With our pandemic going on right now, I have been putting a lot of thought into pandemic cooking. I have 5 kids so the idea of getting emergency food rations from a processed food company is far out of a price range. Instead, I have been putting a great deal of thought of how to put things together on an average day and average budget. I do not consider myself a prepper by any means. After going to the grocery store when the pandemic started, I realized I should make some changes around how food is done around the house in case of shortages though.
One of the things that I did was make a list of a few weeks of a menu that works for our household. Some of the normal recipes, though not normally done with shelf stable items, can be. For example, one item that I like to make is split pea soup. The peas for it are shelf stable. I normally buy pre-sliced up ham to include, but there are small cans that can be bought for a small price. I like to include sliced potatoes in my recipe, but there are cans of this as well for sale.
This brings me to my final point. As a normal household, there are plenty of times I either garden or buy extra vegetables at the store and they begin to go bad before I actually use them. I have a dehydrator and have begun to dehydrate all of those extra vegetables. I do not include things like potatoes because instant mashed potatoes are really cheap. For all the others, after they have been fully dehydrated to a crisp, I grind them all up in a coffee grinder into a powder. You would be amazed of how a hundred vegetables can fit into a really small container. Dehydrators are only like $40 so I would highly recommend everyone have one. With that vegetable powder, you can mix a small amount into a small tea cup with boiling water as a broth. I often have a hard time eating all of my vegetables within a day, but I can easily down a small cup of this broth and feel good that I have a full set of daily vegetables down. It is not going to have the necessary fiber that comes from the structure in the vegetables, but it will have all the necessary vitamins and minerals.
My only other suggestion in the dehydrating the vegetables, I slice the vegetables to the right size for the dehydrator first, and then boil them completely before dehydrating. This makes it easier to mix for a broth first.
I welcome any comments.
One of the things that I did was make a list of a few weeks of a menu that works for our household. Some of the normal recipes, though not normally done with shelf stable items, can be. For example, one item that I like to make is split pea soup. The peas for it are shelf stable. I normally buy pre-sliced up ham to include, but there are small cans that can be bought for a small price. I like to include sliced potatoes in my recipe, but there are cans of this as well for sale.
This brings me to my final point. As a normal household, there are plenty of times I either garden or buy extra vegetables at the store and they begin to go bad before I actually use them. I have a dehydrator and have begun to dehydrate all of those extra vegetables. I do not include things like potatoes because instant mashed potatoes are really cheap. For all the others, after they have been fully dehydrated to a crisp, I grind them all up in a coffee grinder into a powder. You would be amazed of how a hundred vegetables can fit into a really small container. Dehydrators are only like $40 so I would highly recommend everyone have one. With that vegetable powder, you can mix a small amount into a small tea cup with boiling water as a broth. I often have a hard time eating all of my vegetables within a day, but I can easily down a small cup of this broth and feel good that I have a full set of daily vegetables down. It is not going to have the necessary fiber that comes from the structure in the vegetables, but it will have all the necessary vitamins and minerals.
My only other suggestion in the dehydrating the vegetables, I slice the vegetables to the right size for the dehydrator first, and then boil them completely before dehydrating. This makes it easier to mix for a broth first.
I welcome any comments.
