Week Eight

I have been on vacation and even while vacationing I have been thinking a lot about our food storage. What prompted the thinking was the fact that I was in California when they had their "little" earthquake. My immediate thought was how do you store things that you can in Southern California (glass jars would break when they fell from the shelves) Where did I put all my jam I just made and would it be safe if an earthquake hit here at home? But I did not think about that very long but asked myself these other questions. How can I make my storage grow faster? When is the next order going in for the cannery? Am I buying the right kinds of food that my family will eat? OK , so I have gone a little overboard with the fixings for taco soup. My family loves this recipe and it can be made without the meat. But I am sure they will get tired of that so I do need to move on to a new recipe:) Seriously, that is such an important aspect of food storage. You need to store what your family will eat. That takes a little planning. Sorting through recipes for meals that don't have to many perishable ingredients can be tricky. Taco soup is a perfect example of that:

TACO SOUP
1 pound of browned hamburger
28-oz. can crushed tomatoes
151/4-oz. can corn, undrained
15-oz. can black beans, undrained
151/2-oz. can red kidney beans, undrained
1 envelope dry ranch dressing
1 envelope dry taco seasoning
1 small onion, chopped
tortilla, or corn chips
shredded cheese
sour cream
1. Combine all ingredients except chips, shredded cheese, and sour cream in slow cooker.
2. Cover. Cook on low 4-6 hours.
3. Garnish individual servings with chips, cheese, and sour cream.

You can leave off the garnishings but if you have the other ingredients stored in your food storage then you can buy only those things if times are hard! Hopefully things will not be so bad that we can't get our sour cream and cheese! The secret ingredient though is the ranch dressing so don't leave that out! I would love to hear of other recipes that you can just make from a can. Campbells soup has a great recipe book that has lots of ideas!

Next week I"ll be sharing some recipes for things you can make ahead and freeze. The storage life is not as long as shelf food but it is always nice to have something in the freezer for unexpected dinners needed for a neighbor or on a night you just don't have time to think about making dinner. Plus once you start cooking like this you save lots of $$$ on your grocery bill and that extra cash can go for more food storage. See I have been thinking lots about this:)

Week Eight: 5 lbs. of powdered milk