthy for my baby to practice feeding himself. So I made a few modifications to a banana muffin recipe and thought I'd share it! This is a non-dairy, non-fat recipe.

Ingredients:
1 c flour
3/4 c baby cereal (I used whole wheat)
1/2 c sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 eggs
1 c banana, mashed (you can even use jars of banana baby food for this)
1/2 c applesauce (again, you can use baby food jars)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 F. Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. Combine wet ingredients in a separate bowl. Mix wet and dry ingredients and pour into muffin tin. For full size muffins, cook 15-20 minutes. For mini muffins, cook 8-10 minutes. Makes 12 regular or 48 mini muffins.

We ended up freezing a bunch and then defrosting a few at a time.

Rhetorically,
Rebekah

Happy Halloween

We had a great Halloween this year!! 

We had our ward trunk-or-treat the night before Halloween where we dressed up as batman, batgirl, and robin. 

On Halloween day, we had some of my cousins over to make caramel apples!! I used this great recipe to make homemade caramel- my only clarification is that it took at least 15 minutes for us to reach the "medium call" stage. 

We were visited by Belle, Merlin, Mad Madam Mim, and Archimedes the Owl. 

Dash stood for a few seconds on his own. 

We finished the day watching Hotel Transylvania.

Rhetorically, 

Rebekah

Use Easy Recipes

We do our share of frozen and boxed dinners, but here are some easy-to-assemble recipes for meals we cook on a regular basis:

Baked Potatoes (Wash potatoes, dry, and spray with canola oil. Bake at 400 for 45-60 minutes. Cover with your choice of toppings- cheese, chives, sour cream, chili, bacon bits, etc).

Grilled Cheese and Soup (We do use canned soup...but we grill the sandwiches ourselves. Some fun twists are using cream cheese spread instead of butter on the bread, adding basil or garlic salt on top of the cheese, or using several kinds of cheeses).



Skillet Shepherds Pie (1 lb ground beef, 1 can tomato soup, 1 can green beans, 2 c mashed potatoes. Cook the ground beef and add tomato soup along with a dash of oregano, garlic salt, onion flakes, and black pepper. Top with warmed green beans and mashed potatoes. Note: don't add the mashed potatoes until everything is cooked and you are ready to eat.)

BLTs (Cook the bacon, shred the lettuce, slice the tomato. Assemble. Or make it a BALT by adding avocado.)





German Pancakes (Preheat oven to 425. Melt 1/2 stick of butter in 9x9 pan. Mix 1 c milk, 1 c flour, 4 eggs, and 1 tsp salt. Pour into pan and bake for 20 minutes. Top with syrup, powdered sugar, and fruit.)

Tacos (Add packet of seasoning to 1 lb ground beef. Top with lettuce, tomato, cheese, ketchup, etc).





Stew (Combine 1 lb stew meat with 4 cups of cubed potatoes, celery, carrots, and onion. We buy a packet of stew seasonings and combine that with 2 cups of water. Crockpot for 8 hours on low or 4 hours on high.)




Stir-fry (Granted, we usually use a frozen stir fry mix for this, which we combine with stir fry meat and frozen pot stickers. Seasonings we've used in the past are: soy sauce, a-1 sauce, Korean bbq sauce, and ponzu lime sauce. Serve with rice on the side.)

What are some of your easy-to-assemble recipes?

Rhetorically,

Rebekah

"Healthy" Chocolate Options

Blend with milk and frozen banana chunks to frosty-like consistency. 

Drizzle over your choice of fruit (I prefer strawberries).

Make your own fiber brownies using black beans.

Rhetorically,
Rebekah

Peach Season

Our landlady has a peach tree in the backyard, so we've been getting a lot of free peaches recently (which we love). Since Matt and I can only eat a couple ripe peaches a day, we've come up with a few ways to use them:

Peach Cobbler (compliments of my cousin, Cami)

The Peach Cobbler recipe is something that we adjust based on the size of the pan, but generally speaking, for a normal 13x8 cake pan:

• 2 cans of peaches (or enough fresh peaches to fill the pan) 
• 1 box of yellow cake mix 
• 1 cube of butter (I like to use less fat so we tried to reduce the amount of butter to 1/2 cube) 

If canned, drain peaches. Fill cake pan with about two layers of peaches, cover with cake mix and top with butter (we grated the butter so it would cover the pan more evenly). Cook for 45 minutes at 375 degrees. As a side note, I've also done these in a steam oven instead of a regular oven. The crust comes out moister and you can use even less butter.

Peach Ice Cream (click here for the original recipe)

We doubled the ingredients, yielding about 1 1/2 quarts of ice cream:

• 6 cups sliced peeled peaches (To easily peel ripe peaches, place in boiling water for 30 seconds. Then move to ice water, where they can cool off. Once you can handle them, pinch the skin with your fingers and you should be able to pull it right off.)
• 2 cups half-and-half (equivalent to a small carton of half and half)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup whole vitamin D milk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Blend the peaches until they are a fine pulp. Mix in with remaining ingredients (we used the pulse button of the blender to mix the rest of the ingredients). Pour mixture into the freezer can of an ice cream machine and follow the instructions. We have the Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker, which requires you to freeze the freezer can for a day beforehand. Then you just pull it out of the freezer right before you make the ice cream and it takes about 20 minutes. 


What's your favorite peach recipe?

Rhetorically,
Rebekah 

Easter Appreciation Post 2

I had a surprisingly wonderful Easter. It was so wonderful, in fact, that I'm dividing it into two posts. This is the "traditions" post, which includes: Family Time, a New Recipe, and Easter Egg Decorating. 

Family Time

My brother and his wife were in town and chose to spend Easter with us!! Even though they start a new semester of school today, they postponed going back to Idaho to be with us. It was awesome to have company over. I hadn't expected much out of my Easter because of finals, but this was a great excuse to take a break. 

Apparently I only remember to take pictures when people are playing ping pong or pool. No other times. Even though we did an easter egg hunt, had two picture-worthy meals together, and went to church, this is all I've got. (However, it was a pretty epic game of pool. The white ball hovered on the edge of the pockets several times throughout the game.)

 New Recipe: Bird's Nests 

1 c peanut butter

1 bag butterscotch chips

3 cups chow mein noodles

mini cadbury eggs* 

Melt peanut butter and butterscotch chips in microwave until smooth. 

Mix in chow mein noodles, form into nest-like structures. 

Add "eggs" and refrigerate. 

Ta-da!

*(or other egg shaped candies, but why would you want anything other than cadbury eggs?)

Easter Egg Decorating:

 I have to say, we outdid ourselves this year.

In case you can't tell what the eggs are: (going clockwise) 

Yoda, Batman, Mickey Mouse, Nemo, Despicable Me Minion, and Carolina Blue.

What are your favorite Easter traditions?

Rhetorically,
Rebekah

PS If you like Peeps and creativity, and you are looking for a distraction online, check out this link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/lifestyle/peeps-diorama-contest/2014/

Cookie Swap

Over the holiday break, a good family friend invited us to a cookie swap. My sister and I joked that we should bring no-bake cookies and my poor mom thought we were serious. Mortified, because this was supposed to be a more "gourmet" event, she suggested that I make my killer oreo truffles. Oreo truffles are basically pieces of chocolate heaven. They will instantly give you the reputation of a professional and successful baker. The best part? You don't actually have to bake anything. 

Here's the recipe:
1 bag of Oreo cookies (normal, no double stuff or any other variation)
8 oz cream cheese (you can do low-fat if it makes you feel better--no one will notice the difference)
1 bag semi-sweet chocolate chips
whatever other toppings you would like (almond bits, coconut, white chocolate, etc)

Crush the entire bag of oreos to smithereens. fold in cream cheese until the entire mixture is brown again. roll into balls and dip into melted chocolate chips. Top with whatever else you'd like. 

It's that simple.

Rhetorically,
Rebekah