Gingered Mango Coconut Crumb-cupcakes with White Chocolate

 Who knew that  Freeze Dried Mangos and 

6 Grain Pancake Mix  could make amazing cupcakes?

Well...I'm here to say that we've had some great success with using the pancake mix for more than just pancakes!  

Here's my recipe:

Gingered Mango Crumb Cakes drizzled with White Chocolate

2 1/2 cup THRIVE 6 grain pancake mix

2 cup Honeyville Freeze Dried Mango (hydrate with 1 cup hot water for 10 minutes)

3/4 cup Organic Coconut Oil 

3/4 cup sugar
4 large eggs (or dehydrated Powdered Egg Whites, hydrated to equal 1 cup of liquid)

2 tsp  pure vanilla

1/2 tsp rum or brandy flavor

3/4 cup Quick Rolled Oats  

1 T ground ginger

1 tsp ground cinnamon

Crumb topping:

2 1/3 cup THRIVE 6 grain pancake mix
1/2 cup coconut oil
2/3 cup sugar
1 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp ground cardamom


Directions: Preheat oven or solar oven to 325 degrees. Lightly oil muffin pans and line with cupcake papers. (Yields 24). In a large bowl, combine the hydrated fruit, oil, sugar, egg, vanilla and flavor. Whisk until well combined.  In a separate bowl combine pancake mix, oats, ginger and cinnamon.  Combine the wet and dry ingredients and mix by hand 100 strokes.  Scoop into cupcake cups, filling half full.  Top with crumb topping. To make crumb topping, combine ingredients for crumb topping until it looks like this:

Top cupcakes. Bake 15-18 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clear. I drizzle with 8 oz of melted white chocolate when cooled. 

Chopped toasted macadamia nuts sprinkled on top of the chocolate might make me pass out...


There you go! Another way to use your pancake mix! Enjoy! 

Chef Tess Country Style Thick Hamburger Stew in a Jar

 This is a great meal made completely out of food storage. It's amazing for camping or dinner any night of the week. It's perfect for giving to a sick neighbor or to someone you actually...like. I think my family likes it because the folks I cook for are down-home-raised-on-the-farm kind of people. They don't like a lot of green herbs and junk in their food (ironic isn't it?). Now and then I get "froofie" chef on them and roast some garlic or chop some tarragon, but for the most part it's "regular people" food.  As for this meal, the crazy cool part is that it fits in a convenient size quart jar for easy food storage space and planning! 

 Well, when I walked into the store this week, there on the shelf was yet another cool new thing that Troy had picked up...
Honeyville has this great freeze dried vegetable mix!
 It has corn and peas, peppers and carrots. It's great for adding a lot of flavor in one grab. 19.50$ for th#10 can. I thought to myself, "self...I bet I can make a recipe with *that* in it!" Yes...I'm a food storage dork-fest-in-action. You know you like it. (Secretly.)

 Honeyville Freeze Dried Ground Beef is probably one of th most interesting things I've ever used as a chef. It has quite literally changed my convenience food world when it comes to having to make dinner. No longer having to cook meat?! Yah. It's shelf stable and totally crazy cool stuff. I love technology...always and forever. (Quick...name that movie.)

So...Here's the next convenience dinner in a jar meal...

I promise they won't all be soup or stew.

Chef Tess Country Style Hamburger Stew

yield 12 one cup servings

in a quart jar:

1 cup THRIVE instant red beans

1 cup Honeyville freeze dried mixed vegetables

1 cup Honeyville freeze dried hamburger (or TVP beef)

1 Cup Honeyville dehydrated diced potatoes

¼ cup Honeyville dehydrated onions

Seasonings I shake down into the jar: ½ cup tomato powder,

1 tsp thyme, 1 tsp garlic, ¼ cup flour, and 1 T beef bullion.

It will fit if you shake it really well.

To prepare Country Style Hamburger Stew:

In a gallon pot, combine stew mix with 6 cups water and bring to a boil.

Reduce heat and simmer 20-30 minutes.

Works great in a solar oven. Bake one hour.

Put an oxygen absorber in the top of the jar. Seal. Good on your shelf in a cool dark place up to 10 years.


Now, I actually tape the directions onto the jar...(not pictured) or write the cooking directions on the top of the lid in permanent black ink.


Remember that tomorrow night I will be teaching a convenience meals in a jar class here at the store starting at 6:30! You won't want to miss out on some great recipes and samples! It's going to be informative and crazy fun! See you then!

Homemade Hamburger Skillet Meal Mix for you Food Storage

 I try to recreate mixes that are commonly used at home, but make them more natural and less expensive for your food storage. . We've been playing around with the double cheeseburger hamburger skillet meal mix. Do You know the skillet meal mixes I'm talking about? They're the ones where you take a pound of lean hamburger and brown it in a skillet. or vegetarians use
1 cup of TVP Beef rehydrated with 3/4 cup of hot water for 5 minutes.  I have to share something that has really saved my family budget on cheese sauce.  

Powdered Cheese

Honeyville's Powdered Cheese Sauce may be used in all cheese sauce applications including: toppings, pastas, nachos, spreads, soups, dipping sauces and casseroles. Our dried cheese powder requires no refrigeration and is ideal for camping, travel, and long-term food storage. This product may be stored for up to 12 months opened, and 3 to 5 years in airtight sealed cans. Once the powdered cheese is rehydrated it should be refrigerated and used within 4 days.

To make your own skillet meal mix:
Tess' Double Cheeseburger Hamburger Skillet meal mixyield: 10, 1 oz sauce mixes

2 1/2 cups Honeyville cheese sauce powder

1 1/2 tsp granulated garlic

1T granulated onion
2 tsp black pepper

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

Directions:

Combine all ingredients well. Use 1 oz (1/4 cup mix) to 3 oz of macaroni noodles (about 2 cups). I put the dry powder with the noodles in quart size storage bags with the label "cheeseburger helper".

When hamburger is browned, I add 1 cup hot water and 1 1/2 cup milk or soy milk. Bring to a boil and cover. Simmer 8-10 minutes until noodles are tender. Sauce will thicken a little more as it cools.

Your family may want more salt or seasoning. Adjust as needed.

If you are doing gluten free, use rice noodles and adjust the cooking time as needed.

 TVP...Add the meat replacement after the noodles cook instead of browning it, you just cook the noodles with the sauce mix and then fold in the 'veggie burger. Nice.

There you go.
.

Freeze Dried Ground Beef!

Easy to Prepare, High in Protein and Tastes Good

Honeyville Farms Freeze Dried Ground Beef

The Honeyville Farms Ranchers Cut Freeze Dried Ground Beef is a good tasting product and represents a great value.  The ground beef in the Honeyville Farms Ground Beef primarily consists of larger crumbles of ground beef with some smaller powder as well.  The only ingredients in the product are ground beef and salt.  The ground beef is fully cooked with salt and then freeze dried.  This results in a high quality product.   What I really liked about the Honeyville ground beef is that to me it tasted like really low fat ground beef that I have eaten.  It is also really easy to re-hydrate.  It only took 5 minutes in boiling water to reconstitute fully.  Just soak and then drain off the excesses water.  The meat comes out nicely reconsistuted and tender.

We decided to make soft tacos with the freeze dried ground beef.  We also used the Honeyville Freeze Dried Cheddar Cheese as a topping for the soft tacos.  Food storage has come a long way!  Freeze Dried Meat and Cheese.........I never thought I would see the day.

We made homemade whole wheat tortillas from scratch and grew our own lettuce.  This helped us to feel we were making a meal centered in self sufficiency.

The soft tacos tasted great and primarily came from our food storage!

Freeze Dried Cheese?!

If you like shredded cheddar cheese, try this product.

Freeze Dried Shredded Sharp Cheddar Cheese

Many of us love the taste of sharp cheddar cheese and now you can keep it on your shelf instead of your refrigerator.  Once you reconstitute this cheese, it has the taste, texture and cooking characteristics of fresh, shredded sharp cheddar cheese.  You can also just munch on the cheese as a snack straight out of the can.

To rehydrate the freeze dried cheddar cheese, simply add 1 part freeze dried cheddar cheese to 2 parts water.  Make sure the water is lukewarm.  If the water is too hot, it will melt the cheese and clump together.  If it is too cold, the re-hydration process will take a long time. 

After about 5-10 minutes, taste a small amount of the cheese and make sure it is fully rehydrated.  If it meets your satisfaction, drain off the excess water.  If it is still crunchy, allow it to soak for longer.

You can now add the cheese to tacos, casseroles, quesadillas and more.  Chef Tess recently held a kid's cooking class where the kids made hot pockets.  They filled the hot pockets with mozzarella, pepperoni and freeze dried cheddar cheese.  You can check our her recipe for homemade hot pockets by clicking the following link:

Homemade Hot Pockets

We wanted to try the cheese on homemade pizza, so we added some reconstituted freeze dried cheddar cheese to our cheese pizza and it was great.

Hope you enjoy freeze dried cheddar cheese and all of the wonderful things you can make with it!

Dehydrated Hash Browns

Tasty and Versatile Hash Brown Potatoes

Dehydrated Hash Brown Potatoes are easy to rehydrate and then cook up like normal hash browns.  You boil water and then soak the hash browns in the hot water for 15 minutes.  You then drain the potatoes and then add butter or oil to your pan and cook.  We recommend cooking the hash browns in Red Feather Real Creamery Butter and add Real Salt and crushed pepper to taste.

What is great about dehydrated hash browns is that they don't stick together, which makes cooking them easy.  The hash browns retain their white color very well.  They look and taste like fresh hash browns.  You could also add these into soups, stews, casseroles, or other dishes where potatoes are called for.  Honeyville Brand Dehydrated Hash Brown Potatoes store for up to 10 years in the unsealed can and then can store for up to a year opened on the shelf in a closed can with the lid.

We put together this video on rehdyrating and cooking hash browns.  Hope you enjoy:

Now that you have seen the video, it is time for you to enjoy some great tasting hash brown potatoes at your next breakfast!

Freeze Dried Corn

So Sweet It Can Be Eaten Right Out Of The Can!

This product is delicious rehydrated and can even be eaten dry as a snack!  The Honeyville Farms Freeze Dried Corn is a sweet yellow corn that has been flash frozen and then sublimated to extract almost all of the moisture from the corn and then is canned for long-term storage as a dry product.   The freeze drying process for sweet yellow corn removes approximately 97% of the water while helping to retain the natural taste and nutrition. This product comes sealed in a #10 can and has a shelf life of  up to 15 years in the sealed, unopened can.

Rehydrating can be done in several ways.  The following video provides some great instruction on how to do this:

This is a very popular product because of its high quality and great taste.  Here is a great Chili Corn Bread Recipe where you can use your reconstituted sweet yellow corn:

Green Chili Corn Bread

1/2 Cup Corn Meal or Corn Flour

1 Cup Natural White Flour or other white flour

1 tsp Real Salt or other table salt

1/2 tsp Baking Soda (preferably aluminum free)

1/3 cup Red Feather Pure Creamery Canned Butter or other butter

2 Eggs or 2 Tablespoons Whole Egg Powder and 8 Tablespoons Water

1 Cup Reconstituted Freeze Dried Corn

2 Cups Reconstituted Freeze Dried Shredded Cheese or 2 Cups Freshly Grated Cheddar Cheese

1 Can Green Chilies

1/4 cup Honey or Sugar

3/4 Cup Milk or 3/4 Reconstituted Country Cream Real Instant Milk

Mix all ingredients together and place in glass baking dish.  Bake at 350 Degrees for 50 minutes or until done.

Whole Powdered Eggs

An Important Part of Your Food Storage Program

I love my chickens and the fresh eggs that I receive from them each day, but in the preparedness world it is often prudent to also have on hand a long-term food storage item as a backup.  Whole powdered eggs are a great shelf stable product.  The Honeyville brand of whole powdered eggs for instance will last 10 years in the unopened can and up to 1 year after opening.   Some people are a bit skeptical about purchasing them or using them based on their reputation.  Our family has used them in Pancakes, muffins, cookies and other baked goods.  They are easy to measure out and work great.  A good recommendation is to have two (2) to four (4) of the #10 Cans of Whole Powdered Eggs per person in your food storage for cooking and baking needs.

We have also made scrambled eggs with them.  Here is a picture of what they look like once they are cooked.  I put green chilies in with them to help improve the taste.  As scrambled eggs they taste different than fresh eggs because the powdered eggs have been pasteurized.  However, the eggs do bake up nice and fluffy.  If you add spices and/or vegetables they are pretty good.  Our kids actually ate them up with more zeal than we did, probably because they didn't have any pre-conceived notions about powdered eggs like we as adults did!