Using Your Food Storage: Wheatberry Salad

When I saw this recipe in the American Profile insert in our local paper, I immediately knew I had to pass it on. Not only is it based around wheat berries, something most preppers have in abundance, but many of the other ingredients are also commonly found in people's food storage. I store things like Dijon mustard, pecans, and Worcestershire sauce as part of my three month supply and I grow both sage and thyme in my herb garden. I'm sure you could even use dry celery and apples in place of fresh. I can't wait to try this recipe out!

Wheatberry Salad

2 c. wheat berries (ie. wheat kernels)
4 qt. water
1 c. diced celery
1 lb roughly chopped smoked turkey or rotisserie chicken
1 tart apple, such as Granny Smith, peeled, cored and diced
4 green onions, thinly sliced
1 c. dried cranberries
1 c. chopped pecans
3 T. walnut or corn oil
2 T. cider vinegar
2 t. Worcestershire sauce
1 t. Dijon mustard
1 T. chopped fresh sage or 1 t. dried
2 t. fresh thyme leaves or 1/2 t. dried
1 t. salt
1/2 t. coarsely ground black pepper


Place wheat berries in a large pot; add water. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer until tender, about 1 hour. Drain in a colander and cool.

Place wheat berries in a large bowl; stir in remaining ingredients. Serve cold or at room temperature. Serves 10.

Using Your Food Storage: An Easy, Sneaky Trick with Wheat

Don't you love it when you get ready to fix dinner and find out that you're missing a key ingredient? That happened to me last night.

I got all set to make one of  Hubby Dear's favorite meals. You'll be astonished to hear that it was a casserole. ;)  Uh oh - I had only thawed 1 lb of ground beef and the recipe required 1-1/2 lbs. What was I to do? Eating out was not an option. Literally. There aren't many options unless we want to drive 45 minutes away.

In a temporary flash of genuis, I remembered a post I had read on the Honeyville Farms Cookin' Cousins blog. What about extending the ground beef with cooked, cracked wheat? If you've been following me over the long haul, you'll remember that my first experience with cracked wheat was less than stellar. Nevertheless, I decided to give it the ol' college try.

Getting ready to crack wheat in my blender

My Wondermill Juniorwould have been the best choice to crack the wheat, but I was feeling lazy, so I decided to try using my blender again. I had the bright idea that the blender might do a better job cracking the wheat if I poured the wheat in while I had it running. I don't know what possessed me - maybe I was thinking of when you make salad dressings and pour in the oil slowly at the end. Needless to say, the wheat shot back at me, giving my complexion the "been in a dust storm" look and adding to the lovely lived-in look of my kitchen. 

Much like the last time I attempted to crack wheat in the blender, I ended up with a mix of whole kernels, cracked kernels, and flour. Sigh. I decided to proceed on anyway.

I brought a cup of slightly salted water to a boil and threw in 1/4 cup of cracked(ish) wheat. I stirred it every now and then as it cooked down and softened. It took about 15 minutes or so and then I threw it in with the cooked ground beef and onions for my recipe.

Adding cooked, cracked wheat to the beef and onion mixture

When you stir it in, you can barely see it

I added the sauces and seasoning and followed the rest of the recipe as written.


The Results:

It worked!! My kids couldn't tell anything was different at all. Hubby Dear noticed a bit of a difference in texture, but didn't say anything until I quizzed him. I actually think I prefer it with the wheat. The slightly toothsome texture was welcome.

I wouldn't hesitate to substitute cooked, cracked wheat for part of ground beef in a recipe. As long as it is going to get seasoned or incorporated into a sauce, the wheat just blends in with the rest of the dish.

I never thought I'd say this but cracked wheat came to my rescue!

Using Your Food Storage: My Favorite Pancake Recipe

I don't cook breakfast very often - FYOF (Find Your Own Food) is my rule for breakfast - but I do regularly cook breakfast-type foods at other times of the day. If TSHTF, I expect we'll be eating pancakes much more often. Not only can they be made entirely out of food storage, but they also are easy to cook on top of your gas stove, woodstove, grill, or campfire, providing you have the appropriate cookware.

I've been looking for the perfect whole wheat pancake recipe and I think I've finally found it. The pancakes turn out light and fluffy with none of the hard bits of wheat I always seem to get when I try one of those blender pancake recipes. They are sweet, with a pleasant, light, nuttiness from the wheat. I never thought I'd say this, but I actually prefer these pancakes to the recipe I've used for years from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook

Maple syrup and butter on whole wheat pancakes? Heavenly!

Try out these pancakes! They are super yummy, no matter what time of day you make them.


Whole Wheat Pancakes, recipe from Emergency Food Storage & Survival Handbook

2 c. whole wheat flour (freshly ground is best)
2 t. baking powder
4 T. sugar
5 T. dried whole egg powder
6 T. non-instant, non-fat powdered milk
1/2 t. salt
2 c. plus 5 T. water
4 T. oil

Sift together dry ingredients. Add water and oil; stir until moist. Cook on a griddle or pan at medium heat. Serve with butter and syrup or whatever floats your boat. Makes 12-5" pancakes.

Month Seven in Review and Month Eight Preps

Month Seven:

This month of my Prepping Plan featured a few bumps, namely on the grain mill front.

I bought a lot of food storage-related items this month. I have another 100 lbs of beans, 90 lb of wheat, and lots of odds and ends like drink mix. My food storage buckets seem to have multiplied all of a sudden. I wasn't aware that I had this many.

Buckets galore but we need so many more

I also bought a couple of packs of Can Organizers, which made neat work of one of my cabinets. I learned how to can meat and found out it wasn't so scary after all. I also made a first aid kit out of an Altoids tin for my purse.

Tall, dark, and handsome

Month Eight Preps:

I feel a lot of pressure to complete my food storage ASAP because the specter of high inflation looms ever larger, so next month will also be focused on that area. If I can get rid of some of the junk in my storage room, I plan on buying a nifty Shelf Reliance shelving system. It should really help maintain FIFO (first in, first out) when it comes to my canned goods. I also plan on buying a few more items to fill my shiny new shelves.

The weird thing about these Shelf Reliance organizers is that they don't come with a shelf across the top. That's too much space to waste so I'm going to figure out what kind of wood I need to buy and get Hubby Dear to cut a piece to serve as a shelf.

I also plan on getting a P-Touch labeler so that I can create neatly printed labels for all my storage containers. I've always wanted one of those, so I'm pretty excited about that purchase. That's it for Month Eight.

Do you have any preps planned for next month?

Coming Soon: 2010 in Review and Goals for 2011

Adventures in Whole Wheat: Cracked Wheat Cereal

Since my waffle experiment went swimmingly, I was eager to try out another application for whole wheat sans grain mill. I opened up Emergency Food Storage and Survival Handbook and found a recipe for Cracked Wheat Cereal and gave it a try.

First I measured out 1 cup of whole wheat kernels. Then I attempted to crack the kernels by pulsing them in my blender. They did not crack well at all. Some kernels remained whole, others cracked a bit while still more was turned completely into flour.

This is what it looked like when I gave up and decided to proceed with the recipe. After I was finished, I went back and read

the instructions for cracking wheat in a blender and you are supposed to only crack 1/4 to 1/3 c. at a time. Oops. Maybe that was the problem...

I added water, salt and a pat of butter to my improperly cracked wheat and cooked it for the 20 minutes it calls for in the recipe. When the time was up, it was still soupy and the wheat was extremely chewy.

I then increased the heat and stirred the mixture until the water had evaporated and the kernels were tender-ish.

The recipe made two large servings. Following the suggestions in the recipe, I added some milk to each bowl. Hubby Dear requested that I top his with cinnamon and brown sugar. I put honey and cinnamon on mine.

We dug in and chewed. And chewed some more. By cracky, that cracked wheat was chewy! The overall taste was okay, but the texture made it hard to enjoy. Neither of us finished our bowls.

The Verdict: This tastes like you expect "survival food" to taste. I'll pass on this one unless we're truly in a survival situation.

If you give this recipe a shot, let me know if you get it to come out better than I did.

Cracked Whole Wheat Cereal, from Emergency Food Storage and Survival Handbook by Peggy Layton

1 c. freshly cracked wheat
3 c. water
1/2 t. salt
1 T butter (or 1 T butter powder reconstituted with a few drops water)

Combine all ingredients in a pan. Bring to a full boil and reduce the heat. Simmer 20 minutes. Serve with honey, raisins, and milk. This cereal is also delicious with chopped apples, berries, nuts such as almonds or cashews, sunflower seeds, or cinnamon. Makes 2 servings.

Adventures in Whole Wheat: Blender Waffles

Today I opened one of the #10 cans of wheat that I recently bought and cooked with whole wheat kernels for the first time.

Since I don't have a grain mill, I am limited in what I can do with wheat. The first recipe I selected was Blender Waffles, which is a recipe I downloaded from Everydayfoodstorage.net.

Here are the ingredients. You'll notice that I'm using fresh milk and eggs. I don't have any powdered milk or eggs yet, but if you do, feel free to use them in this recipe.

This could be a completely shelf-stable recipe other than the bananas. Unless you live in Costa Rica on a banana plantation, you'd have to adapt the recipe in an emergency situation. Just leave out the bananas and subtract one tablespoon of wheat from the recipe below, and you're golden.

I opened the can of wheat and took a gander at the contents. Here's a small amount of it in Mini-Me's hand. I was surprised at how dry and unoily the kernels were. I guess that's what makes their shelf life so long.

Being the homeschooling mommy that I am, I proceeded to ruthlessly quiz the children about whether wheat is a monocot or dicot. We covered that in The Thinker's science lesson today. I told the children that I wouldn't give them any waffles unless they got the answer right.

The Thinker said, "Yeah right, Mom", rolled her eyes and left the kitchen. I've lost her to tweenage cynicism already. Mini-Me just looked up at me sweetly. She knows the power her brown eyes have to get her out of many a situation. Not to mention the fact that no one in my house is anything less than well-fed. So much for my threat.  

Anyway, the first step of the recipe is to blend the wheat with the milk for 4-5 minutes on high speed.

I was afraid my blender would either combust or do a lousy job, but it actually came out OK. The texture was kind of like a thick oatmeal when it was finished.

After the wheat and milk was blended, it was very easy to add the other ingredients, mix briefly, and then make the waffles.

 

As the waffles cooked, they smelled faintly like banana bread. I also made the caramel sauce to go along with the waffles.

When they were done, the family dug in with gusto. The Thinker, who is the pickiest eater I know, happily ate two of them. The caramel sauce tasted lovely with the waffles.

The whole wheat in the waffles made them extremely filling. The recipe made nine waffles, which ordinarily wouldn't go very far since my husband does a remarkable vacuum-cleaner imitation. We ended up having two waffles left over, which will make a fine breakfast for someone tomorrow.   

The Verdict: DELICIOUS! I'll definitely make these again.

Up next: Cracked Wheat Cereal

Blender Waffles, recipe from Everyday Food Storage

1 Cup Milk (3 T. Powdered Milk and 1 C. Water)

1 Cup + 2 Tbs Wheat Kernels, whole & uncooked
2 bananas
2 Eggs (2 T. Powdered Eggs and 1/4 C. Water)
2 tsp. Baking Powder
1/2 tsp. Salt
1/4 Cup Oil
2 Tbs. Sugar

Put milk and wheat kernels in blender. Blend on highest speed for 4 or 5 minutes or until batter is smooth.

Add bananas, eggs, oil, baking powder, salt and honey or sugar to above batter. Blend on low.

Pour batter into hot prepared waffle iron from the actual blender jar (only one thing to wash!). Cook and serve.


Hot Caramel Sauce - makes enough sauce for 2 recipes of waffles–good on many desserts too!

1/2 Cup buttermilk or 1/2 Cup milk with 1/2 tsp. vinegar or lemon juice
2 Cups Sugar
1/2 Cup Butter
2 Tbs. Corn Syrup (not essential but it will help your syrup keep longer with out going grainy)
2 t. baking soda
1 tsp. Vanilla

Mix ingredients in a pot and boil for 3 minutes, the sauce will turn to the carmel color towards the end of boiling. Stir in vanilla when syrup is finished cooking.

Month Three in Review

The third month of my prepping plan is complete.

What I accomplished:

• I added more cash to our BOBs
• I bought plastic sheeting and duct tape to prepare for sheltering-in-place
• I also got a box of trash bags for sanitation and other SHTF purposes
• I acquired local/regional maps and placed them in our vehicles and BOBs.
• I bought a lot of items for food storage.

What didn't happen:

• I have my duct tape and sheeting, but I haven't cut it to size. Having pre-cut pieces could save so much valuable time.
• I didn't get bottles of butane to refill my favorite Zippo MPL or the rest of my van's vehicle kit either. I decided to hedge against rising prices and bought 200 lb of wheat instead.

I'm still trying to prioritize my purchases for Month Four. So much to buy, so little money!

I've got my wheat so now what?

A grain mill is not in my budget for a couple of months. What can I do to play around with my 200+ pounds of wheat in the meantime?

First of all, I found that it is possible to crack your wheat in a blender. According to the gals at Food Storage Made Easy, you put a small amount of wheat (1/4-1/3 c.) in your blender and pulse it. When it looks cracked, it's done and you can use it in recipes that call for cracked wheat.

You can also use your blender to make pancakes or waffles with your whole, uncooked wheat kernels. The mixing time is somewhere around 5 minutes to grind all the wheat kernels. Ay Chihuahua! I have doubts about the ability of my blender to handle that.

What if my decrepit blender decides to die or the power goes off? In Emergency Preparedness the Right Way, the author describes another way to grind wheat. Basically, you take three pipes, bind them together, and use them to beat on wheat kernels you place inside a can. If you have ever seen how many tribes in Africa grind grain, you have the general idea.

I did a google search for "improvised grain mill" and lo and behold, I found the original source of this idea.  Improvised Grain Mill pdf   

That is one labor intensive way to grind grain!

Here are some recipes to use wheat without a grinder. I'm going to be experimenting with pancakes and one of the cereal recipes sometime during the next week and will report in on how it goes!

Blender Wheat Pancakes

1 Cup Milk (translation for powdered milk is 3 T. Milk and 1 C. Water)

1 Cup Wheat Kernels, whole & uncooked

2 Eggs (2 T. powdered eggs 1/4 C. Water)

2 tsp Baking Powder

1-1/2 tsp Salt

2 Tbs. Oil

2 Tbs. Honey or Sugar

Put milk and wheat kernels in blender. Blend on highest speed for 4 or 5 minutes or until batter is smooth. Add eggs, oil, baking powder, salt and honey or sugar to above batter. Blend on low. Pour out batter into pancakes from the actual blender jar (only one thing to wash!) onto a hot greased or Pam prepared griddle or large frying pan. Cook; flipping pancakes when bubbles pop and create holes.

-From Food Storage Made Easy

ROASTED WHEAT KERNELS

1⁄4 cup wheat berries (whole kernels of wheat)
1⁄2 tablespoon oil
1⁄8 teaspoon salt

Heat a small amount of oil in a skillet. Add wheat berries and pop like popcorn. They don’t expand as much as popcorn, but they will pop. Swirl around in the pan to prevent burning. Sprinkle with salt while hot. Makes 1⁄3 cup.
 
CREAMY CRACKED WHEAT CEREAL

1 cup uncooked cracked wheat
3 cups water
1⁄2 teaspoon salt
1⁄4 cup powdered milk
4 tablespoons sugar

Prepare cracked wheat by using a wheat grinder or a blender. Add dry milk to water, whisk, and bring to a boil at medium high temperature. Add wheat, sugar, and salt; cover and reduce heat to simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until water is absorbed. Makes 3 cups cereal.
 
 
THERMOS WHEAT

1 cup wheat
2 cups boiling water
1⁄2 teaspoon salt

Preheat a thermos by filling it with hot tap water. Bring 2 cups of water to a boil and add salt. Empty the tap water from the thermos. Place the wheat in the thermos and add the boiling water. Screw the lid tightly onto the thermos and allow the wheat to cook for about 8 hours or overnight. Drain off any water that has not been absorbed. Serve.
 

The previous three recipes are from a pamphlet entitled All is Safely Gathered In: Family Home Storage Basic Recipes by the LDS Church

Why the Fed-Ex man hates my guts

My order of wheat from Emergency Essentials came yesterday.

My herd of children are usually the ones who let me know when someone pulls into the driveway. Who needs a dog when you have four kids?  This time they were busy wreaking havoc elsewhere so I was the one who saw the Fed-Ex man arrive.

Under normal circumstances, I engage in polite chit-chat with the delivery person and sign for my deliveries. This time, however, I was a bit nervous and remained out of sight while the delivery guy brought up the boxes.

Why did I skulk around in my own house? Because I knew the delivery man would soon be hurting. Indeed, by the time he had gotten all of my boxes off his truck and onto the porch, his face was beet red and he was limping. I think my delivery weighed over 225 pounds and the temperature of 105 degrees didn't help matters either.

I'm pretty sure the Fed Ex guy will remember me and he probably noticed the very prominent lettering on these boxes as he cursed their weight. It may also have reminded him of the many other similar deliveries he's brought over the past few months.

That adds up to a breach in OPSEC. OPSEC stands for operational security, which basically means prevention of leaks of information that could be used by others to harm you. The Fed-Ex man is aware that The Harried Homemaker Acres has had several large deliveries from preparedness companies. This is not ideal since I'm trying to keep our preps on the down-low.

I have many more prepping purchases I need to get over the next few months. What should I do to both maintain OPSEC and keep the Fed-Ex man from needing to apply for worker's comp? Ideally, I would purchase things in small amounts with cash from several local stores, transport them myself, and discreetly bring them into my home. That's not easy for a person who lives in a preparedness wasteland. I'm just going to have to continue to do what I've been doing and hope for the best.

I implore companies that specialize in preparedness supplies to remove the prominent lettering from their packaging. Help your customers gather their preparedness materials discreetly. 

To wheat or not to wheat?

I was all prepared to make my final Month Three Prep purchases this morning when I was made aware of the craziness in the world wheat market. I was watching HLN, which I refer to as the junkfood of the TV news biz. You know, full of fluff, light on substance. They reported that the Russian government is halting wheat exports, which set off a giant price increase in wheat prices. They are predicting wheat to continue it's upward trend. Famine could be a possibility in third-world countries like Egypt that depend on cheap wheat to survive.

Then I got on The Survival Blog and JWR said: "I predict this will start a chain reaction, around the globe. Other nations are sure to follow suit with export restrictions, and futures prices will soar. We can expect food riots in the future. There is also some likely inflation in other grain prices, as cattle feed is shifted slightly, to compensate. Get your wheat orders in with a trustworthy vendor pronto, before the inevitable prices increases hit the retail level! Wheat prices could double again, before December."

I about choked on my Cheerios when I read that.

My prepping plan went out the window and I decided to spend the remainder of my budget this month on wheat. Unfortunately I had already spent half of my money on sheltering-in-place supplies and a trip to Sam's Club.  I envy the people who live close to LDS canneries. You can get wheat very cheaply there if you are Mormon, have a Mormon friend who will go with you, or they let you in. 

The best buy that I have found for me is to order through Emergency Essentials. I had enough money remaining to buy 4-6 gallon "SuperPails" and 4-#10 cans of hard white wheat. If I had food grade plastic buckets and mylar bags on hand, it would have been cheaper to just order bags of wheat from Honeyville Grains. When I need to refill these buckets, that is what I'll probably do. Yes, I do plan on using my wheat regularly. Once I get it and get a grain mill, that is!

I hate deviating from my plan. Knee-jerk reactions are often not my best decisions. In this case, however, I was planning on buy some wheat in the next few months. This may save me some money and insure that the product I want is available.

Now I have to decide whether to get back on my prepping plan next month or to go ahead and buy more wheat. I need to buy 473 more pounds in order to have a year's supply for my family. I refuse to be at the mercy of inflation, food shortages and a world gone crazy.

Here are some links I got from the Survival Blog for further reading on the subject of the wheat market:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6742QQ20100805

http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/higher-food-prices-russian-heatwave-wallet/19581230/

My Preparedness Binder, Parts Two and Three

In case you missed it, the first section of my Preparedness Binder is devoted to Food Storage and Preparedness Stocking Plans. I've collected bits and pieces of the collective wisdom of preppers on the Internet to come up with my own plan to buy food and supplies.

The second section in the binder is entitled "Food Storage Information". In this section I have general information about long term food storage.

• Print offs from the LDS Preparedness Manual including :

-The Seven Major Mistakes in Food Storage

-Recommended Food Storage Shelf Lifes

-Growing and Using Sprouts

-Water Treatment

• Print offs of information from Food Storage Made Easy - water storage, grains, baking supplies, etc. This includes types of items to store, ideas on how to use them and shelf lifes.
• A handout from Everyday Food Storage about wheat

I intend to collect more information on how to use the items in our future long term food storage and put them in this section.

The last section of my binder is devoted to emergency and disaster information. The LDS Preparedness Manual was very helpful for this section as well. I included:

• A Preparedness Test (We failed!)
• Supply Table/Master Preparedness List
• Generator Info
• What to do in the case of biological or chemical agent dispersion
• Nuclear/Chemical decontamination kit and how-to
• A Shelter-in-Place diagram (I got this from Ready.gov)
• Nuclear Disaster and Warfare Info

I have also collected quite a few recipes that use food storage items. I plan to put together a binder for food storage recipes soon.

Speaking of food storage recipes, I have finally completed our three month food supply. Well, not the food itself, but the shopping list of what we need to have three months worth of shelf-stable food. I'll have to post our menu sometime. The Excel file from Food Storage Made Easy was essential and really made things so much easier.

It is a bit intimidating to realize just how much food and other items we need to store. 45 cans of Chicken Noodle Soup, 75 large cans of fruit and eight cases of toilet paper are among the highlights of the list. (Yes, we use a lot of toilet paper. It's pretty ridiculous.) I'll just keep chipping away at it and get there eventually.