Hi Everyone,
NOTES:
** Ran out of mayonnaise and made a new batch. I think my first batch lasted three weeks. I hadn’t used it in a few days and it had the beginning of mold around the edges. This is the trade off. Making your own is better for you by far BUT because there are no unpronounceable preservatives in it, it won’t last months and months in the fridge.
** I decided to make bread with my natural yeast starter. It’s just not the same as bread made with rapid-rise yeast, but it smells good and tastes delicious. I used some of the starter to make pancakes and they were also good.
Cooking with natural yeast comes with a learning curve for sure!!!
By the way, City Prepping has a video showing how to do this with a potato to make sourdough. Pretty cool. I’ll have to try his method sometime.
GARDEN HAPPENINGS:
Here’s another one:
I’ve been hardening off my tomatoes, peppers, and other vegetables that have been growing indoors since January. More and more I’ve been planting other things in the pots with my tomatoes. This year I’m planting two other vegetables/flowers in with each tomato. Here are my companion plants: celery, basil, onions, garlic, calendula, chamomile, and alyssum. We are still 10 days away from our last frost date, but according to the weather app, we won’t be anywhere near freezing. Of course, tomatoes don’t REALLY like it outside until the nights are about 50Ëš, but they are so tall that I can’t keep them inside any longer. So……out they go. They are near the house because it was SOOO windy!
In fact, I ended up staking them up with skewers.
I still have a few things inside: some marigolds that got planted late, some celery and a few other flowers. I bought seed potatoes and I’m going to let those sit out for 5-6 days before I plant them. The carrots are coming up, the onions and garlic are growing. Things are looking good out there.
THIS WEEK’S PURCHASE: milk
Time to look at your stored milk. The shelf life is 20 years, which is not bad. The thing about milk, is that it is so easy to rotate.
One 27-oz pouch from the Home Storage Center ($6.83) will make about 2 gallons of milk. At $3.40 a gallon, the price is VERY comparable to store bought milk.
The benefit of dry milk is that it won’t go bad when you lose power.
The pdf below shows that a minimum supply for 1 adult is 16 pounds of milk. 1 pound milk = 1 1/4 gallon. So, 16 pounds will give you 80 cups of milk, or 1 cup milk every 4-5 days. It’s enough to cook with, and to have on your cereal, but not enough to drink every day.
Let’s do more math LOL
Suppose you want 1/2 c. milk every day for just 3 months. That’s 45 cups of milk. Divided by 5 (the number of cups in a pound) and you need to store 9 pounds. Each pouch is 27 oz. of milk. And……. ta dah! A little more than 5 pouches PER PERSON for just 3 months. $6.92 a pouch. Get a box of 6 and feel good about it.
MISC. PURCHASE: soap, especially Dial
Keeping our hands and homes clean will go a long way to avoiding sickness. We have a friend who could not her an open sore to heal. She finally was referred to a “Wound Clinic”. They told her to wash with Dial soap and cover lightly. Within three days she saw noticeable healing. In a week it was gone. All those old-time diseases like typhoid, and cholera are all caused by lack of cleanliness and sanitary practices. Bars of soap are easy to store and rotate. Just get some!
FOOD STORAGE RECIPES:
This information is taken from an article “Food Storage Use It or Lose It” published by Utah State University Cooperative Extension
Their Golden Rule is:
Draw from your stored foods every day and replenish them regularly. Rotation is the key to maintaining an EDIBLE inventory of foods.
Here is a weeks ideas of menues:
Day 1 Breakfast: cornmeal mush, canned fruit juice, milk
Lunch: Orange juice whip, Bread with peanut butter and honey
Dinner: burritos, spanish rice, canned green beans, milk
Day 2 Breakfast: whole wheat muffins, canned pears, milk
Lunch: macaroni salad with tuna, spiced tomato juice, chocolate chip wheat cookies
Dinner: wheat chili, cornbread, vanilla pudding, milk
Day 3 Breakfast: hot cocoa and toast
Lunch: tomato soup, grilled cheese sandwich, raisins for a snack
Dinner: whole wheat meatloaf, baked potato with yogurt sour cream
Day 4 Breakfast: applesauce, scrambled eggs with cheese, cinnamon toast, milk
Lunch: wheat seafood salad, canned peaches, milk
Dinner: baked herb chicken, barley pilaff, jello fruit salad
Day 5 Breakfast: cracked wheat waffles, orange juice, milk
Lunch: fruited yogurt, whole wheat muffins
Dinner: sloppy joes whole wheat buns, cooked carrots, whole wheat chocolate cake
Day 6 Breakfast: sourdough pancakes, orange juice, milk
Lunch: oriental fruit salad, crackers, milk
Dinner: eastern corn chowder, whole wheat breadsticks, lemon wheat fluff
Day 7 Breakfast: granola with milk, peach nectar
Lunch: egg salad sandwich, canned cherries, milk
Dinner: chicken stew with rice, wheat or barley, french bread, berry frozen yogurt.
Unfortunately, the recipes for these dishes were provided in a separate hand-out that I do not have. However, over the years, I have just substituted my own recipes for some of the meals, and others I have change to accommodate my tastes and storage.
Marti Shelley
