I Dare You To Eat It

I’ve been a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints my whole life and yet I’ve never seen this before. Very cool, if you ask me.

If you have questions about our temples check out this information from www.mormon.org

This morning, I have a question, well a couple of questions, about Canada.

1. Do you know anyone, relatively near the downtown Toronto area, that would like to have a food storage presentation? I’ll be there during the week of February 6th-11th and I’d like to try adding something to the schedule, if I can. Just tell them to contact me ASAP! (and don’t tell my husband…yet)

2. Do you have any great suggestions for the “must see” while visiting Toronto? I’ve never been to Canada (well, except for one hour at Niagara Falls, 20 years ago) so this is sort of a big deal.

I’ll be triple-shipping, as in three copies for the price of one, on all book orders that come in through December 10th, 2011.

Merry Christmas friends!

Lately, I’ve received messages from friends who said that they were having a hard time finding copies of I Dare You To Eat It in stores. Sure enough, last week when I was in Barnes and Noble, I asked if my book was available and the clerk told me, “No, but you could go to another one of our stores…blah…blah…blah.”

So, for my own little piece of the Black Friday fun, I’m going to ship three copies to anyone that orders one book on November 25th. If you would like to order more than a single copy, for one day only, I will triple ship on every order I receive. No limits! It’s my happy way of getting around the retail price and hopefully help those who have been interested in buying the book but haven’t been very successful with finding it available in local stores. Grrrr.

Happy Holidays Friends!

Fresh Ingredients

cilantro, chopped (optional)

Storage Ingredients

1 can beef chunks (12 oz.)

1 can coconut milk (13.5 oz.)

1 can sliced, or diced, potatoes (15 oz.)

1 can sliced carrots (15 oz.)

1 can peas (15 oz.)

2 tablespoons flour

1 tablespoon curry powder

1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper

1 envelope Lipton Onion Soup mix

In a medium-sized pot combine beef chunks with broth, coconut milk, drained vegetables, flour, and spices. Simmer for 10 minutes and serve over hot rice, garnished with fresh chopped cilantro.

Prior to the General Relief Society broadcast a couple of weeks ago, my previous stake served this and two other recipes. I’ll share those next but can you believe it? (gasp!) CANNED VEGETABLES AND EVEN POWDERED MILK AT A STAKE EVENT!!!

With the Utah Food Bank begging for donations, our focus was on rescueing and goods from our food storage were the tools. Besides encouraging the women to participate in a mass food collection, we served them a simple ‘pantry meal’, and shared one woman’s personal testimony of being rescued.

What I learned, again, was that it truly doesn’t matter what we bring to a friend in need. If we don’t have time to make our mother’s famous lasagna, with homemade noodles (oh please) we can still help! We can quickly reach out, show up, share what we have, and try to lift one another. Having a few extra cans in the cupboard will help us to be ready to respond.

And if our budgets happen to be hurting, simple pantry meals can be just the help we need. A yummy curry dinner made with these basic ingredients costs less than $10.00.

One recipe makes enough to feed a family of six!

And, my favorite part is that this recipe can be ready in 10 minutes! Who doesn’t need THAT kind of help?

My mother never cooked with canned vegetables so I grew up thinking they were BAD. But because I want to have some amount of canned vegetables in my food storage, I want viable recipes for disguising using canned vegetables. Let me tell you, the sisters at this last stake event had no idea that I had contributed one of the recipes, but I heard comment after comment about the tasty curry dish. So…

If you’ve never cooked with canned vegetables, I suggest you give this a try. Don’t tell your family. Just surprise them with an interesting Indian stew, for an international treat! Marketing is everything.

Another cold, rainy, almost the end of May day here in Utah and I needed something BIG, quick, and hearty to feed the masses.

Fresh Ingredients

8 oz. fat free cream cheese

1 lb. mild Italian sausage

Storage Ingredients

4 cups dry macaroni

1 can cream of mushroom soup (10 3/4 oz.)

1 cup dry powdered milk

1/4 cup dry minced onion

1 cup water (Plus another cup of water reserved from the cooked pasta.)

2 cans white beans (15 oz. each)

1 large can marinara/pasta sauce (32 oz.)

1 cup cooked whole wheat berries

Start by heating a large pot of salted water. Boil macaroni for 7 minutes.

In another pot, heat the cream of mushroom soup, powdered milk, dry minced onion, cream cheese, and 1 cup of water.

Brown the sausage (remove casings first), drain fat, and add the cooked whole wheat berries and pasta sauce.

The macaroni should be ready by now but reserve 1 cup of the salted cooking water before draining the pasta. Add this cup of hot water to the cream of mushroom cheese sauce so that it’s not too thick.

Drain beans and combine with the drained macaroni and mushroom cheese sauce.

Lightly butter a large dripper pan and layer both mixtures just as you would for lazagna. Using half of the pasta and bean mixture, begin with a layer of white. Then add half of the sausage wheat marinara for a layer of red.

Repeat.

“Card, party of 50? Your table is ready.”

Today was a doozy so I prepared this casserole in the morning, covered it with foil and refrigerated until later. Finally returning home, I heated it, still covered, for 2 hours at 350 degrees. Of course you normally wouldn’t need to heat it so long. I’m sure it would even microwave well if layered in 2 or 3 glass pie pans.

I served it with pan seared carrots and zucchini and a real simple spinach salad. Everyone said it was great and enjoyed two big servings. SIL Chas (served his mission in Italy) helped himself to three servings. Guess it hit the spot on this cold soggy day. The big girls couldn’t believe it was so creamy-cheesy with only 1 cup of fat free cream cheese, and no other added cream, butter, or cheese. Samantha said the white beans were yummy. Everyone agreed that the wheat virtually disappeared into the sausage mixture. Hearty, healthy and happy. That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it.

If you need to feed the Young Men or the Young Women or just the neighborhood this one might do the trick. Lots of yummy food for very little money. Using pasta, beans, wheat, soup, sauce, powdered milk, and dehydrated onions from my food storage. No biggie.

I’m headed out the door for two more presentations this weekend, and it better be sunny. We’re still enjoying the late April showers/soggy snows here in Utah.

Tonight I’ll be sharing my food storage and provident living message at the L.D.S. stake center in Monticello Utah. The building is right next door to the temple and the presentation will begin at 6:00. Then on Saturday night, I’ll be speaking at the Las Vegas Meadow’s Stake Center (3200 Mustang) at 7:00. Sorry for the late notice. Please feel free to join us, either night, if you’re in the area.

And if you would like to have me t-r-a-v-e-l to YOUR area in order to give a presentation to YOUR peeps, please contact me through this web site so that we can compare schedules and synchronize our watches. Typically, groups outside of Northern Utah are pre-selling 60 + copies of my book, at the wholesale cost of $8.00 each, in order to cover the travel expenses. There is no charge for the presentation.

I’ll be speaking in Scarsdale, New York, on May 10th. That used to be home for us so we’re really looking forward to that one. Cheerio!

This is a wonderful story. You’ll be glad you took the time to watch.

I promise.

Sorry for the surprise attack, but if anyone would like to schedule a group presentation I’m headed South and would love to help.

Thursday Jan 20th is available for locations near Cedar City or St. George.

Saturday Jan 22nd, in the afternoon or evening,  is available for locations in Las Vegas or Henderson.

Jan 26th-29th is available for locations in Southern California.

During a one hour presentation, I try to teach people how they can save money AND simplify the daily routine. Learning how to design and use food storage in a way that fits your life, is easier than you think!

Still on my quest to prepare anything I can ahead of time, I’ve spent the afternoon cooking 70 cups of copycat Cafe Rio cilantro lime rice. I’m mostly following Erica’s recipe (http://www.favfamilyrecipes.com/2007/11/jared-and-i-love-cafe-rio.html) after she’s cracked the code from this local favorite restaurant.

It takes a village.

Fresh Ingredients

1/2 bunch cilantro, chopped

1 tablespoon butter, diced

1 lime, zest and juice

Storage Ingredients

3 cups rice

6 cups boiling water

3 chicken bouillon cubes, crushed if possible

2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon dry sliced garlic pieces 

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Boil water. Spray or oil a 9 x 13 inch cake pan and pour in the 3 cups of dry rice. Sprinkle on the cilantro, butter, chicken bouillon, sugar, and dried garlic pieces. Add boiling water and cover tightly with foil. Bake at 350 for approximately 70 minutes. Fluff with a fork and stir in the lime zest and juice. This stuff is GOOD.

Trying to conserve both time and energy, I baked two pans at a time and increased the temperature to 375 degrees and then let them cook for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Each of the three batches turned out perfect, which is totally unusual for me. 

I still don’t know what happened that one time, about two years ago, when I was in charge of cooking the oven rice for a major dinner prior to Stake Conference . It seems like we were hosting not one, but TWO, visiting General Authorities, not to mention our wonderful Stake President, who just happened to be Gordon B. Hinckley’s son. Something went terribly wrong (surprise!) and my rice was not even close to being ready when it was time to serve this terrific group of leaders, and their lovely wives, an amazing salmon dinner. I DON’T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED. There was either an evil hex on my kitchen that night OR I didn’t increase the oven temperature and add extra cooking time. Thankfully, the kind sisters I was serving with were gracious about my mess-up and insisted that the guests would just assume we were trying to go very “low carb”…or something.

Anyway, the rice for Rosie’s family dinner is D*O*N*E way way ahead of time.

My plan is to keep all the bags of rice frozen until the night before her farewell dinner and then microwave each as we’re ready to serve. Provident Living.

Repentance.

Meds.