Monday, January 4, 2010

Fresh-free ingredients

We recently had a week-long family reunion where we based all our meals off food storage -- meaning, rather than having to go buy tons of stuff to feed all 17 solid-food-eating people (the three babies were easy), we chose recipes for which the ingredients were already stocked up in our pantries. We ate great food, and we only spent about $200, which included all the food for an extended-family feast on Christmas Eve (which was not food-storage themed).

Aside from saving money, it was great to not have our fridge overloaded with stuff. During past reunions, the fridge has been overloaded with all sorts of things that we needed for each meal, leaving little room for the real important things of life, like leftover pie.

Sooooo ... this whole thing has me itching for more recipes that don't require fresh ingredients. I'm itching so much, in fact, that I'm interested in putting together a little cookbook full of fresh-free recipes.

By fresh free I mean any recipe that you can store all the ingredients, unrefrigerated, in your pantry or closet or whatever. That doesn't mean it has to be meat free -- canned chicken is easy enough to come by, and I know you can personally can just about anything. Instead of milk you can use dry milk, instead of butter ... um, churned dried milk?

If you have any recipes you can share, PLEASE post them or e-mail me at stellmonquarterly AT gmail DOT com.

3 comments:

Jade said...

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Sarah said...

Are you going to share this cookbook with the rest of us when you get it put together? I'd definitely be interested in something like that! I'll comb through my recipes, see what fits the criteria, then email them to you.

Jade said...

I'll absolutely be sharing with anyone who is interested. Hope you find some good ones to share. :-)