About 10 years ago I purchased a yogurt incubator and I set about trying to make my own yogurt. After a year and a half of trial & error and trial & error, followed by error & error & error, I finally gave it up and decided that homemade yogurt was neither simple, economical or healthy. On all accounts I was wrong! At a food storage class I attended, I tasted Katie’s yogurt and almost fell off my chair! It tasted great, was thick and creamy, and her ingredients totaled about $.60 a quart! Luckily, Katie shared her recipe and technique, and now I will share it with you.
Category Archives: Milk or Dry Milk Powder
Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream
Adapted from a wonderful recipe made with fresh cream by our good friend Scott G. When we have no fresh there is no reason we have to go without this special treat!
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Strawberry Shortcake
Shortcakes served in a bowl with milk! This is my favorite way to eat shortcake. With the ease of my baking mix, this one is ready in a snap.
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Robin’s Scalloped Potatoes
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Growing up, the best way to store potatoes was in your cellar, or as my grandma called it, “The fruit room.” The fruit room was always cooler and lower than the main level of your house, and you just stocked up on potatoes in the fall and ate them all winter. After being married for a while, we moved to a tropical climate, and I discovered that trick doesn’t work everywhere. At one time I couldn’t keep a fresh potato in my house for more than 3 days before it was completely inedible! That’s when I found dehydrated potatoes! I love how they go just about anywhere, and I never have to peel! They are relatively cheap and come in many forms — sliced, diced, shredded and flakes. Bring on the dehydrated potatoes!
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Cheesy Apple Muffins
Going without cheese is no option for our family. My grandfather loved cheese so much he would put it in his morning oatmeal. I guess you could say grandpa was the inspiration for these muffins. They are full of apples, but the cheese makes them awesome and adds variety to the kinds of things my food storage brings to my breakfast table. Yes, I spend the extra money on freeze-dried cheeses, but I shop the sales and stock up when I find it for $15-$20 a #10 can. I also feel $40 a can is too much, but when things are on sale, I can justify a lot.
Don’t Forget Lunch!
Sometimes I get caught up in planning dinner and I overlook lunch. But when noon rolls around, lunch never seems to get overlooked by the toddlers in our house. They know before anyone that lunch must come and SOON. Planning a lunch recipe might seem silly when slapping PB&J on bread is a natural reaction to the toddler tug on the pant leg, but having the recipe in your plan ensures that you will have enough in your storage when the need is there.
Apple Pancakes
Don’t let the long list of ingredients keep you from trying these. They are inspired by a family recipe given to me from my mother-in-law. We can’t live without these special pancakes so I was just determined to make them out of shelf stable ingredients. They do not disappoint.
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Cream of “Chicken” Soup
After realizing my family can’t rotate 40 cans of cream of chicken soup fast enough to keep them from expiring, I was determined to find a way to make a replacement from scratch. At about the same time I discovered bean flour and the miraculous way it can substitute for butter and oils. This recipe is the marriage of those two ideas! The canned stuff is creamier in its condensed form, but as I’ve used this substitution in our recipes, we haven’t noticed the difference. In fact, Spicy Girl poured today’s batch (I was trying to get you a good photo!) all over her pasta at dinner and pronounced it delicious! Which gives me an idea for a casserole…
Speaking of the picture…cream of chicken soup isn’t exactly a glamorous specimen of culinary delight. Open at your own risk!
ABC Sauce
I love alfredo sauce. But what you can do with a jar of creamy garlic sauce is limited, so I store table cream instead. This yummy Alfredo Bean Cream Sauce satisfies my craving, but I can also turn the ingredients into something totally different — like dessert! That’s versatility! — Mellyn
Shown here served over pasta twirls, ABC Sauce is always a hit!
Great Pumpkin Cookies
Delicious and reasonably healthy — these are chocolate chip cookies Charlie Brown (and every other kid) will love. As the Mom I love them, too. They freeze well, and (dare I admit?!) we ate them for breakfast last week. Picky boy was all about that! – Mellyn
Chicken Pot Pie
A Betty Crocker version of this recipe was the first “real” food I learned to cook, and it’s still a family favorite. (Heck, I even forked out the cash for freeze-dried peas! No mooshy green peas in my pot pie!) Anyway, I keep about 25 pounds of butter in my freezer and planned to use part of it for chicken pot pie filling. But now that I’ve made the bean “discovery,” I can save my butter for places I won’t be trying beans — like spread on my toast at breakfast! –Mellyn
Bean?! Biscuits
They’ll never know! Since the shortening has been replaced with beans, these biscuits have all of the comfort and none of the guilt! Why would I do such a thing?! Two reasons. First, although shortening is shelf stable, it only lasts about 2 years from the date of manufacture (according to the Crisco website). Dry beans last 30+ years! Second, shortening is horrible health-wise. Using beans eliminates nearly 50 calories and 5 grams of fat per biscuit, while dumping the hydrogenated fat and boosting calcium, potassium, iron and fiber.
For more info about my bean “experiments,” be sure to read Bonkers for Beans!
– Mellyn
Pumpkin Scones
Now that my eyes are open to the many things that can be done with pumpkin, I’m excited to try more and more recipes. Unfortunately, many call for fresh ingredients. Sometimes making them out of food storage works well (with a little tweeking); sometimes it doesn’t. I was happy when I got this butter spread to work. The sugar really enhances the cranberries, and it was spreadable and yummy.
Pumpkin Oatmeal
One cool, fall evening I was craving pumpkin. Up until then I usually filled my pumpkin cravings by making pumpkin cookies or pumpkin roll. A friend mentioned this healthier option for pumpkin, and I was hooked. This recipe is a great way to fill your kitchen and your mornings with the smell of the fall season. It also inspired me to look at pumpkin as a healthy food — not just dessert.
From: Valerie
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Honey Nut ‘n Pumpkin Pancakes
These gourmet pancakes are nutty and sweet –they don’t even need syrup! I love to serve these to guests and then tell them they’re eating whole wheat pancakes. Seriously…can you believe this is food storage?!
– Mellyn
Donkey’s Waffles
A favorite Saturday morning breakfast at our house, these waffles were inspired by our favorite Betty Crocker recipe. –Mellyn
