Random Favorite Food Storage Recipes

Sharon January 15th, 2009

Hi Folks: The recipes here cover the range of food storage and preservation techniques, from recipes for eating out of your root cellar and season extension to straight pantry cooking.  I thought some of them might be fun additions to your menus.  These are some of my favorites.

Tex-Mex Millet: Another recipe borrowed (ok, stolen) from _Veganomicon_, this frankly, kicks ass.  It tastes like Spanish rice, but better.  I’ve changed it to be a bit more of a pantry thing, but the original is pretty terrific too.  Maybe they won’t sue me if you run out and buy their cookbook.

2 tbsp butter or oil

2 cloves garlic

1 cup millet

1 onion

2 pickled jalapenos, diced, or to taste (I like a lot more, but then I’m a chile head)

2 cups vegetable or chicken broth or bullion

5 tablespoons tomato paste

½ tsp salt

1 tsp ground cumin

½ tsp ground coriander

Sautee the onion, garlic and jalapeno in the oil until golden and soft, about 7 minutes.  Add the millet, stir and sautee another 5 minutes, until the millet looks golden and toasted.  Pour in the broth and add tomato paste, salt, cumin and coriander. Bring the mixture to a boil, lower heat, cover and cook on lowest setting for ½ hour, or until all the liquid is absorbed.  Fluff up and eat.______________

Dehydrator Apple Granola bars: My kids love granola bars, and I love that I don’t have to actually bake these.  These are very tasty and have absolutely no fat in them, other than what’s naturally in the oats

 3 tart apples 
2 cups rolled oats 
1/2 cup silvered almonds 
2 tbsp. brown sugar 
1 tbsp. honey in 1/4 cup water 
1 tsp. salt 
1/2 tsp. cinnamon 

Peel and grate apples. Place in a bowl with the other ingredients and toss lightly until thoroughly mixed. Place mixture on a dehydrator sheet and dry for 2 to 3 hours, or until crunchy. Cut into bars and store in an airtight container.__________________

Pumpkin Pancakes: These are extremely nutritious, really tasty, cheap and filling.  My kids adore them, and so do the adults.  I like them with cranberry sauce, actually, but maple syrup is traditional.

1 cup pumpkin, squash or sweet potato puree

1 egg plus 1 tbsp soy flour (or 2 eggs)

1 cup milk, buttermilk, soymilk or water

3 tbsp honey or sugar

1/2 tsp salt

2 ½ cups whole wheat flour

Mix together egg, orange vegetable puree, honey and liquid.  Mix dry ingredients.  Whisk together and fry in a pan with a little oil over medium heat.  Eat with jam, apples sauce, honey, maple syrup or pancake syrup.________________

Beets with Tahini Sauce: Ok, I know you hate beets, or think you do, but this is the platonic beet recipe - people who hate beets coming running up to beg for seconds, I swear.  There is something about this amazing combination that just transforms the beets.  Try it – really.  I’ve adapted the recipe from May Bsisu’s spectacular book _The Arab Table_.

5 large or 10 small beets, peeled and diced.

2 tbsp oil

3 tbsp yogurt

2 tbsp tahini

½ tsp cinnamon

½ tsp cumin

Salt and pepper to taste

Coat the diced beets with oil and roast in a 425 oven until tender (you can steam them if you prefer).  Meanwhile, mix all other ingredients.  When the beets are tender, toss with the tahini-yogurt sauce.  This can be served warm, cool or at room temperature and is absolutely amazingly good.

________________

Bamboo Shoot Soup - If you have bamboo, you have bamboo shoots.  You can use the canned ones, but they aren’t as tasty.  This soup kicks butt when you are tired or grumpy or sick

6 cups vegetable stock (or chicken or whatever)

3 tbsp light soy sauce or to taste

1 tbsp sugar

2 cups julienned sliced bamboo shoots (you can used canned too, although the taste is inferior)

1 cup diced carrots

1 cup sliced onions

1 cup sliced mushrooms (you can used dried and rehydrated shiitakes or fresh mushrooms)

1 cup dried tofu sheets (available at asian grocers), broken into bite sized pieces

3 tbsp cornstarch

1 tsp white pepper

¼ cup of hot sauce (or to taste - we use chile-garlic paste) 

Bring stock to a boil. Add soy sauce, sugar and vegetables and cook until vegetables are tender.  Dissolve cornstarch in ¼ cup cold water, and stir into soup. Keep stirring until mixture thickens, about 5 minutes.  Adjust seasonings to taste.  Serve with hot sauce and fresh cilantro, if available._____________

Stuffed Cabbage with Dried Fruits, Mushrooms and Wild Rice: This is adapted from Georgeanne Brennan’s lovely book _France: The Vegetarian Table_ and has become my favorite way to eat stuffed cabbage.

1 large cabbage (savoy is the easiest to separate)

2 tsp salt

4 tbsp butter or good oil

1 large onion, diced

10 dried prunes, chopped

¼ cup golden or regular raisins

4 dried apricots, chopped

¾ fresh or dried and reconstituted wild mushrooms – the more flavorful the better

2 tsp while pepper

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tbsp chopped rosemary

2 cups wild rice (can use regular rice or another grain, but wild rice is the best) cooked until tender in meat or vegetable broth or apple cider

1/3 cup heavy cream

Vegetable or chicken broth

Peel off the dry outer leaves of the cabbage, if any.  Put the whole cabbage in a pot, cover with water and add salt, and boil for 15 minutes.  Remove cabbage from pot and drain in a colander until cool.  Unwrap and remove leaves from the outside in, setting gradually aside.  When it becomes impossible to keep removing leaves, cut the stem out of the center, and chop the center cabbage – you should have six cups of chopped cabbage.  Melt the butter in a large skillet, sauté cabbage and onions until transluscent.  Add dried fruit and mushrooms and cook for 5-7 minutes, until tender.  Add pepper, cumin and salt to taste.  Remove from heat and mix with cream and rice.Wrap a small amount of filling in each cabbage leaf, fold until closed and place in a baking dish. Pour enough vegetable broth over to come about halfway up on the cabbage, cover baking dish and bake 35 minutes, until tender.

Enjoy!

 Sharon

16 Responses to “Random Favorite Food Storage Recipes”

  1. curiousalexa says:
    January 15, 2023 at 2:56 pm

    For the chocoholics that can’t keep out of their chip stash, I offer Wicky Wacky Cake! My mom made this when I was a kid - I’ve since lost that original recipe, but there’s a wide assortment available via Google. All shelf-stable ingredients, no eggs, and actually vegan.

    WICKY WACKY CAKE

    3 c. flour
    2 c. sugar
    3/4 c. cocoa
    1 tsp. salt
    2 tsp. baking soda
    2 tsp. vanilla
    2 tsp. vinegar
    1 c. oil
    2 c. water

    Sift dry ingredients together. Then add vinegar, vanilla, oil and water. Beat until well blended. Pour into pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes. Let cool and ice. Do not grease pan.

  2. Survivalist News » Casaubon’s Book: Random Favorite Food Storage Recipes says:
    January 15, 2023 at 3:01 pm

    [...] Casaubon’s Book » Blog Archive » Random Favorite Food Storage Recipes The recipes here cover the range of food storage and preservation techniques, from recipes for eating out of your root cellar and season extension to straight pantry cooking. I thought some of them might be fun additions to your menus. These are some of my favorites. [...]

  3. Kate@LivingTheFrugalLife says:
    January 15, 2023 at 3:09 pm

    Oh! I love the sound of that Tex-Mex Millet/Spanish rice thing. We have some chili pepper salsa we put up last summer from our chili pepper crop. But I’m not so much into the chips and dip as my husband. This recipe sounds like a great way to use up our preserves. Thanks!

  4. curiousalexa says:
    January 15, 2023 at 3:57 pm

    on the fruit-filled cabbage rolls - how much mushrooms? what temp oven? Sounds yummy!

  5. Sarah says:
    January 15, 2023 at 4:45 pm

    Ooooo….one of the things I’ve been most looking for a substitute for is packaged granola bars. Wouldn’t they have quite a bit of fat from the almonds, though? (For me, that’s a good thing!)

  6. lavonne says:
    January 15, 2023 at 9:54 pm

    Excellent, thanks! Btw, recipes can’t be copyrighted, though the way the instructions are worded can. :)

  7. lavonne says:
    January 15, 2023 at 10:11 pm

    I should have said that the wording of the introduction to the recipe can be copyrighted. Instructions are part of the recipe and thus, can’t be copyrighted.

  8. Laurie in MN says:
    January 15, 2023 at 11:33 pm

    Hey, *I* have bamboo! Big, branchy, came to us from Hawai’i via Duluth, MN (no lie!), has flowers in August that bees/wasps/etc. *love* bamboo that is happily taking over part of my front lawn. Can you use ANY kind of bamboo? (I’ve always liked bamboo shoots in the faux/Americanized chow mein that my ma made, and I’ve thought about adding them to stir fry. Never really thought about the ones in my YARD!)

    Also, how big should the shoots be? The ones that I get come up about as thick around as my finger (it varies), but stay fairly slender for a long time. They also tend to come up IN my Bleeding Heart, and I need to pull them several times a summer. I will *happily* eat the darn things if I can!

  9. Matriarchy says:
    January 16, 2023 at 12:15 am

    Coincidentally, I started working on a “Best of 2008″ recipe post this weekend. I started building a pantry and learning to canning just this past year, and we are eating all sorts of new things - or old things, in new ways.

    http://rampingup.blogspot.com/2009/01/best-new-pantry-recipes.html

    I plan to try that beet recipe! So far, I only like them pickled with red beet eggs (a PA Dutch thing). I want to like beets more.

  10. Sharon says:
    January 16, 2023 at 10:25 am

    LaVonne, I know you can’t copyright a recipe - I was joking. But it is a good book!

    Alexa, it should say “3/4 cup” mushrooms. And, oh, probably the universal 350? I have a wood cookstove, so oven temps are pretty fungible here.

    Lance - I believe all bamboo shoots are edible, although some are tastier than others. I think they are tenderest when little, but can be peeled if they get bigger. I’d experiment - just don’t accidentally eat the bleeding heart, which I’m sure you know is poisonous.

    I love bamboo!

    Sharon

  11. Sharon says:
    January 16, 2023 at 10:26 am

    Oh, and Sarah, yes, that should say “naturally in the almonds” not “naturally in the oats.” Thanks for catching my typo!

    Sharon

  12. Laurie in MN says:
    January 16, 2023 at 10:43 am

    Actually, I *didn’t* know the bleeding heart was poisonous, so that’s good to know, but there is VERY little chance of mistaking one for the other. The bamboo I have is a broad leafed, branchy variety; the leaves look nothing like the bleeding heart.

    I am very amused that the plant that regularly astounds people (“That’s bamboo?!!? In MINNESOTA?!!!”) may possibly also be edible. I love stealth gardening!

  13. Connie says:
    January 16, 2023 at 10:49 am

    Whenever I cook rice with add tomato products, the rice stays hard, no matter how long I cook it. (Like, why you aren’t supposed to add acid products to beans/bean soup till they’re fully cooked.) Doesn’t this happen to anyone else? Isn’t the TexMex rice going to be, well, not soft?

  14. tasterspoon says:
    January 16, 2023 at 2:16 pm

    There’s a YouTube video on preparing bamboo shoots. (I don’t know if this link will be allowed, but you can search for Boing Boing and preparing bamboo. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRjau1c4H9A) We foraged for them on a 4th grade class excursion (when I lived in Japan) and I don’t remember it being such an involved process.

    I’m crazy about pumpkin pancakes! I add pie spice and it’s like having hot pumpkin bread every morning!

  15. Martina Fisher says:
    May 10, 2023 at 9:42 am

    I cooked this , it was simply wonderful. I am certainly not what you would call an experienced cook, and therefore tend not to enjoy complicated dishes which will make me stressed out when cooking. It’s very simple and yummy, marvelous accompanied by a bottle of white wine. Many thanks.

  16. mannequin head says:
    September 10, 2023 at 9:20 am

    I want to show my admiration for your kind-heartedness giving support to all those that really want assistance with your area of interest. Your special dedication to passing the solution all over has been pretty good and has specifically allowed folks like me to attain their goals. The insightful recommendations signifies a whole lot a person like me and a whole lot more to my office colleagues. Regards; from everyone of us.

Leave a Reply