Store It Foods

Emergency survival kits are great tools for securing your family in any emergency situation. Having one on hand provides a feeling of peace of mind and security. Many people actually keep more than one on hand, like having one at home and one in the car. Keeping an emergency survival kit in the car should be mandatory, especially if you are always on the road or you live in a remote area that is prone to severe weather conditions.

Even in any outdoor activities such as hiking or camping in the woods, an emergency survival kit should be included in the backpack as several emergency situations could happen along the way. There are emergency survival kits can be carried in a backpack or shoulder bag. Examples of the contents include water pouches, batteries, food bars, first aid kit, warm clothes, flashlight, and waterproof matches.

A few months ago, I switched to part-time at my job in order to spend more time at home with the kids. Since then we’ve been busy with dozens of activities, from arts and crafts to learning musical instruments and foreign languages. I want to allow my kids to experience all sorts of practical yet fun hobbies so that they can choose the ones they’d like to pursue seriously.

One such hobby takes place in the kitchen, where we’ve been learning how to make our favorite foods from scratch. It’s proved to be a real money-saver for me as well – many food products are marked up to exorbitant prices in grocery stores. You’re really just paying all that money for packaging and convenience. Just last week we used a Roma sauce maker to create a marinara from tomatoes, onions and assorted herbs.

Delicate garden salads and other light cuisine are well-suited for the dog days of summer, but now that the November chill is well on its way in many parts of America, diners are clamoring for something a bit more substantial. I like to wait for an especially cold night to make the following pot roast recipe. It’s a rib-sticking meal that will satisfy even the hungriest members of the family.

Ingredients:
2 pounds sirloin tip roast
3 Tsp. Worcestershire sauce
4 large potatoes
carrots, chopped into manageable pieces
½ yellow onion, diced
3 cups water
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
1. Season roast with salt and pepper. Put oil in Presto pressure cookers and warm it over medium heat. Brown roast on both sides and remove from heat.
2. Pour Worcestershire sauce over the top, put onions on top and add other veggies. Cover roast with water.
3. Heat pressure cooker on high with lid on. Don’t be alarmed if rocker jiggles slightly. Bring heat down to low and cook for about 50 minutes. Check periodically and serve.

My grandfather grew up on a farm in the Midwest, where he became intimately familiar with the breadmaking process. He and his parents would sow the seeds, till the earth and eventually reap the wheat. They would then take their grain to a flour mill or occasionally use their own grindstone and mallet to grind the flour from scratch. That hard work and painstaking attention to every detail of the process really inspired me.

I opened a small boutique bakery several months ago, eager to set myself apart from the competition. Remembering my grandfather’s commitment to excellent food, I purchased a grain mill and set about grinding my own flour for baking. While I don’t have the time or resources to plant the wheat, it still makes me feel like I’m connected to a long tradition of dedicated bakers.

I’ve been on a health kick of late and wanted to pass along a delicious recipe I’ve been putting into heavy rotation – no pun intended. It combines two of my favorite things: fennel and the food processor. I adore fennel for its rich, aromatic nature and the way it spices up even the blandest of dishes. And there’s no disputing its health benefits, either – the herb contains 20 percent of your recommended daily Vitamin C intake.

Ingredients:
4 fennel bulbs
1 russet potato
2 cloves garlic
2 cups skim milk
4 cups chicken broth
3 Tsp. parmesan cheese
1 Tsp. salt
¼ tsp. black pepper
2 Tsp. chopped mint leaves

Directions:
1. Cut the fennel in half, then slice it into thin strips. Peel potato and slice thinly. Plop the fennel, potatoes, broth, garlic and milk in a pot over heat. Simmer and cook until fennel and potatoes have softened. Should take 30 minutes or more.
2. Drain and place fennel mix in food processor and set to puree. Add the cheese, salt and pepper and mix some more. Next, put the mint and process some more. Add salt and pepper to taste, then serve.

Salads are very healthy for you, but they can be boring if they only consist of lettuce. You can make your salad more interesting and filling by adding cucumbers, tomatoes, radishes, carrots, artichoke hearts and more – whatever you like! But it takes time to chop all those vegetables, and that may discourage you from adding them. If you’re not comfortable using a knife, the idea can even be scary.

A Presto salad shooter really comes in handy for slicing and shredding vegetables for salads. It’s motorized, so once you insert a vegetable, all the slicing or shredding is done automatically. You can also shred cheese and other ingredients for pizzas, tacos, desserts and more. The salad shooter shoots your ingredients right where you want them. You can shoot cheese right onto a pizza or radishes right onto a salad; no mess from a cutting board or an extra bowl. What more could you want?

You do not need to limit your meat grinder’s use to the grinding of raw cuts of meat.  Consider this very easy to make recipe for shepherds’ pie.

Ma Palmer’s Simple Shepherds’ Pie

Ingredients:

• Leftover roast beef
• Leftover gravy
• one onion
• approx. 2 1/2 cups mashed potatoes

Take leftover roast beef and one onion.  Grind together.  Mix with gravy and fill a standard pie plate.  Spread potatoes over the top.

Bake in 350^o F. oven for 30 minutes.

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.