Stockpile Challenge: Update #5

 

By Daisy Luther

Well, the end is near for the Stockpile Challenge!  Less than a week until I can go buy those fresh fruits and veggies I’ve been dreaming about! I’m very pleased with the amount of food we have remaining.  We haven’t run out, or even low, on anything that is truly vital to our healthy survival.  Sure, there are a few things we’d like to have, but there are no real “needs”.

We had a social obligation and ate out once this week. I have never enjoyed a big veggie-filled salad more!!!!

We noticed this week that we settled into the routine of choosing things from the stockpile.  Although, as noted before, we’re eating differently, we are still eating very well.  We still have a lot of variety in our meals due to the large amount of home-canned meats and soups.

Some readers have written in asking what kind of meals we make from the stockpile, so I’ve listed some examples from the past 7 days.  All of the ingredients are either dry ingredients from the stockpile, from the freezer or previously canned here at home.

This week we had:

• Scalloped potatoes with ham, peppers and onions
• Meatball subs on homemade garlic buns
• Roasted turkey with cornbread stuffing and green beans
• Turkey tetrazini
• Turkey and gravy served with mashed potatoes and carrots
• Biscuits with sausage gravy and hashbrowns
• Cornmeal waffles with strawberry-rhubarb syrup
• Split pea bacon soup with homemade rolls

We also had these snacks:

• Carrot applesauce muffins
• Spiced peaches
• Granola cookies
• Homemade pretzels
• Raisins
• Blondies with caramel crunch topping
• Apple/Cranberry sauce
• Peanut butter and crackers
• Homemade rolls with jam
• Ham and honey mustard calzones

I have to confess, I’m kind of a health and fitness nut.  This menu, while technically very balanced and healthy, is not the way we generally eat.  It’s much higher in carbs and lower in produce than my normal diet.   This is something I’m going to address in future stockpiling endeavours.  That being said, imagine a world in which the grid was down, perhaps permanently.  People would be performing a lot of manual labor and for that type of work, a diet higher in carbohydrates would help to fuel endurance for chopping wood, plowing a field or building a shelter.  Different activity levels call for a different balance of nutrition – it’s not “one-size fits all”.

What about you?  What delicious meals have you created from your stockpile of ingredients?