Chef Tess: Meals in a Jar
Chef Tess is often featured on the Honeyville Farms blog, and that's where I first found her. Her latest post Kid Friendly Meals in a Jar is a perfect example of the kinds of things she plans. Here are several other links to her jar ideas.
- Four Concenience Meals in a Jar
- Meals in a Jar posts with this label
- 6 Amazing Casseroles fro one recipe!
That will get you started and you can continue to browse and click on her sites at leisure.
Probably my favorite storage foods, especially the freeze-dried.
Three Suggestions From Me:
- Freeze-dried Corn - eat it right out of the can!
- Taco TVP - tastes great in tacos or Mexican casseroles, as is, or add your favorite ingredients, such as that corn I mentioned! Or eat it on a hamburger bun, yum! Do NOT mix it with a sauce like Manwich. Just sayin'.
- Amaranth a very flexible grain and healthy
Three Suggestions From Me:
- Almond Flour I know it's a little expensive, but it's gluten free and makes it possible for those who need gluten free to have many things they couldn't otherwise have. This link has a video of Chef Tess making cookies with it.
- #10 can stove This uses an empty #10 can and the quickstove fuel to turn it into a lightweight emergency cooking source. Great to fold up in your 72-hour kit, and all it takes in addition is a #10 can - which you may stuff with first aid supplies for that 72-hour kit!
- Chocolate Soy Milk for those who are lactose intolerant, this makes a great substitute in smoothies or even in a cup of hot cocoa.
This one always throws me because the address is beprepared, not Emergency Essentials. The brand on the can is Provident Pantry, so that's three names to keep straight! In addition, they don't show both sizes of a product on the same page, as Thrive Life does, so I sometimes have to go hunting. They DO have a paper catalog you can have sent to your home, though. If you can get together with friends and do group orders, they have group specials each month and you can save with quantity buying.
Three Suggestions from me:
- Freeze-dried Green Onions I keep a large can of these open in my pantry and toss in a handful to almost everything I'm cooking. Unless it's scrambled eggs or something that I'm cooking without liquid, I don't even rehydrate, just toss them in.
- Lentils are wonderful, especially in soup, but thrown into other things, you don't even notice they are there while they are providing wonderful nutrition.
- Soybeans are a great source of protein and calcium. These can be cooked or ground into flour.
This is a favorite of a friend of mine, and they have some things which are wonderful.
Three suggestions from me:
- Bakery Kit: Pancake mix, Biscuit Mix, and Bread & Roll Mix, a #10 can of each. There is no leavening in the bread mix, so you would have to provide that.
- Basic Starter Kit: #10 cans of Hard White Wheat, Long Grain White Rice, Regular Rolled Oats; For $25, you can start your food storage with these three basics!
- Chocolate Chip Cookies Everyone needs a little treat now and then, so store some for long term! After all that wheat chili and emergency food, you're going to need something familiar and sweet.
I've saved the best for last. The link takes you to a map where you can look for the little wheat sign to find out where the closest cannery is to you. #10 cans are available at those locations.
This link goes to a page where you can download the order form and see what is available, and how much it costs. ALWAYS call your local center to find out what days and hours they operated, AND how they handle purchasing of products. You do not have to be LDS in order to go to a cannery and buy products.
For things on this list, I would always buy them here and save a lot of money. This is non-profit. I can highly recommend the hot cocoa, the refried beans, the oats, both regular and quick, the potato pearls (though not for long-term storage) ... well, pretty much everything on there is in my long-term food storage, and I use the oatmeal all the time.
These come ONLY in #10 cans (with the exception of items on the bottom of the form, such as potato pearls), so be sure you keep them closed tightly except for long enough to dip out what you want. An oxygen absorber DOES become saturated and then doesn't work. Don't for instance, leave a can open while you bake your cookies! The beans and wheat don't have or need oxygen absorbers, but once open, they do need to be stored carefully and used within a couple of years.
That's it for today!
