Saturday, November 15, 2008

Everything Under the Sun by Wendy DeWitt

Here are highlights from the excellent food storage class I went to this week.

For the full transcript of the presentation go to everythingunderthesunblog@blogspot.com or
check BYU-TV in February under speaker Wendy DeWitt.

Wendy has a very simple 1 year food supply. She has bought and stored all the ingredients to make her favorite 14 meals 26 times and 7 breakfasts 52 times. In addition she has stored enough food to make a loaf of bread per day for the third meal and also cakes, cookies, rolls, pies, and brownies for snacks. Her food storage has a minumum shelf life of 3 years (meats mostly, most stuff is much longer). The other clever part of her system is that she is able to cook all of it w/o electricity "under the sun" in her solar oven.

Tips for storing everyday foods your family eats.
Wheat grinder: You must have one! hand ones are nice for power outages, electric are nice for everyday use.






Food Saver w/ jar sealer attatchment: Nuts, raisins, brown rice, candy, chocolate chips, baking mixes, etc will last 3-5 years rather than just months. You can stock up when there are sales. This is really the heart of what makes Wendy's food storage so yummy. Regular things with short shelf-life now last long enough to be in long-term food storage. The Food Saver is expensive, but deals are usually available on used ones, the attatchment runs about $10.






Pressure cooker: bottling fruits and veggies is a lot of work, but meat can be raw packed. Put it in the jar. When you process it, it gets cooked perfectly. Stock up when meat is on sale, then you have all these easy meals just waiting in your food storage. Wendy uses two jars of meat a week and rotates her years supply every 3 years. She can do 50 lbs of meat in one day. That is probably enough for the year...


solar oven: These are cool and I didn't know they existed. Apparently hundreds of thousands are used world wide. This along with our propane grill would have us pretty prepared to cook food in a power outage. The solar oven cooks in any temperature of whether as long as there is sun you can cook. She says her oven preheats in about 30 minutes to 350. So she can sterilize water, boil, and bake with it. It might take longer to preheat in cold whether, but not too much. Her friends had a nice warm meal on a ski trip in 18 degree weather. The trick is to adjust it every 45 minutes so that it is always facing the sun. She cooks breakfast and then a big meal. After the big meal she does a loaf of bread and then you don't have to worry about cooking at night when there is no sun...

4 comments:

Stacy said...

You can really pressure cook raw chicken? Have you ever eaten home canned chicken?

Regina said...

I haven't eaten it, but others who have, say the flavor is very good, much better than canned chicken in the store. They can a lot of meats at the Lindon Cannery and people in my ward say it makes really easy dinners.

Living Lavallee said...

wow! Thanks for all the info. I've always wondered how we're supposed to be able to cook all the food storage.

Regina said...

Stacy and I tried the pressure cooking of raw chicken when chicken was on sale and it was wonderful. Such easy dinners! I don't like to can fruits and veggies, but canning chicken is worthwhile.