[MaryV]

I feel stuck, not sure what to do. It seems like I have a hodgepodge of stuff, but no plan for proper meals and nutrition for my food storage. I have bags and jars of dried veggies, lots of them. but if I had to survive on my food, I would get tired of veggies pretty quick.
I have rice and oatmeal and barley.
I have veggies.
i have dried blueberries and bananas.
I have some mountain house meals.
what else do I need? I will eventually when I have the money, get some freezedried meat to go with the veggies.
Is this enough? i just feel like I need some kind of plan and dont have one.

 

[George_H_M]

Hey there Mary. Here is a couple of suggestions. First write or collect recipes for the food stores you have. Then start make week meal plans on from what in your store is soonest to expire and your recipe list you have. With that setup you can start to use what you store and see what else you would like to or should store for your self. Hope this helps.

 

[MaryV]

ok thanks so much. I know there are some items I still need to get, like various spices. but starting with recipes will sure help me plan. I will start doing that today.

 

[NaeKid]

Just having food in the house doesn't mean that you are really prepared. Just storing the food doesn't mean that you are ready. You just stated that you need spices ...

What do you normally cook for food? Do you like pasta? Do you make your own pasta-sauce or do you buy it in a jar? How long do you cook your pasta for before eating? Have you tried "fresh-frozen-ready-to-eat" pasta's at all, or, do you just get the standard dried pastas?

What I am reading here (and, I might be reading into it too much) is that you are stashing food / supplies, but, you are not really sure on how to make the foods into meals.

The only way to turn "food into a meal" is to experiment with all kinds of recipes or create your own.

Can you turn flour and water into a biscuit? If so - bake some biscuits and you have the start to a meal. Steam some mixed vegies and sprinkle some chipotle spice (very little if you like the flavor, lots if you like the heat), toss in a skewer of chicken with some home-made honey-n-garlic sauce and you have taken food and turned it into a meal.

Do you normally cook for 1 person, 2 people or for a full-family? How do you normally cook? Do you follow a recipe, do you cook based on other people's requests, do you prepare foods that do not require cooking (raw-vegies), do you eat exotic foods or are you more of a meat, vegie, potatoe person? Do you normally eat salty or sweet foods? Are you on a liquid-diet (blender-drinks, smoothies, etc)?

Just as I have shared some of my quick-n-simple recipes in the thread "Small apartment cooking" - please share some of your favorite edibles with us so that we can help you plan out your meals and such.

 

[MaryV]

I am experimenting a little bit, and will be this week, with various recipes using my dried veggies. I made a soup/stew in my slow cooker, and put in too much rice so it turned into a rice veggie goop, edible but just...
my usual eating is oatmeal w blueberrise for breakfast or pancakes w blueberries, or eggs.
i dont eat lunch often, dinner is sometimes a meat with veggies. i make my own bread. i dont eat really spicy food, i like it simple and mild. i eat a lot of kraft dinner, or spaghetti, or ramen noodles with chicken meat and added veggies if I feel like it. I seldom eat fresh salad in winter but in summer i eat a lot of it.
in a survival situation with no electric I have some meal in a can foods.
I guess I am figuring that i can live on rice and veggies and oatmeal and blueberries, if am unable to get to the store or there is no food for a week or whatever. I think I was kind of panicking a bit, looking at my veggies and wondering how to make meals, but I will experiment. I have nver eaten beans much. I wonder how I could incorporate like the navy beans into my meals. they are cheap and are a protein and have fiber.
I live alone and eat alone, so really I am storing at this time just for myself, its when I think about storing for my daughter and grandsons that I feel inadequately prepared because that is my goal, to have food for them also. but when finances are limited I cant just go purchase a 2000 dollar food plan.
anyway i think i am rambling this morning. sorry if i am not making sense.
lol.
do you have a recipe using dried veggies and navy beans?
what about tvp? is that a good thing to buy to add protein to emergency food storage?

 

[George_H_M]

Those are good uses for what you have. I do suggest tho put up more of a variety of foods if you can . The reason is if you are dealing with other problems you do not want to add food fatigue to the list by eating the same 10 items each and every day . You don't need to by it all now , just watch for sales on stuff you like and but a bit extra each time and be for you know it you will have a large supply of stored food . But you are doing good so far just keep up the planning and prepping .

 

[Samoan]

My son has braces on his teeth and each time he goes to the orthodontist to get his braces tightened, he sometimes has to eat a liquid diet for a day or two depending on the soreness of his teeth. On random days when his teeth are moving a lot for that day, he's only able to each mushy foods. Does anybody have some advice and idea's of food for people on a liquid diet? He should only have his braces for another year, maybe a year and a half but god forbid something happen to this world in the next year or two...

 

[NaeKid]

My son has braces on his teeth and each time he goes to the orthodontist to get his braces tightened, he sometimes has to eat a liquid diet for a day or two depending on the soreness of his teeth. On random days when his teeth are moving a lot for that day, he's only able to each mushy foods. Does anybody have some advice and idea's of food for people on a liquid diet? He should only have his braces for another year, maybe a year and a half but god forbid something happen to this world in the next year or two...

I love making blender-foods. You can purchase a 12-volt blender made by Coleman that will recharge its internal battery off your vehicle, solar-panel or household 110v wall plug.

The best plan would be to make a stew - full of meats and vegies - pour a single-portion into the blender and spin it up. Another great food is standard soups - Creamy Tomato would top the chart with any of the other cream-type soups. Split-Pea w/ Ham is also a good choice - especially if you put the ham-bits through the blender before you warm it up.

If he gets tired of soups - try mashed potatoes w/ a cream-of-mushroom based gravy. Steamed peas would be very easy to eat and for meat - maybe some tuna.

Desert could consist of making a fruit-smoothy - some ice-cream or milk combined with strawberries, blue-berries, melons .. or other favorite fruit (either fresh or frozen).

I have thousands of recipes (in books, on computer and in my head) that I can share. If you create a thread and give me a couple of favorite ingredients, spices that you have available, the spicey-factor (mild, medium, hot, suicide) and the kind of cooking that you have available (camp-stove, electric stove, BBQ, oven, camp-fire, dutch-oven, etc) and I will come up with something for you. Please give me a list of allergies if they apply.

I have challenged friends with this several times for "surprise-dinners" at the house. I will get them to bring something that they like to eat and I will combine it with other ingredients that I have available and cook it up for that evenings meal. It is alot of fun to do - especially if you understand how different flavours can work with or against each other.

 

[benJAMMIN]

You seem like a great cook, Naekid! Would love to have dinner at your place sometime....LOL

 

[NaeKid]

You seem like a great cook, Naekid! Would love to have dinner at your place sometime....LOL

I have a fairly extensive resume profiling my years of cooking professionally before I became a computer tech / AutoCAD designer. I am the primary cook at home and have been for well over 20 years. My grandmother taught me how to cook when I was barely tall enough to see over the counter. My grandmother raised her siblings during the Great Depression and had to make-do with whatever that she could to make the food for the family while her mother and father tried to work the farm.

She told me stories about making her own "coffee" without coffee-beans. She taught me how to make candies out of excess mashed potatoes. She taught me how to make a cookie so small and so full of flavour that you only needed just one - but couldn't wait till you were allowed another.

My grandma taught me alot - and I miss her dearly. There is so much more that I wish that I could have learned from her. She taught me all the "homemaker" stuff - including how to design, cut and sew clothing. My grandpa taught me what I know about working with wood - he was a carpenter - now - he is an amazing gardener. Yes, even at 94 years old, he is still tending the garden through the summer and tells me the stories through-out the summer of the bushels of corn, peas, beans, carrots, berries that he has grown, picked, canned, frozen, baked and given away. My grandpa can put most 40 year olds to shame - and - he is still driving daily and has even driven across 5 provinces to visit family (he lives in Vancouver, BC and still has brothers living and enjoying life in Manitoba).

Now I am a grandfather - my grandson is 4 years old and I am trying to pass my knowledge onto him. I can only hope that I can do as good of a job as my grandparents did with me.

 

[Herbalpagan]

Naekid - isn't it amazing how much a good grandparent is? My grandma was like that...she taught me all kinds of things and I'm trying to pass it on to my grandson too.

 

[MaryV]

I think I will stop dehydrating veggies for a bit, and concentrate on buying food at the store that is on sale. today I bought 22 cans of campbells chunky soups which I reallly love, they were on sale. they are good for 2 yrs.

I am not a very good cook, so coming up with recipes is pretty hard. but there are a lot of them on line. I am feeling a little better, realising I have to just do what I am able, I wont have a yr supply of food right away, its going to take time.
and I think its better to have a supply of the foods i am used to eating, but at the same time I realise that I need to eat properly considering my health.

 

[Canadian]

I find the best inspiration is to go shopping. If I see a case of something that I don't have and it looks tasty I check the expiry and if it's far out enough I buy it. I've got enough variety that we can eat varied meals for weeks and not get bored.

I've stocked all the daily items as well. Our idea was to live exactly the same as we do now except instead of going to work we take turns patrolling and standing guard in shifts.

As for the need for liquid food here's something that will help. This is a Cuisipro Food Mill. There are lots of food mills around. I have a Rosle one from Germany becuase I'm a food snob (and I worked in the kitchen supply business for the past ten years.)

I have one. It will turn naturally soft foods into paste. If the food is hard you can just boil it. They come with three disks and you can select how fine a paste you want. Then just add water and you have liquid food.

 

[MaryV]

canadian, i wish I had just done what you are doing, instead I bought the best dehydrator money can buy, and then a foodsaver, and mylar bags and buckets and alot of other stuff, and i could have bought a LOT of food from the store with that money.
however, i learn things the hard way generally speaking...lol

 

[UncleJoe]

Something I didn't see mentioned was canning some of the foods you normally eat. I learned to can last year and "put-up" about 40qts of fresh peaches and pears. It was a lot easier than I thought. Having fresh fruit in the middle of winter was quite a treat for me so I think it would be a great way to break up a bland diet as well as add some vitamin C to it. This year, with the garden produce, I am going to make my own soups and stews and can some of that as well.

 

[Canadian]

Canning is awesome and is a lost art in my city. These days it's usually someone's grandmother that knows how to do canning. Mostly because in the city it's pretty much impossible to grow enough food to need to store any for later. I remember doing canning with my mom as a kid. Good memories.