White Chocolate Orange Dream Cookies--Food Storage Style

This month I’m participating in a Pantry Challenge, where we are focusing on eating the foods we have on hand.   

One of the foods that I store is powdered butter.  It has a sealed shelf life of 5 years, and once you open it a shelf life of 9 month.  That is all without refrigeration.  This comes in very handy when I wanted to bake cookies today but was out of butter. 

Baking with powdered butter can be a little tricky, but only because the directions on the can are somewhat lacking.  I have done a lot of research and experimenting with butter powder and I am finally happy with its performance in cookies.  When baking cookies I use

1 ½ c butter powder + 6 Tablespoons water = 1 Cup of butter

This yields a tender and tasty cookie. 

A couple of this to know about baking with butter powder.:

• It makes baked goods a little puffier.
• Cookies don’t brown as much.  So if you wait until the cookies are golden brown, they will be very overcooked. 

White Chocolate Orange Dream Cookies

1 ½ cup Butter Powder mixed with 6 Tablespoons water

½ c brown sugar

½ c sugar

1 egg

¼ teaspoon orange extract

2 ¼ cups flour

zest from 1 orange

½ bag white chocolate chips

3/4 teaspoon soda

1. Cream together butter (with the water), sugars, and egg.

2. Add all other ingredients and mix.

3. Drop by large round spoonful’s on ungreased cookie sheet.

4. Bake at 350º for 10-12 minutes, cookies will be very pale. Do NOT over bake.  

5. Let stand on cookies sheet for 2 minutes cool before removing.

Pantry Challenge: Roasted Potatoes and Carrots

I live a few miles away from the Idaho border and each fall farmers from Idaho bring down their odd sized potatoes to sell at a great price.  I usually get a 50 pound bag for $10.00.   

This year I purchased 2 bags one yukon gold and one russet.  Needless to say during this challenge we will be eating potatoes.  But that is a good thing because I have a secret love of potatoes.  I love potatoes. 

Recently I have been roasting a lot of my veggies, and as I was looking around my pantry I decided to roast some potatoes and carrots in my crockpot.  It is super easy to do.  And happily my kids really liked it.

Roasted Potatoes and Carrots in the Crock Pot

8 small Potatoes

2 cups Baby Carrots

¼ cup Olive Oil

½ tablespoon Rosemary

½ teaspoon Thyme

Salt and Pepper to taste

      

      1.      Scrub potatoes.  Cut potatoes into large bite sized chunks.

      2.     Add potatoes and carrots to crockpot.  Drizzle olive oil over veggies.  Sprinkle with salt, pepper, rosemary and thyme.

      3.     Cook on low for 2 hours.  Adjust temperature to high.  Cook for 2 more hours.   Do not lift the lid to stir.

If you too have a lot of potatoes in your pantry check:

Garlic Oven Fries  and Spicy Fry Sauce

What is your favorite way to eat potatoes?   

 

Pantry Challenge: Spinach Artichoke Dip

I have had a jar of artichoke hearts in my pantry for a couple of weeks.  It was purchased to be backed chicken bacon alfredo.  But that didn’t happen, and I’m glad it didn’t because as I was looking through my pantry I saw it and knew that Spinach Artichoke dip was in my future.

To Cut Up Messy Canned foods--Like Artichokes 
Just cut them right in the can with your clean kitchen shears or use a knife cutting the food against the side of the can. This recipe takes about 1/2 a jar of artichokes.

Spinach Artichoke Dip
8 oz cream cheese, softened
1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for topping
2/3 cup sour cream powder (add to ¼ cup hot water mix well, don’t worry if it is a little lumpy, after you bake it the lumps will be gone.)

1 cup FD Spinach (rehydrate in 1 cup hot water and drain)
1 cup coarsely chopped artichoke hearts, drained
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1/4 teaspoons

Directions:
Preheat your oven to 400°. 

In a medium bowl -combine sour cream and hot water mix well,
Add the cream cheese.  Beat till smooth, either by hand or on low speed with a hand mixer. 

Add in the salt.

Fold in the drained spinach, garlic, artichokes, and Parmesan cheese.

Spread into a small baking dish or hollow our a loaf of artisan bread and fill the cavity with the dip.

Bake for 35 - 40 minutes or until the top is slightly browned.  Avoid over baking to prevent it from separating.

Sprinkle additional grated Parmesan cheese over the top if desired, during the last 5 minutes of baking.

Serve warm with baguette slices, pita chips, crackers, etc...

Recipe Substitutions: 

If you don’t have the sour cream powder that I used, use regular sour cream or 1/3 cup sour cream and 1/3 cup mayo.

If you don’t have Freeze Dried Spinach it is okay to use fresh cooked spinach or defrosted frozen spinach, just make sure that whatever you use is very well drained.

Pantry Challenge: What you should store

 

This month I’m participating in the Pantry Challenge and one of my goals is to evaluate my food storage.  For the last year I have been adding a LOT to my long term food storage.  It is time for me to reevaluate what I need, what I have, and what I want.  

With this as with all big projects I like to break it down into smaller tasks, so today we are just going to focus on figuring out what you need.   I like to use a combination of the free food storage calculators and inventory sheets available online. 

Choosing a Food Storage Calculator  

 

There are a couple of easy to use food storage calculators that I recommend. 

       1.      Food Storage Calculator from About.com

The is really easy to use.  You enter the number of people over 7 years old, than you enter the number that are younger and hit calculate.  You than have a list of basics divided by pounds. 

This calculator does not include any freeze dried foods, any canned goods, or any fresh foods stored in a root cellar.

      2.      Food Storage Made Easy Long Term Food Storage Calculator and Inventory

This is a free download.  You need excel to open the file. 

This is a great calculator.  It allows you to customize the number of months that you desire to have food storage for, that is a  great feature that many of the calculators don’t have. 

I also like this one because it has a place for those of you who are OCD to track the cost, where you purchased it, and how much you have stored. 

     3.      Shelf Reliance THRIVE Planner

This planner is specialized to the THRIVE brand of food that Shelf Reliance sells, but I feel like it is easy enough to transfer across to any brand you are buying. 

I LOVE it because it is easily customizable.  

For example my family is pretty picky about what beans they will eat.  They will not eat kidney beans.  Ever. So when I was figuring out what we needed the planner recommended that I store 5 cans or 25 pounds of red beans .  I took them out and the planner recalculated showing me that I now only had 43% of the meat and beans my family needed.   I swapped things around until I was happy which left me with a case each of Freeze Dried Chicken, Instant Black Beans, Sausage Crumbles and Whole Egg Powder.  This put me over the recommended but I’m okay with that. 

This is the calculator that takes the most time to use. But it takes that time because it allows you to totally customize it.  If you want to store freeze Dried Spinach and Freeze Dried tomatoes it can handle that.  If you are storing only gluten free grains it can handle that. 

It does take a little time to process as you change things around.   

One of the things I really like about this caculator is that it gives you the food amounts in pounds and in the number of number 10 cans.  

For example it figured out that I needed 7 cans of 9 grain cracked cereal which is 28 pounds.  I like this because I purchase most things in number 10 cans but I sometimes buy things in bulk and knowing how many pounds to buy is great .

When you are finished with the planner and everything is set how you want it.  You have a couple of options.  You can Set up monthly shipments (which you are totally in control of what comes, and when it comes) you can add all of it to you cart and buy it all in a go, you can e-mail your plan, and you can save you plan.  I like to e-mail it to myself and save it.

      4.      The Food Storage Planner from the USU Extension:  This file is a PFD and you will have to do some of your own math.  (But it is simple math and you can do it.)

This plan helps you create a list of 10 main dishes that your family likes.  You than break down the dishes by ingredients and store the ingredients to make these dishes.  This PDF includes easy to follow instructions, an example, and 3 blank forms.  The 3 forms are the food storage planner, the Pantry Storage Inventory, and   Frozen Storage Inventory. 

This is a great way to think about food storage.  It insures that you have foods stored that your family will eat and that you know how to cook.  I really like that it includes the pantry and freezer storage, places many of us overlook when we are evaluating our food storage.   

If this kind of food storage appeals to you, than check out the cookbook   it’s in the bag by Michelle Snow.  You can see my review of it here. 

5.  E's Food Storage Inventory:  You might Remember E from a while back.  She is the one with the super awesome pantry.  She also has a great way that she keeps track of her food storage inventory.   

How do you figure out how much to store?  Do you use a food storage caculator?