Some of my Favorite Things

It has been some time since I have posted here, but I feel like I need to get back into it. I thought I might share with you some of my favorite things that I have or have learned that have to do with preparedness.

My favorite books: Well there are quite a few, but I have recently aquired a couple of new ones that I am really enjoying.

One is called Marlene's Magic with Food Storage. It is not a newly released book or anything, but she has some great ideas and recipes in this book. I ordered it from www.marlenesmagic.com which is her website, so check it out. It really is worth having if you really want to know what to use your longer term food storage for. It contains things like cheese making from powdered milk, making tofu from soy milk which you make yourself, alot about sprouting, cooking with all the basic food storage items, and even making food for babies from food storage. Well worth the money.

Another one is called My Whole Foods Kitchen by Tere Foster. It can be found at www.3Dhealth.net It is also well worth the price that I paid for it, right around $25. She goes through a whole system of setting up your kitchen to be food storage friendly, using all of your longer term foods, and her whole point of the book is to be healthier because of it. She shares a system of rotating by following menus, and planning ahead, and I really love the way she does stuff. She has a channel on YouTube as well if you just do a search for 3Dhealth, she has quite a few great videos not only on food storage but on survival in the Latter Days, and quite a bit of her stuff is LDS related. I have made use of many of her videos to help me organize and set up my rotation system. They are great so check them out!

Some random things:

I love my soy milk maker that I purchased not long ago. You don't have to purchase the most expensive ones, but they are a little bit pricy. Try checking out ebay if you are interested, you might find them cheaper. Shop aroung. Anyways, I have been experimenting with making soy milk, which is surprisingly not too bad. There are a few of us in the house that have lactose problems, and it actually works for us. Of course I have also made it with my milk maker, but it takes way longer and is much more work. So if you have lactose problems, or just want to get your family healthier, I would suggest getting one. I just searched google and found one that I liked. I also am experimenting with making tofu from my fresh made milk. I love tofu, and eat alot of it, because I don't care for meat, and haven't eaten it for about 20 years. So tofu and beans are great. I am still trying to find the desirable tofu, but will keep at it until I find it.

I don't love my hand wheat grinder. I mean it works great for what it is, but if I want to get enough flour for a batch of bread, then I have to grind for about an hour or more, and that is just not fun! So on the top of my wish list of favorite things to get will be an electric mill. I am grateful I have my hand one and someday, I will really appreciate it, however, for now, I really want an electric one.

I love my Cabella's commercial dehydrator that I purchased. I have used it to dry pretty much every thing that can be dehydrated. I am learning to cook with these dehydrated foods and they are wonderful. When they are reconstituted, they are almost like fresh. What a blessing a dehydrator can be. It is worth getting a good quality one, or you will not love it.

I also love my food saver. I have made many of my own meals, "just add water" meals, and then seal them up with my food saver, and voila.........light weight nutritious easy to make meals that taste soooooooo much better than some of the store boughten ones I have tasted. A friend of mine had me try some her meals similar to this that she bought in a 5 gallon bucket, because she said they were just horrible and she needed some help to figure out how to make them more palatable. Well I tried them, and............they are pretty much horrible. Sorry for any of you who have purchased these buckets of survival food. My suggestion to you, try them out and figure out what you need to do ahead of time to make them taste better! In my case, I am so glad that I have the dehydrated foods, TVP, other food storage, and spices in my store room, with the food saver, and I make my own meals.

Well, enough random things for now. I will come back soon because I have so many thoughts on my mind. Things like Gardening - since we are facing such grave food shortages - I think we can and should still be creative in our gardening ways, so that we can still provide and put away garden produce for our families. I will get back to you more on this one soon. I have to teach a class about it, so you will be hearing from me. I am also prepping a class called "Using your long term storage and loving it" So you will hear from me on that one too.