This burrito recipe is great for utilizing beans in your food storage and wheat or corn if you are a handy tortilla maker! The first thing you are going to want to do is soak beans overnight in a crock-pot - preferably pinto or black. The next morning, start the pot and cook for 8-10 hours.
When it comes to the actual meal assembly, make sure you have hot beans. In a pan (the best ones are cast iron) put enough butter in there to cover the bottom. Put 1 tortilla in the pan and down the center put about 1/4 cup of shredded cheese (more or less depending on your taste). Then sprinkle season all and taco seasoning over the cheese. Make sure you are generous so the flavor really carries. Then put beans down the middle - amount according to taste and preference. Put a lid on the pan so the cheese melts, the tortilla will get nice and crunchy too. Once you are able to use a spatula to take the tortilla out of the pan without the sides sagging, take it out. Place on a plate. Use two utensils to fold twice. Flip burrito over and sprinkle anything you want on top. You might not want to put anything, but a salsa, enchilada, and taco sauces are great additions! You can also sprinkle a little more cheese, fresh tomatoes, jalapenos, etc.
This recipe can also do well if you do not cook everything together, instead freeze the burritos. Put all ingredients into the tortilla and fold all sides into each other to seal the raw ingredients in. Lay burritos on parchment paper and freeze. Once frozen, wrap each burrito individually in parchment paper or freezer paper. If you use freezer paper you can write on the packaging what is in the burrito (if you decide to make different kinds). When you want to eat them, simply bake for 20-25 minutes at 350 degrees. Add your favorite toppings and enjoy!
This week, we will explore homemade dressings. Today, the topic of Italian dressings. Please send in your comments on your Italian Dressings. In my opinion, the best way to make an Italian dressing is to simply explore flavor with taste. The two main ingredients:
Oil (preferablly extra virgin olive oil, next canola oil if needed)
Vinegar (balsamic and apple cidar work great!)
Aside of these, you will need seasonings and spices to fit your desired taste. Great starters are salt, pepper, sugar, garlic powder and onion powder. These alone will make an excellent flavor. You can also throw in garlic and onion raw, but you might want to consider mixing it in the blender in order to chop up all of the pieces.
Other great additions to this dressing are mustard powder, basil, a small amount of ketchup, lemon or lime juice…these are just examples. Play around with it! This will keep for a long time, but I would recommend only make enough to last no more than 1-2 weeks to maintain optimum freshness.
Today I’m going to discuss the topic of making your own salad dressing. The following are all reasons to make your own salad dressings:
Excellent Taste. Homemade salad dressings beat store-bought dressings any day of the week.
You can make them to fit your taste. You can not only get creative with different tastes but you can leave out nasty ingredients.
High Quality. If you use high quality raw ingredients, you know your end product will be high quality. By making your own dressings, you also do not have to add any type of preservative, which in itself makes your food higher quality.
Save Money. Making your own dressings saves money - no question about it.
Longer lasting. While store bought dressings have preservatives to make them have a relatively long shelf life - that preservative is not particularly healthy - like we mentioned. The raw ingredents needed to make your own dressings are usually very long lasting (in particular dressings such as Italian, which consists mainly of an oil, a vinegar, and herbs).
Buying the raw ingredients in bulk is a great way to build up food storage for not only salad dressings, but for other food too, and you can have fresh dressings any time or you can can them too!
This vegetable curry dish is wonderful, sweet, but not too over powering, just enough to make you want some more! The assembly of this recipe is very easy. I recommend it for frozen food storage. You can change it and add any vegetable or meat you would like. The steps to prepare this food is roughly as follows:
For the first step, make a list of the vegetables you would like - Broccoli and Zucchini do a great job of absorbing flavor. I also use carrots, peppers, string beans, garlic and onion. The garlic and onion are great for flavor, so I highly recommend them. Other great ideas for veggies are potatoes, cauliflower, eggplant, cabbage etc. Collect and chop (if fresh) all desired veggies. I do recommend cooking hard veggies before freezing or adding them with the rest because they will not have enough time to get thoroughly soft otherwise. Freeze bags of veggies according to your desired proportions and quantity for individual meals. When cooking them for dinner, put some oil in a pan, first add onions for a few minutes then throw in the rest of the veggies. Once they are almost done - add the sauce and simmer for about 10 minutes. Serve over cooked rice.
The second step is the sauce for the vegetables. For this you will need (per meal) 1 can of tomato sauce, ginger, curry, salt, sugar, and soy sauce. You can add as much or little of each of the ingredients as you would like. I personally think the ginger and curry add wonderful taste - so the more the better! Also, be conservative with the salt keeping in mind the soy sauce sodium content. I would add about a tablespoon and a half of soy sauce and about a teaspoon or two of sugar. This sauce can be frozen once assembled. When you are preparing your dinner, you can pull the seasoning packet out first and put it in warm/hot water and it will thaw quickly.
I suggest simply preparing the rice when the rest of the meal is cooking. This meal should take no more than 30 minutes to prepare from the moment you walk into the kitchen, until you sit down to take your first bite. Enjoy!
If you are new to food storage, or if you are starting to gather food for storage, start small. Don’t feel overwhelmed like you need to store food for a long period of time all right away. Break up your end goal into smaller time periods. You will have more fun, work into a routine that works for you, and will have the endurance to work up to your goal.
Programs such as cooking for two weeks and cooking for a month are great ways to try out storing food. Take one or two days and plan out the meals you will need for a set period of time, we recommend incriments of two weeks. Cook, freeze, bake, assemble everything. Make two lasagnas, freeze a batch of cookie dough, assemble three soup stocks, cook a turkey and use the meat for sandwiches, noodle dishes, salads, and for snacking. These are just a few great ways to get started.
One great thing about starting small like this, is you can get into a routine for budgeting. You will know exactly how much you can allot to groceries every set period of time by properly alloting food for certain meals. We wish you a great start with food storage!
- Put Drumsticks or Dummies into a 1 gallon zip bag.
- In a large mixing bowl, put orange juice, onion, peppers, soy sauce and peanut butter. Mix. Add to the bag with the chicken. Label and Freeze.
- When ready to use thaw chicken the fridge. Either cook in a slow cooker or about 7 hours, on low ( until done, will depend on the size of the meat you use). Or put the chicken in a oven safe baking dish and bake in a 350 degree preheated oven for about 1 hour or until done.
Serve 4 Serve 12
2lb chicken meat 6lbs chicken meat
3/4 c chunky peanut butter 1 1/2c chunky peanut butter
1/2c orange juice 3/4c orange juice
1 chopped onion 2 chopped onions
3 TBS soy sauce 1/2c soy sauce
2 TBS hot peppers 5TBS hot peppers
This is delicious with a salad or some plain pasta with a little olive oil or butter and a sprinkle of salt.
Did you know that you can bake and freeze cakes, cookies, pies and breads? Storing these foods will always mean that you are prepared when: company drops by, a special occasion arises, you need hostess gift, visit a friend or neighbor, have a family celebration.
It is a great feeling to know that when life becomes challenging for someone, you can offer a true gift from the heart, a tasty, warm and healthy, home cooked meal in a moments notice.
Once a month cooking allows you to offer fresh and healthy foods to your family for a healthy lifestyle. Imagine on the busiest and most hectic day you have you can serve a meal in about 30-40 minutes. Your meal will make the house smell yummy, and the meal can be cooking while are doing something else. Effortless multitasking with the best reward.