Using food storage everyday in your recipes.

Using food storage on a daily basis is simple, convenient, and economical.  (And, every meal doesn’t have to include wheat or beans!)  Here are some easy ways to incorporate food storage into your family’s diet and convert any recipe to a food storage recipe.

The THRIVE food line consists of the same foods you would purchase at the market—fruits, veggies, meats, beans, grains, dairy, and the basics—only with THRIVE you don’t have to dash to the store every time you run out of essential ingredients such as eggs or milk.

Use whole grains. Use wheat flour, oats, or other grains in your cooking.   They add much more flavor and nutrition to your recipes.  If this is new for your family, start slow.  Begin by swapping out part of the white flour in recipes for whole wheat flour and work up to using more.  Flour made from hard white wheat works great this way and the change is rarely noticed. Oats add nutrition and work just as well as bread crumbs in meatloaf. Cooked wheat can be added to ground beef to stretch a recipe for tacos.  The wheat takes on the taco flavoring, and generally goes without detection, while making the meal healthier.

Use powdered milk.  The pricey smoothie shops do it all the time!  Powdered milk has fewer calories and less cholesterol than whole milk products and adds protein.  Try it in soups, casseroles, bread recipes…and smoothies. Trive powdered milk is so great, I actually drink it for my milk now. Now this is dry powdered milk, NOT the instant milk, big difference. The first time I tasted it I was so shocked at how good it was and how it REALLY taste like milk from the store.  (see my milk conversion chart) I also love to have powdered buttermilk on hand.

Convert eggs.  I love having powdered eggs on hand.  They are convenient and easy to use.  They are even great for camping…no more cracked eggs in the cooler. Just add the egg powder with your dry ingredients and the required water with your liquid ingredients. (see my egg conversion chart) The best part of using powdered eggs in recipes like cake batter, and cookie dough is that you can now eat the cookie dough with out the fear of eating raw eggs.

Use dry beans instead of canned. The savings is significant.  To make them more convenient to use in your cooking, soak and cook a big batch of beans and freeze them in can-size portions. Place 1 2/3 cup portions of cooked beans in zippered sandwich bags and freeze. Then when your recipe calls for a 15.5 oz. can of beans, you just have to pull a bag from the freezer.

Throw in dehydrated or freeze dried vegetables or fruits.  Dehydrated or freeze-dried fruits and vegetables retain much more nutrients than do canned vegetables. Once you start using them, the convenience will win you over.  No washing, peeling, or chopping.  Dehydrated  or freeze-dried potatoes, onions, carrots, corn, bell peppers and celery are ready to go in soups and casseroles. Dehydrated or freeze-dried apples are fantastic in oatmeal, or reconstituted and chopped for baked goods.  Freeze-dried fruits are wonderful straight from the can as a snack.   The biggest difference between Dehydrated and Freeze-dried is that dehydrated veggies take longer to reconstitute than freeze dry ones. There are several benefits from incorporating your long-term food storage ingredients into your everyday cooking.