Recipe Friday: Cake Mix Cookies This is an incredibly easy recipe that uses cake mixes as the foundation for the cookie and creates a very simple cookie when following the directions, but I love it when I approach it from the perspective of it being a blank canvas. I Read more…
This recipe is found in its complete form in my cookbook, The Magnificent Pantry, including how to make the crust yourself! There are over 250 recipes in the cookbook of delicious magical dishes made from shelf-stable ingredients. It’s available in digital, paperback and hardback format. Knowing that I’d be out Read more…
Recipe Friday—Corn Syrup Substitute.
Corn has infiltrated so many of our standard foods nowadays. The problem is that not only is the majority of food now tainted in the GMO processes but many people nowadays have an allergy to corn. (I can’t help but think the two are related.) As such I wanted to share a recipe with you that’s an alternative to corn syrup so that you don’t have to do without some of the sweet luxuries that you enjoy. I use this syrup base almost exclusively in place of corn syrup. In fact, I’m using it tomorrow to make a divine Honey-Star Anise Marshmallow Mousse. Yum!
For the record, I absolutely loathe the term “food storage.” It’s no longer used in our household because I’m not a squirrel. As such I don’t purchase items which serve no other purpose than to be stuffed away into a corner, only to promise unpleasant eating later. If I don’t eat it or know how to use it, it doesn’t come into our home. And if it comes into our home, we use it and are very familiar with it.
Now, have said that, the question posed above is a common question in my line of work because others don’t necessarily share my point of view. That’s okey dokey. Regarding having “enough” there are certainly plenty of numbers 
thrown out there. I do have an opinion to add to that list of suggested amounts, of course, though I confess that my answers aren’t always well received—I have this nasty habit of sharing facts that may contradict what a person has relied upon for a long time. *wink* So, how much food do you really need in order to have a year’s supply for your family at any given time?
Bacon, bacon, B-A-C-O-N! There are some foodies who consider bacon to be the Food of the God’s. While Paula Deen has her well-known belief of “you can never have enough butter” (and I do SO agree), there are many bacon fans out there that would rather have to listen to a Milli Vanilli Greatest Hits Marathon than do without their bacon. I think we’d encourage a lot more people to carry firearms if we were ever able to convince bacon lovers that zombies might take their precious salted pork someday. “Zombies after my bacon?! Now them’s fightin’ words!”
Remember when I told you about how great sprouts are nutritionally? A seed can increase its nutritional content by 500-600% just with sprouting. Just a little water and 48-60 hours of patience, and you’ve got amazing, live, fresh nutrition! Well, the fermentation of foods is a very similar science. You can take a wonderfully nutritious food such as fruits, vegetables, grains, meats and whole dairy products and compound their nutritional value through fermentation AND do so in such a way that the body just gobbles up those nutrients. Obviously, if we can’t absorb the nutrients, then they don’t do our bodies much good.
It’s interesting what a seemingly innocuous sounding sentence can do. Apparently the phrase “you can wax your own cheese and store it” is a vile enough claim to cause some to turn on their evil buttons. Oh the controversy. But the problem is that the misinformed cheese wax controversy is causing some to not have their favorite food group in stock in the event of an emergency. No cheese? That’s practically against my religion. I’d rather be hung by my toes and pummeled with an organic carrot than be forced to survive without chocolate and cheese. So, I consider it my duty to share the sound reasons as to why I’m completely comfortable waxing and storing my own cheese.
There are 3 aspects that you need to concern yourself with when it comes to your food storage. Nutrition, preparation, and rotation.
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The nutrition aspect has to do with WHAT you store. Be sure it’s not food that will simply enable you to survive, but THRIVE. Feeding your body quality nutrition in a time of stress is critical. It’s one thing to try and live off of fast food and such when you lead a mostly sedentary lifestyle. You may not think of food much
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How to influence that skeptical spouse when it comes to emergency preparedness efforts is a query I hear frequently in my line of work. I affectionately call it the “$64 million dollar question.” Surprisingly, the question isn’t dominated by one particular sex or the other, either. I guess both men and women are equally skeptical when it comes to this topic. Obviously, it is tough to have one member of the family focused on something so important without the support of knowledge, enthusiasm and additional expertise from the other. Being on the same page for this sort of thing boils
Food Storage. It really doesn’t have to be complicated.
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When it comes to emergency preparedness, there are actually 10 different components to consider, listed below in order of priority: