This video demo’s a half batch. Here is the recipe for a full batch.

Tato bars

2 1/2 c. of sugar
1/2 c. water
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 c. dark Karo syrup

2 egg whites

Coating
2 c. milk chocolate
2 c. toasted coconut

1. Mix first four ingredients in a 2 qt saucepan over medium heat for 5-10 min.s, or until it has boiled to a hard ball, 260 degrees.

2 Meanwhile, beat two egg whites to a stiff peak, (5 min.s) in a stand mixer.

3. Pour the sugar mix over beaten egg. Mix on high, 5-10 min.s till fondant is pasty white and can be handled.

4. Roll into balls.

Coating

5. Melt chocolate

6. Drop the fondant balls into the chocolate, coat, lift with a fork, and drop into toasted coconut. Cover the ball and place on wax paper to set.

I really made this video for my family, so they could remember Grandma Bea.

Video demo’s a half batch. This is the recipe for the full batch.

2 c. sugar
1 c. corn syrup
3 c. whipping cream (heavy is tasty but fattening, half & half is okay)
pinch of salt
1 Tbs. butter
1 tsp. wax (I’ve left this out a lot and it’s fine)

1. Let sugar, corn syrup, cream, salt and butter boil together until thick.

2. Cook to firm ball, 235 degrees.

3. Add wax, pour into a greased 9×13 pan. (I line this with very well buttered aluminum foil, easier to pull out and cut caramel. Don’t use PAM)

4. If you accidentally cook it for to long and it sets really hard, remelt with 7 oz. (1/4 cup) of sweet & condensed milk, re-pour in a pan.

 To answer that you have to be sure you know what kind of oats you’ve got. If the oats have not been finely ground and all the remants removed, you likely have course rolled oats.  Though you probably would only consider feeding this to a horse (unless they are cooked,) they are good for long term food storage because the shelf life is between 10 and 15 years (depending on the way they are stored.)

Now there are also semi-prossed rolled oats that you probably won’t get your kids to eat either, but at least the remnants of these processed oats have been better removed. With this type of oat you can eat is as cereal uncooked, or mix it in with cookies for a little tougher texture. The expiration date on this type of oatmeal would be 5-8 years.

The most palatable oatmeal is the quick oats. This is what Quaker and other oatmeal manufacturers use for their large varieties of hot oatmeal. Big grocery store chains will often sell individually packaged oatmeal by the box in their case lot sales. Stock up on the ‘regular oats’ flavor and you’ll save some money on buying the tubs of quick oats. Yes, it does mean you have to rip open individual packets, but that also gives you another measuring divice. With this type of oatmeal, you have to keep up with rotation or the oats lose their nutritional value and have a stale flavor. Rotate quick oats every 2 years.

The waysyou’ll know your oats are going bad is a stale flavor. Be aware that if you open a 5 gallon bucket of any kind of oats older than 6 months there will be an off smell eminating from the oats. They aren’t nessisarily going bad. I have been using a bucket of semi-ground oats that is two years old in homemade granola and I think they taste wonderful. The smell did intimidate me when I first opened it though. So don’t be scared off from oats.

I’ve made several fruit smothies and that blender can blend big chunks of ice as well as frozen berries. You might have to run it through a blend cycle twice if you choose to add that much frozen fruit, but this blender can handle the work. We eat a lot healthier now that I’m blending fruit and adding a little spinach just for health sake. (If you add just a 1/2 of spinach you can’t even taste it).

One word of warning to anyone considering buying a blendtec blender. They aren’t quiet. It scared me to run the machine for the first two weeks. The other thing is there’s so much power to the blender you think it’s going to flip off of it’s base, but you can turn it onto one of it’s cycles and walk away.

I made some soup out of dry kidney beans the other day. The blendtec did an awesome job grinding the bean into a powder. After adding the liquid, the blender heated the soup through and I was very impressed. Also, making refried beans was very easy. I like black refried beans better because they are healthy. It’s cheapers to buy a can of beans though and then blend them yourself, plus that way the refried beans are fresh for your dip, soup, or enchiladas.

One feature that I love about the blendtec blender is the easy clean up. The base doesn’t come apart so there’s no unscrewing or re-tightening. You don’t have to scrub it either, unless you leave the food sitting in it for a while. All you have to do is put a tiny bit of dish soap and water, then set it back on the base and run the pulse button for 10 seconds. Super easy.

I already know that this blender will do great grinding wheat, because it ground the beans pretty well. However, I will write another post when I try some blend some wheat.

Now don’t be fooled into thinking you just get your food storage and you’ll have no problems. It will expire, and lots of short term food storage carries weevil larva. This is a nasty problem, but not a deadly problem. In fact it adds more nutrients to your meals rather than eliminating the health value as does expired food storage. However, I don’t know one person who likes eating bugs. Most people will throw away anything that they find a creepy crawly climbing out of. So the question is how do you prevent one of the most common food storage invaders? Well flour weevils are in many foods we enjoy. Crackers, cereal, cake mixes, and on and on.

Two years ago when I was doing my research on weevils I was living in hot Arizona where there is no extended cold season to kill the larva eggs. Neighbors would tell me they would pour a bowl of cereal and find it wiggling, and if it isn’t cured quickly the whole pantry or cupboard becomes infested. One friends said she had never had a weevil problem and then two weeks after that she had her pantry infested with weevils while she was on vacation. I felt bad, maybe I cursed her?

So the important things to know about weevil larva is they are at the processing plants of flour mills and other grains like rice. They hang out there laying their eggs all day long, but like I said, they are harmless, you’d never even know your flour had weevil eggs because they are so tiny. Grain mills do their job in sifting out bugs and processing the product to code, but the weevil eggs are highly resistant to cold when they are in their dormant stage. In Arizona and other hot climates, these little nasties come out of dormancy and hatch into larva. If not caught then they enter their next phase as little beetle like bugs. My Grandpa who served during WWII said while in the South Pacific their bread constantly had weevils baked into it and it really didn’t bother him after a while because he did see it as extra nutrients. Most soldiers couldn’t get passed the image so they just picked the weevils out of their cooked bread.

Ways to illuminate the weevil eggs would include oregano leaves in the pantry. I was told by a neighbor that’s what they do. I can’t find any science to back it, but maybe you’ll want to keep oregano leaves just for extra measure. The best way to kill them is freeze the eggs. It is tricky though because they must be out of their dormant cycle. How to determine this is not possible without a microscope. However food sitting on the grocery store shelves has been there long enough in a warm enough place to bring them out of dormancy. So when you get home with a 10 pound bag of flour just put it right in the freezer for 48 hours. This will kill the weevil eggs. If you don’t eat cereal too often but you like having it around, put it in the refrigerator. Don’t leave crackers on your shelves or in cupboards for too long without rotating. And make sure you look through your food once in a while to check if you have weevil larva, or else they will phase into bugs which crawls around and lay more eggs. I have never had a problem with weevils yet, and I freeze all my flour. I hope to never deal with a weevil infestation, but if I get one, I’ll take a picture and post it.

I personally do not like hamburger helper, but it is an easy short term storage item that can be rotated often. Macaroni and cheese, Pastaroni, and other boxed meals are quick and easy, and in an emergency adding some canned meat will provide protein. Canned meat is another short term storage item that is easy to incorporate in everyday meals.

Another short term storage item that I always have as a basic cooking ingredient is cream of chicken soup. This is an item I buy in bulk when it’s on sale. The expiration date of cream of chicken and cream of mushroom soup is approximately two years. If you get into the habit of making casseroles, these soup bases go a long way and you can add vegetables whether they are fresh or dehydrated vegetables.

This past week we had Hawaiian haystacks in which we used cream of chicken for the gravy. My husband didn’t realize I bought new cans and he pulled some out of food storage which really should have been thrown away. The cream of chicken soup was 10 years old. We didn’t realize until after the meal was over. We shrugged our shoulders and said, “We’ll know we got food poisoning off old cream of chicken soup if we’re throwing up in 4 hours.” Good news, there was no weird taste, and we didn’t get sick. I’m a proponent of not taking chances with old canned food or dented cans during good times, but I was happy to learn that if it was a major emergency, eating expired cream of chicken soup will not kill you.

In storage I have the Augason Farms Cream of Chicken Soup mix. I hate having to open a huge #10 can to experiment with product, but I did. I just wish food storage companies would make more varieties available in smaller cans. The can I opened was two years old and it smelled good. The directions said to mix 2 cups of water and 2/3 cup of dry product and cook to thicken. I was looking for the same consistency as what you see in a regular can of cream of chicken soup. The directions turned out way too thin. I found if I mixed a ½ cup of water with 2/3 cup of mix the consistency was very close to the store bought stuff. I made some chicken pot pie and replaced half of the canned cream of chicken soup with the food storage cream of chicken. It turned out very tasty. I would recommend having some cream of chicken soup base in storage.

You want to have sugar in storage. It could also be in the form of 30 pounds of jolly ranchers, but get some sugar in storage. And I’m kidding about 30 pounds of jolly ranchers. After 5 years, they start to really stick to the rapper and it’s quite difficult to get to the sugar.
I’ve talked about honey and that is the healthiest way to store sugar. It’s by far not cheap, and it takes the work of stirring after it has sat for years, but it sure is good. I really hope I will never have to live in such a disaster that my honey and sugar are the only long lasting sweeties I have to look forward too, but prepare with the simple white sugar, and then your mind will be at rest.

Store honey!!! It’s healthy and can substitute for processed sugar.

Two months later

Okay, so I was making spiffy whip again this week and I kept messing it up. Finally I realized there is a trick to making spiff-e-whip. You can not make it using a quickstir blender, or a regular blender, especially not a blendtec blender. Blendtec blenders get going so fast that the friction heats the product up, which will make the spiffy whip never set. Use a regular stand mixer or hand held mixer to whip this up and make sure you use cold water. Also if you are using this in jello as the center layer, it will float to the top. So don’t waist your time placing it in the middle of your jello.

I think all of the authors whose books I reviewed are brilliant. They have well researched ideas and practical experience that makes them professionals. My critic is not intended to reduce, or undermine the brilliance of the authors, but to provide a list of food storage books with key points that are useful so readers know what sources they can turn to for the best information.

This list is by far incomplete. There are still several books I will review in the future.