Preparedness Pro in Your Kitchen

by Kellene

Solar Oven Chicken. Yum

As all of our regular readers know, I LOVE to cook!  You may also know that I fully expect to love to cook even in the midst of a full day, camping out, or in the event the power company experiences a breakdown. Yup. The last thing I fear about an apocalyptic event is eating garbage. But I realize that many of you don’t feel quite so enthusiastic about preparing your favorite dishes under challenging circumstances.  So, I’d like to help you out.  What I’d like to do is help you adapt your favorite dishes to more Everyday Preparedness methods. I’d like you to be able to make them in record time, utilizing items from your shelf-instead of your freezer or refrigerator, and without the help of the local power company. Heck, for some of you this may simply serve as a weekly “Cooking 101” class—so you may want to double or triple the recipe so you don’t starve the other 6 days of the week—hee hee. So, in order for me to help you out with this, I need you all to post your favorites dishes here.  Each week I’ll select one of your posted dishes and do my darndest to adapt it into an Everyday Preparedness—easy peezy fare.  I may end up using freeze-dried, bottled, canned, powdered, or otherwise preserved ingredients each week to reinvent your favored fare and I’ll also be using the grill, a butane stove, or a solar oven to make these delicious plates happen as well.  In doing so, I hope that I’ll arm all of you with the same cooking enthusiasm and confidence that I get to enjoy in my kitchen in spite of using shelf-stable foods and non-electric methods of cooking.

Pulled pork in the pressure cooker. Yum.

I’d like to help you adapt recipes in this manner for three reasons.  For starters, I’ve discovered that cooking with my pressure cooker and solar oven is actually MORE tasty than any other conventional methods.  The other day I was watching The Food Network (I know, shocker, eh?) and watching the great Chef Ann, share some great recipes for a slow roasted pork accompanied by an even slower cooked chickpea soup. I decided to take her recipes and adapt them, but knowing how flavors are compounded when using the pressure cooker or solar oven I decided to cut down on some of the more expensive flavors and spices. The results were FAB-U-LOUS!  I’d love to invite you all over for a backyard picnic so that you could see the results for yourself.

The second reason why I’d like to do this for you all is because I know that you all don’t have any more time in your day than I do. (If you actually do, then you should stop holding out on me with the secret and fork over the time machine.)  Since I can’t be your close by friend to help out once in a while, I’d love to shave off some stress and effort from your day instead.  If I can’t cook for you, the least I could do is share with you some of the super weapons that I use to “get ‘er done.” I use my pressure cooker and solar oven often because it makes my life so easy and turns dinner into an easy part of my day rather than a red carpet Hollywood event. When I was making the recipes I observed during the Food Network episode, I was doing a little jig as I realized that I had reduced the slow-roasted pork recipe from 6 hours (with lots of babysitting and fussing) down to a carefree, hands-off,  4- hour treat in my solar oven.  I was also able to convert a 4-hour chickpea soup into a 40-minute amazing gourmet with my pressure cooker. I felt like I had struck gold.  I would love to envision cooks all over the world doing the Everyday Preparedness Jig too. *grin*

Another reason why I’d love for the rest of you to discover some of these methods is because I’d love to help you stabilize your grocery budget by incorporating the use of shelf-stable foods in your everyday fare. Even the wealthiest persons in the world love to get a good deal and save money.  I assure you that one does not get wealthy solely by spending money. I also believe that due to the countless gaps in our food safety system, prices rising as much as 700% in one year of various foods, politically motivated abuse of our nutrition sources, as well as the tenable supply sources of our food, we are all far too vulnerable nowadays when it comes to what we feed our families. Personally, I don’t do vulnerable very well. I’m sure we could all use a little more confidence in the world around us.  So if I can help any of you to have some peace of mind by being able to take more control over the food supply in your home, then I will have yet another reason to do a Preparedness Jig.

So, post your favorite meals here and each week I’ll work on revising them for you to help you with an increased confidence, satisfying taste, delicious comfort, time and cost-cutting meals!

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