Food Storage Meal: Chicken and Rice Soup

Chicken and Rice Soup (food storage edition)


1 onion (or dehydrated onion)
2 stalk celery (or dehydrated celery)
2 carrots (or dehydrated carrots)
1 can chicken breast
2 cups chicken bullion
3 cups water
1 1/2 cup rice
Oregano
Pepper
Salt

Cook celery, carrots, and onions in oil until soft.  Add chicken and broth from bottle.  Add broth or bullion, water, rice, and seasoning.  Cover, cook for twenty minutes.  Add more water if necessary.

It's not pretty...

 It's not pretty, but it tastes good

Chicken was only $1.39 this week, so I decided to try canning it.  I've been wanted to plug the giant meat-shaped gap in my food storage.  I also figured that it would be nice to have a bunch of cooked chicken around, and I just don't have a the freezer space for very much.

It's not hard to bottle: cut chicken, put chicken in jars, pressure cook.  I found the instructions here:
http://lovehugsandgiggles.blogspot.com/2008/11/canning-chicken.html.   (I did not use salt).

I have to add that this was made possible through the loan of a pressure cooker from Mom and Ted (thanks, guys).

I've used this chicken two days in a row, now.  It's unbelieveably convenient; I plan to can the rest of the chicken that's in my freezer as soon as I have the time.  It also increases my food storage possibilities, so I look forward to coming up with new storage-only meals.


Since I was canning anyway, I decided to try bottling apple slices.  I had about twelve pounds because they were sixty eight cents a pound this week, and I knew I'd use them somehow.  I peeled, sliced, blanched, bottled, and boiled.  We'll use these for pies, or for rice and apples, or over ice cream

I love  that pop the bottles make when they seal.  My girls love it, too; they kept giggling every time they heard it, and would hang around while I pulled the bottles out of the water so they wouldn't miss it.  In a couple of years, I think I'll have a couple of little helpers.


Additonal:
I've been doing some research, and you can can include sauce in the bottles before you cook them, to flavor the chicken.  Monday will find me at the grocery store buying another box of chicken and some Italian dressing.

Note to self: buttermilk freezes.  Poor, neglected ice cube trays could be put to work to accomplish this.

Amazon subscribe and save

So, this is cool.

I'd heard of Amazon.com's subscribe and save service, but the last time I looked at it (for cloth diaper detergent) it didn't have much that I was interested in.  I hear their prices on diapers are amazing, but since I don't use them, I haven't looked into it.

I was cruising a bargain blog today, and a price caught my eye.  Shawn takes Omeprezole (Prilosec) twice a day, which gets kind of expensive.  The cheapest I can get it consistently is $19 for 42 tablets at Target, and once or twice I've found coupons for other store brands and paid $18 dollars.  This means $30 a month for his medication, and leaving it out of the budget isn't an option, for a lot of reasons that I won't go into (if anyone is actually reading this, you should thank me for not explaining.  Trust me.)

The Subscribe & Save price for name-brand Prilosec is $17.30, and you get $3 off your first purchase.  My plan is to order three, then set up my next order for six months from now, and see if the price drops before then, so I can get it cheaper. Still, the current price is fantastic, and shipping is free. 

I've been looking around the website for other deals, and found a pretty good price on toilet paper.  Sun liquid dish soap is a pretty good price, about 97 cents a bottle, but I usually wait until it drops below 90 cents to stock up.

This is kind of exciting.  Buying this sort of thing online means I get a great price, and I don't have to go to the store, which means I don't make impulse buys.  Win!

Wheat flour

I've been waiting for wheat flour to go on sale at local grocery stores for six months, and it hasn't.  It's at least $12 dollars for 25 pounds at the store, which is way too much.

I went up to the Honeyville store in Brigham City last week and bought 100 pounds of wheat flour for $27.  Their store prices are so much better than their website prices.

At the Honeyville store, I also picked up some freeze-dried mushrooms, peppers, and onions.  I hope that we don't get to the point that we can't buy fresh fruits and veggies, but I plan to be prepared if we do.

Food storage meal: Pizza Pockets

Pizza Pockets

1 recipe white bread dough, or frozen or refrigerated dough

Pasta Sauce
Dehydrated peppers, onions, and mushrooms
Cheddar cheese (optional)

I used the same sauce that I use for pasta, but only half as much.  The leftover sauce can be used for pasta, or frozen and used another day.

Spread out the bread, and fill with sauce and cheese.  Fold the dough like a burrito, pinching the edges.  Bake for about 15 minutes, until browned.

The cheese keeps this from being a true food storage meal.  There is such a thing as freeze-dried cheese, but I haven't dared try it yet.

Food storage meal #1: Pasta

Food storage meal number 1:

Pasta with tomato and vegetable sauce

1 jar Pasta sauce (I use Prego, which I buy on sale for about $1.25 a jar)
Dehydrated mushrooms, peppers, and onions
1 pound pasta.  I buy this in bags when they are less than 70 cents a pound, or in the bulk bins at Winco for 73 cents a pound

Put the sauce in a saucepan, add the dehydrated food and cook until heated.  Pour over cooked pasta.

This is before it's cooked.  It looks better afterward, I promise