Store It Foods

There are many good reasons to have an extra supply of food in your house. Maybe you’re just trying to keep up with feeding your kids as well as all their hungry, teenage friends. Or maybe you’re ensuring that your family has a cache of food in case something unexpected and tragic happens. And then again, you could simply be preparing a lot of food ahead of time in order to save yourself the time and trouble later.

Whatever reason you’re storing an extra supply of food, it’s important that you have the food storage supplies ahead of time. After all, if you start canning food and realize that you don’t have the proper cans, it’s going to be a big pain. Also make sure you have the space to store all this food. If it can be left out, make sure there’s enough space on your shelves to accommodate all this food. If it needs to be frozen, make sure you have an extra freezer that can hold all those dishes.

Food dehydrators are simple kitchen appliances that are designed to drastically lessen the amount of water contained in any given food. The water is most often removed by placing the food within the dehydrator where it is exposed to heat over long periods of time. People typically use these food dehydrators in order to keep food that would otherwise rot or go bad in a short amount of time.

For that reason, the most common food items to be placed in a dehydrator are various kinds of fruit. The resulting dried fruit is perfect for storing for long periods of time and placing on oatmeal or cereal in the morning. Dried fruits and nuts also make an easy and convenient mix of snacks to take on hikes or other high energy activities. Dried fruit is a healthy, high energy snack, and this makes it ideal for building up energy before a run or replenishing your energy after some intense trekking.

There are some kitchen gadgets that make life harder for you. These are better off left untouched in the shelves for the next couple of years. However, once in awhile you discover an amazing kitchen gadget that leaves you in awe. You marvel at it and can’t stop talking about it. You purchase it and couldn’t wait to try it at home.

This is what happened to me when I saw the Victorio food strainer. It was love at first sight. My turf is in the kitchen and I spend most of my waking hours preparing food for my family. I love making sauces and salsas, which are actually my specialty. Just recently I decided to get out of my comfort zone and venture into selling bottled sauces. The strainer has been the perfect kitchen assistant. Not once did it fail me. Doing something I love and earning from it, what more can I ask for?

If your cholesterol and triglyceride levels are high and your physician has told you to change your lifestyle, then it’s about time you do something about it. First off, it is never too late to start a healthy diet. Ditch the greasy steaks and burgers. Aim for the greens. Green leafy vegetables and fruits in season are high in fiber. They can effectively lower your bad cholesterol. If you find it such a hassle to chop all the veggies for a salad, then get a salad shooter. This amazing kitchen gadget will do the slicing and shredding for you. Choose a dressing that is light such as a vinaigrette dressing.

Aside from eating healthier, make exercise a part of your life. Consult with a fitness trainer or your physician on what exercise regimen would work for you. You’ll see positive results in just a few weeks of keeping fit.

When you come home at the end of the day, you want to be able to enjoy a great meal.  But sometimes, you don’t have the time to prepare anything and will just pop a frozen meal in the microwave.  But you can enjoy real meals in just a few minutes with pressure cookers.It is very easy and convenient to use a pressure cooker.  And you can preserve the flavors and nutrients in pressure cooking.  You can also save on your electricity bills since they cook the food very quickly.  There are different sizes of pressure cookers so you can get the right one for your family size.  Coming home for dinner will now be an easy task.

Here’s a quick and easy recipe for Cream of Mushroom Soup made right in your own kitchen from your own fresh ingredients. 

Easy Mushroom Soup

Serve 2-3
Preparation and cooking time: less than 1/2 hour

Ingredients:

2 tbp Butter
2 cloves Chopped garlic (optional)
3 3/4 cup Chopped/sliced mushroom
2 tbp Plain flour
1 c Water
1/2 c Milk
1/2 c Evaporated milk
Dash of white pepper (optional)
Salt
Parsley/ Marjoram for garnish (optional)

* Change water with chicken stock and milk with cream for better flavour.

Directions:

1. Melt butter in a sauce pan over a medium heat and saute garlic and mushroom until soft. Add plain flour and mix it in until no lumps can be seen.
2. Add water/ stock slowly and stir it into the mushroom mixture. Keep stiring to ensure the mixture is lump free and heat it until it thickens and starts bubbling.
3. Add milk and evaporate milk/ cream and stir it in. Heat it until it is just about to boil. Add pepper and salt to taste.
4. Garnish with herbs just before serving.

The recipe shown above is reproduced from a Wordpress blog, butlerwoman.wordpress.com, that contains this and many other delicious recipes.

If you wished to use food storage items, you could, of course, substitute reconstituted dehydrated mushrooms for the fresh mushrooms, and garlic powder for the garlic cloves. You might even want to introduce your own variants.  In any case, you control what goes into it.

Having said that, though, it must be admitted that there is more time and work involved here than would be needed in plucking a can of mushroom soup from your cupboard, adding water and quickly heating it on your stovetop.  The can of soup probably makes for a relatively nutritious meal, but you would likely lose some of the heartiness of homemade.

An often ignored fact is that you would also lose control of the ingredients that go into the making of that soup.

Here’s a sampling of what you will likely find in that canned soup of yours:

Ingredients: Water, Mushrooms, Enriched Wheat flour, Cream, Corn Starch, Canola Oil, Salt, Modified Milk Product (Modified Milk Ingredients, Modified Palm Oil, Cream, Soy Protein Isolate), Modified Corn Starch, Sugar, Momosodium Glutamate, Coloring, Yeast Extract, Spice, Spice Extract, Garlic Powder.

So there you have it — a little “food” for thought.  Whether or not you are using fresh mushrooms or your own, home dehydrated mushrooms, or some other type of soup altogether, there is often a lot to be said for home made, even though it might take a litte more time and trouble.

Meat grinding is often done to make different meat ingredients for hamburgers, sausages and other meat dishes.  If you like preparing your meat beforehand, an electric meat grinder will suit you best.  Some models even come with attachments for sausage-making.  Most meat grinders have different size meshes so various sized meat cuts can be achieved.  Typically, all kinds of meat can be run through a grinder.

Having an electric meat grinder in your kitchen could be an advantage.  Some meat grinders can even grind up hard fruits and vegetables.  If you prefer making your own meals, instead of buying pre-processed meats and meat by-products, this is the kitchen tool for you.  It is easy to use and easy to clean.  Some are even designed for easy storage.

Here’s a simple but tasty recipe:

Sausage Delight

• one pound beef or pork sausages
• canned tomatoes
• salt and pepper

Take the sausages and canned tomatoes and put together in a pot with salt and pepper to taste.  Boil for twenty minutes.  Serve with potatoes.  (This can make a good sized meal for quite a large family).

That’s it.  It’s quick.  It’s simple.  It’s inexpensive.  It’s easy to make.   It should also be noted that this comes from a Depression era cookbook which had been compiled during the “lean thirties”.  It, and many like it, deomonstrate that meals can successfully be based on very few ingredients.  Note the lack of multiple herbs and spices.

Such recipes might be good have on hand.  When we find ourselves actually depending upon and using our food storage items, we may find that we may be somewhat limited in what ingredients we have available.  So, we will want to do the best we can with what we have.  Thus, those simple, easy to make recipes could be just exactly what is needed.

The time to find them, of course, is before they become a necessity.  Start with a basic few.  Try them and see how you like them.  In other words, be prepared.

Remember, too, that your long term food storage is supposed to be there to benefit you whenever it is needed, and that can include times of unemployment or under employment, times when money is scarce.  You do not need to wait for some sort of natural or man-made disaster to strike.  If finances dictate that you use it now, then now is a good time to use it.

No kitchen would be complete without a flour sifter.  Or would it?

As the name implies, the flour sifter was designed to sift flour, breaking up clumps and removing foreign matter.  These days, however, the flour that you bring home from the grocery store is unlikely to have clumps or contain foreign matter.  Some cooks, however, insist that the usefulness of the flour sifter has not ended, that it can still be used to aerate flour, giving it more volume and thus making for lighter, fluffier baked goods.  They claim that sifting also makes it easier to incorporate other foods and liquids into sifted products.

Even if that were true (and it might very well be) some feel that a sifter is more trouble than it’s worth, and that an ordinary sieve will work just as well and be much easier to clean up afterwards.

The debate goes on.

The reason for raising the matter here is simply to show that when contemplating the purchase of a food preparation or food storage product, it is wise to look at the pros and cons of that purchase.  In other words, why purchase a flour sifter if you don’t think it is worth using?  On the other hand, wouldn’t it be wise to add one to your inventory of kitchen tools if you think it would be of great benefit?

A flour sifter is not terribly expensive, so buyng one just to try it might be worthwhile, even without giving it a great deal of thought.  For more expensive appliances such as grain mills, bread makers, deluxe food processors and the like that might not be as good a policy to follow.  Maybe you should consider doing a little contemplating beforehand.

After all, if you can’t see yourself ever using it, why are you buying it?  If you don’t think the pros outweigh the cons, why make the purchase?  If you aren’t going to be willing to at least try it, is it really going to be that wise an investment?

Yet, if you envision it being a really useful and important tool, why are you hesitating?

 With so many choices in baby items that are out in the market these days, choosing baby shower gifts can be quite confusing. So it is best to base your decision on the usefulness and practicality of the baby shower gifts and you should make sure that the gifts selected by you would be useful to the parents-to-be as soon as the baby is born.

Given below are some of the popular and practical baby shower gift ideas:

~ Baby feeding products. These include feeding bottles, baby dishes and baby food grinder.

~ Baby clothing. You can include undershirts, mittens, blankets, and socks.

~ Baby bath products. A baby bathtub with baby towels and bath robes works well.

~ Baby’s nursery room essentials.