Lately I’ve been on a “72 Hour Kit” and “Food Storage” kick.  What am I talking about?  A 72 hour kit is something you can grab if you have to leave your house in a hurry in the event of some sort of disaster- a flood, an earthquake, you get the idea.  Hopefully, it never EVER needs to be used, but just in case, it’s a grand idea to have a portable bag/wagon/backpack stocked with enough food, water, toilet paper, diapers, flashlights etc. to last you for 3 or so days.

Food storage is something the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints have encouraged families to store.  Ideally, a family should keep a year’s supply of food- enough to feed every member of the family in the event of an emergency.  I have heard many stories of people who have lost jobs but, thankfully, had a food supply they were able to rely on when funds were low or gone.

A year’s supply is MASSIVE, people.  It’s hard to fathom how much food is necessary, which often leads people (ok, ME) to get discouraged and not do much of anything to build up the food storage.

I recently heard about a food storage analyzer where you can input everything you currently have in stock and it will spit out how many days you could survive and how many nutrients you have in supply.

So I went to www.foodstorageanalyzer.com and input my info.  It’s not pretty, friends.  Apparently, tons of peanut butter, spaghetti and applesauce are NOT going to be enough for our family to survive.  If something awful happened and our family could not purchase food, we would have enough to eat for only nine and a half days.

That’s NOT very encouraging.  But it is, however, quite motivating.  Thanks to the website, I now have a clear cut goal.  I know how much more food I need and I know where I am lacking in nutrients.  We have almost no calcium, Vitamin A or Vitamin C in our storage.

So I am on a mission: to get just a ONE MONTH supply of food by the end of October.  Can I triple the amount of food I currently have in just a little over a month’s time?  Can I?  Wish me luck!

This has been sitting on my counter for over a week now.  It is a $40 bottle of olive oil.  Before you think I’m into expensive food, just know I would have to be at gunpoint in oder to spend $40 on a bottle of olive oil.  $40 is more than half of my weekly groceries.  And I don’t even coupon all that much.  (One day I’ll figure that out.)  The point is, I’m cheap.

The olive oil was a gift to my husband from a client.  I don’t know what to do with it!  Can you help?  I can’t use it to just cook a frozen chicken breast in a pan.  I think I could get arrested for using something so expensive in such an ordinary manner.  I’m pretty sure there is a law against that.  Look it up.  Are there other uses for olive oil?  There must be.  Tell me what you would do with it.  And remember, I don’t like weird foods.  Keep it normal for me.  Thanks.  =)

Also, do you see my self portrait in the photograph at the top?  I tried to take a picture without getting my reflection in the bottle, but it was impossible, so I just gave up and posted the picture with my weirdest and least flattering picture taking angle.

Ha! If you know me at all, or if you’ve read this post, you’re ready to tell me to get off my food soapbox and stick to something I do know, like avoiding real work or watching re-runs of Seinfeld.

But wait!  Don’t go!  My pictures will be horrible, but the recipe is good, good, good!

There is a thing or two I know about food.  I know how to make food in a hurry.  I know how to make an entire meal in one pot or casserole dish. 

Dinner time is the worst time of our household’s daily life.  I teach piano until almost 7:00 pm some nights.  My husband is supposed to be home before 6:00, but that doesn’t always happen. 

When he does come home, Lydia, tired of sharing her mommy with pre-teens at the piano, is ecstatic to see her daddy finally walk through the door and get some real one-on-one time with a parent.  Imagine the protests when he tells her he can’t play because he has to cook dinner.  He tries to involve her, but that is hit & miss.  While sometimes giving her a cooking task works like a charm, other times she erupts in meltdown after meltdown.

So Ryan scurries around the kitchen, trying to keep a cranky, lonely toddler quiet (ha) so my piano students can hear themselves play, and prepare a healthy, beautiful meal in twenty minutes (double ha).  This is why we love one dish meals.  Side dishes do not occur in our home, (with the exception of a hastily washed and cut piece of fruit) so we need to throw our veggies into our meals if we want to eat semi-healthy.

Enter picadillo, a recipe given to me by a funny girl who knows how to cook.  This is the step-by-step “Takes As Little Time As Possible While Your Toddler Stays Busy” version.

1. Give your toddler a potato scrubber and let her scrub a potato you don’t need to use tonight.

2. While she is happy doing something, wash 2 or so red potatoes, 2 or so carrots, and a bushel of cilantro you DO plan to use tonight.  Let them dry.

3. Get some olive oil warming in a pan on the stove.  Chop up a clove or two (or three, if you like) of garlic and half (or more, if you feel so inclined) of an onion.  Throw the chopped up goodness into the pan.  Stir.  Turn around.

4. Chop up your potatoes, carrots, and cilantro.

5. Fill the sink with water and let your toddler “clean” some plastic dishes.  She’s starting to tire of the potato scrubbing and the whining is getting a little loud.

6. Throw the cut up potatoes and carrots (not the cilantro)  into your super delicious smelling pan of garlic and onions.

7. Turn the burner to medium/high heat if it isn’t already there.  Stir every now and then.

8. While the veggies are cooking, defrost a pound of ground turkey in the microwave.  Hurry!  Your toddler is spilling all over the floor!

9. While the veggies cook and the meat defrosts, you have a few minutes.  Get a towel and clean the water from the floor with your toddler.  She’ll think it’s fun.  Let her keep doing it on her own while you tell her how amazing she is and get back to the veggies.

10. Now the veggies are tender, the meat is defrosted.  Put the meat in the pan!

11.  When the meat is almost brown, add the cilantro and a can of green chiles.  Add some garlic salt and salt as well, if you would like.

12. Serve with tostadas.  (Break them up and scoop up your picadillo with them)

I’m not going to tell you how many pictures we took of these stupid tostadas.  Ok, it was over 50.  I told you- the pictures are no good, but the meal is delicious!

We love love love St. Patrick’s Day in our house.  I am 1/4 Irish.  My husband has red hair and fair skin, so we’ve made a guess that he’s got some green blood running through his veins as well.  He also gets incredibly happy on cloudy or rainy days.  He’s certain that is because his inner self is calling back to it’s cloudy, misty homeland of Ireland.  (Or maybe Seattle?  You never know).  We love bagpipes and Irish punk music.  And we love- I mean LOVE- CORNED BEEF!  It is an absolute MUST for St. Patrick’s Day.

Here is my mom’s super easy corned beef recipe:

Put 3 1/2 lb corned beef brisket, rinsed, in crockpot.  Top with 6 medium potatoes, peeled and quartered; 3 large carrots, peeled and halved lenghtwise and cut in 2 inch pieces; and one small onion.  Add water just to cover.  Sprinkle with the seasoning packet that came with the corned beef.

Cover and cook on low about 12 hours or until corned beef is fork-tender

With a slotted spoon, remove carrots and potatoes to a serving dish.  Discard onion.  Transfer corned beef to a cutting board; cut in thin slices against the grain.

So delicious.   But, as corned beef goes, you either love it or hate it.  Who are you?  A corned beef lover or hater?

I had a pioneer moment.  I made jam.  All by myself. (Mostly.  The husband did do some pouring and the daughter did do some picking/eating).

I picked the berries.

I washed the berries.

I smashed the berries.

I mixed the berries with the right ingredients and magically turned it into jam.

And I would show you a picture of all that sparkling jam lined up, glittering proudly on my counter tops if my husband would stop giving it away like last year’s fruitcake.  It’s really good, I swear.  His giving it away means he’s really excited about the taste and wants to share it, right?  Not that it’s disgusting and he wants to get it out of the house.  Right?

Handsome Hubby got to go to the homeland- that is, California- for a wedding this weekend.  Husbands and wives are not meant to be apart. This much I know! But that’s a different story. While he was off playing, Baby Girl and I were freezing at home.  THIS started happening (BEFORE Halloween, mind you).  I’ve been in Utah for 7 years, but I still can’t get accustomed to ridiculously low temperatures and frozen water falling from the sky.

In denial, I refused to turn on the heater.  Instead, I ran the hair dryer a little longer until my hair formed itself into a nice ball of static.  I did laundry that didn’t need to be done in hopes that the dryer would heat the house a little.  I baked.  Oh I baked.  Cookies and muffins… yum.  When temperatures continued to drop, I finally surfaced from my chilly denial and turned on the heater.  And a good thing too- if I continued in this way, I might have had to shift my original denials of temperature to denials of a sudden weight gain from consuming too many baked goods that never heated my house.

Here is the recipe for my applesauce muffins.  If you’re feeling a little chilly, go bake some.  Your disappointment at a still-chilly house will be compensated by the yummy yummy taste in your mouth!   You can also make this recipe into a loaf of bread, rather than muffins if you like.

• 1 egg, slightly beaten
• 1 cup applesauce
• 1/4 cup melted butter
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
• 2 cups flour (I do 1 cup whole wheat and 1 cup white flour)
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 3/4 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp. nutmeg
• 1/2 to 3/4 cups seedless raisins (if you like that kind of thing.  Yuck)
• 1 cup chopped walnuts (again, if you like that kind of thing- oh barf)

Blend well the egg, applesauce, melted butter, sugar, and brown sugar.  Sift flour, baking powder, salt, soda, cinnamon, and nutmeg and stir into the above mix just until blended.  Add the raisins and walnuts, folding into above mix. 

Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.  (In my oven, it only takes about 20 minutes.  Just keep an eye on these the first time you try them).  It’s done when toothpick comes out clean after inserting into center.

Immediately remove from pan and cool on a wire rack.  Pour over a glaze of powdered sugar, milk, and a little vanilla, letting it drizzle down the sides.

I have a kazillion grapes in my freezer that my sister in law let me pick from her vines.  I was browsing the internet for a grape jam recipe and came across this one