Food Storage Challenge

So I didn't end up doing the Specific Carbohydrate Diet with Rychen, I don't think that's what he needs, at least right now. He is doing a bit better now, just working on eating habits and a lower-volume diet (higher calorie foods so there isn't as much volume to process). Anyway part of this means we are using our food storage more! We've been using our food storage for at least half our meals. And yesterday we FINALLY cooked the last of the pinto beans from this 25# bag we bought a couple years ago!! What a burden lifted! ha ha!

So I am having fun using the gluten-free foods for Rychen. We've been doing gluten-free since Elisabeth was born, but I never really got into bakery items so we just didn't eat much flour at all (more beans, potatos, rice). But now I am having fun doing muffins and pacakes with sorghum or brown rice flour. We top it with homemade almond butter (we always have several pounds of nuts in the freezer, a short-term food storage) and we also have a couple lbs. of frozen butter handy. Rychen Sr. has been using up the wheat and barley making his own breadsticks, and dipping them in canned tomato paste, another food storage item.

I also experimented with blender flours, which turned out quite well. You can't tell the difference. So you don't need a mill - what you do is soak the grain overnight (which releases dangerous enzyme blockers) and then rinse them off and just blend them with water, to make your dough. This is very handy because you can throw in other things while you're at it, and it mixes your dough for you. We use Ener-G Egg Replacer, which is a shelf-stable powder to use as egg substitute. Also, I like to use applesauce in place of the oil, so I just throw an apple in the blender while it's grinding the grains.

Other foods in our food storage make great hot cereals. We have lots of oatmeal to use up soon, and since Rychen P. is allergic to oats, he does a similar hot cereal with either rice or quinoa (Quinoa is a "new," ancient grain that has a strong nutty flavor, high in protein - you can buy it at Costco or order it from Azure Standard).

Millet is another grain we love - we use it the same way you'd use rice, but it's fluffier and just provides some variety (I don't personally like rice). It's yummy just stirring in some dehydrated vegetables, or putting some ginger and soy sauce over it. There's a 100% food storage meal right there.

So mostly our food storage is those grains, and some beans. We also have raw foods - mung beans and lentils that can be sprouted. All our grains are in kernel form so they can be sprouted if desired, to increase nutrition and preserve the life/enzymes. We are sure to have lots of seasonings and spices, since that is how you enjoy all these plain grains and beans! We keep our dried fruits stocked up, since that would be our fruit supply in an emergency, as well as some dehydrated vegetables. And our freezer is always full with extra vegetables, fruits, and raw nuts. And we usually have 50-100 lbs. of produce on-hand - this time of year is great because you can store apples, oranges, pears, onions, carrots, potatoes, squash, etc. for a month or two in your garage.

So anyway it is fun for us to see how little we can shop, and rotate our food storage each winter. We tend not to use much of it in the summer because we eat almost exclusively produce during the warm months, so I figured it would be a good challenge to live off our food storage (and thus rotating it) through the winter months.