Are You Prepared for an Emergency

Last night there were a series of earthquakes in Reno, Nevada.  The largest one was 4.4.
Are you prepared for an earthquake emergency?
I have family and friends that live from blocks to 2 miles away from the epicenters and felt everyone of them. If you are a prepper and have family/household members who aren't maybe these earthquakes are a good emergency preparedness conversation starter. Are your 72 hour kits up to date? How about how you store your food storage. I can a very large amount of our food storage and a few years ago we rebuilt our shelves so that they are one inch lower in the back than the front. This should help with the movement of glass jars. We hope. Where will you go if you have to leave? Are you prepared for family and friends to stay with you in an emergency?

 At the top of this blog you can click on links for 72 hour kits and even see mine.

Starting the 2016 New Year

2016 is starting with the plan that I had for 2015 and didn't follow through with.  This year I am preparing a handout for the women at church each month, so that will keep me on track.  This first post is the January 2016 post and a repeat from last year.

How to Make Whole Wheat Bread.
I am going to keep all of the recipes on another blog so here is the recipe link.

How to make Bread For Beginners.  This is the recipe I used when making bread.  I was from a women's magazine in the early 1980's.  It is a very sticky dough, but I used it until I was comfortable make bread with more flour.

Batter Bread
Click here for the recipe.

Making Powdered Sugar

I ran out of powdered sugar today while I was making frosting.  I remembered that you could make it in a blender from granulated sugar, so I gave it a try.

I put 1/2 cup of sugar into the blender and blended it on liquefy, my highest setting until it looked like powder.  I poured it out and saw granulated sugar in the bottom, so back in it went.  The total time of blending was about 2 1/2 minutes.

I got almost 1/2 cup of powdered sugar when I was done.  I was expecting it to fluff up and be more than 1/2 cup.

Here is what was left of the store bought powdered sugar in the yellow container and the one I made in the green container.

Time to try again with 1 cup of sugar this time.

Here it is ready to blend.

Blending on the highest setting again.  I stopped it 3 different times and shook the blender.  I blended this about 2 1/2 minutes also.

This is what I got this time.  It was fluffy and is more than one cup now.

I poured it into the frosting and finished mixing the frosting.  Well the frosting has a slight grainy taste when done.  It appears all of the sugar didn't get turned into powder.

Time to get on the Internet and see what I can find.




Internet Information: from different sites.

1 cup of granulated sugar makes 1 cup of powdered.
Add 1 Tablespoon cornstarch to 1 cup of granulated sugar.  Only necessary of being stored some say.
Some say blend until it turns to a powder and some say pulse.
No site listed a time length to blend.  I guess that depends on the power of your blender.
Warning do not make in a plastic blender.  The sugar crystals will scratch the plastic.

For me:  I liked the information on the plastic blender.  Otherwise I learned that if you think it is done blend some more to be sure.

December 22, 2015 Update: I ran out of powdered sugar again while making Royal Icing for graham cracker houses with the grandkids.  I let the sugar go in the Kitchen Aid blender for what seemed like forever.  I stopped the blender, shook the sugar, blended some more, and repeated the blending and shaking several times.  I tried blending different quantities at a time.  I need 3 cups of powdered sugar and it still ended up grainy.  I think I will try the food processor next time.  Oops.  I can't do that.  I just remembered the food processor bowl is plastic.
The 6 year-old liked the texture.   

Three More Wheat Recipes

Whole wheat kernels can be cooked and eaten.  Soaking the kernels overnight will make them cook faster.  Use 3 parts water to 1 part wheat kernels. Add salt as desired.  Do not drain.  Cook in the water they were soaking in.  White wheat will taste slightly different then red wheat, it cooks faster and is chewier.

Cooked Whole Wheat Kernels Recipe.  Click HERE

Crispy Fried Cracked Wheat Cereal

Press leftover cracked wheat cereal into a loaf pan and cool.  When cold, unmold, slice, fry, and serve hot with syrup.

Turn your cooked whole wheat kernels into pre-sweetened cereal nuggets with sugar and powdered milk.

Pre-Sweetened Cereal Nuggets.  Click HERE.

Using Beans

Beans can be ground into a flour and used to replace a small amount of flour in bread.  The book Country Beans has a lot of information about using beans.  I can't find mine.  I may have given it away.  Anyway try replacing about 1/3 of a cup to start with for each loaf of bread.

Ground Pinto beans can be made into refried beans by adding 1 cup of bean powder to 1 cup of water.  You can adjust the consistency to whatever thickness you prefer.

Beans are really easy to can.  They have to be done in a presser canner. Place 1 1/4 cup of beans in a quart bottle.  Add 1 teaspoon of salt.  Fill bottle with water leaving 1 inch of head space.  Process at 15 pounds for 90 minutes.  This is for 3500 to 4500 foot elevation.  Adjust to your elevation.

My Recipes are on another blog.  You can click on the links to find them.
The blog is http://simplifyitexemplifyitrecipes.blogspot.com/

Pinto Bean Fudge.  Click HERE

Baked Beans.  Click HERE

Sprouting Wheat and Growing Wheat Grass

I have spent the last 6 weeks trying to sprout wheat twice and grow wheat grass once.  It didn't work.  I tried sprouting wheat several years ago and it didn't work then either.  My wheat is Red Hard Winter wheat that is about 18 years old.  Maybe that is the problem.
The wheat sprouts just got soft and mushy.  The wheat grass never sprouted, but the pot grew a lot of white fuzz. I didn't take pictures.  I'm saving you from seeing the ugly sight.
My wheat makes wonderful bread, so I don't know why it won't sprout or grow.  If "they" can grow two thousand year old wheat from Egyptian tombs why can't I grow mine.  Well maybe if I knew who "they" were I could find out what is wrong with mine.

If you want to give it a try yourself here is how you do it:
Sprout wheat the same as any other sprouting seeds.  The only difference is that the wheat sprout will only be about half of the wheat kernel length or slightly more. Go HERE for other sprouting pictures and details.

If you want to grow wheat grass here is how:
Soak wheat kernels in water for about 12 hours before planting. Use a soil-less mixture of 2 parts peat moss, 1 part perlite, and 1 part vermiculite, or other soil if you prefer.  Place a couple of inches in a container, cover with wheat seeds. Cover container with paper towels, cloth, or something to keep it dark until the wheat starts sprouting (3 or 4 days).  Keep the wheat moist the entire time also.  Cut the wheat grass off near the kernel when it is at least 3 inches tall.  It is possible to get a second crop.  You can also pull the entire plant from the ground, rinse the soil off of the roots and eat the entire thing.  Don't forget to keep it watered while it is growing.

Update on the Cracked Wheat Cereal

The man of the house cracked an entire #10 can of wheat which I am very thankful to him for. The wheat is in a container in the freezer.  A few days after cracking it he made himself cereal.  It was not toasted like the first cereal we made.  He said that it tasted fine.  The next time he make cracked wheat cereal he toasted the cracked pieces of wheat.

The end result was that the toasted cracked wheat cereal tasted better.  It didn't seem to make a difference if it was toasted before or after cracking.  The toasted cereal took about 10 minutes longer to cook in water than the non-toasted cereal.

Cracked Wheat Cereal

Since I am trying to get you to use your food storage, I decided I better try using mine in more ways.  Today was the first time I have made my own cracked wheat cereal and it was really good.  I checked online to see how others had made theirs and the first one I looked at stated that the cereal tasted like flour the first time they made it, so they decided to toast the wheat the next time.  No other sites I looked at talked about toasting the wheat first.  That flour taste comment was enough to scare me away, so I decided if I was going to make it than toasting the wheat first was for me.

Here is what I did:

I put a few handfuls of wheat into a cold cast iron pan and turned it on high.  I cooked the wheat for about 3 minutes stirring occasionally.

The wheat looked dark enough, so I took a picture.

Then it started popping and I turned it off and took another picture.

Here is the can of wheat compared to the pan of toasted wheat.

The wheat grinder had to be put together, so the wheat ended up sitting in the pan for about 5 more minutes.

Here is the hand grinder my husband used.  An electric grinder will grind the wheat to fine.  It is a Victorio brand grain mill.  The knob that holds the handle on is the one that knob that adjusts the coarseness of the grind.  The handle is loose and wobbly trying to get a very coarse grind.  The final product was 1 cup of cracked wheat.

Here is a close-up so that you can see how far out the grinding part is.

Here it is cooked.  Hers and his.  We added a little sweetener and ate it.  We both loved it.  I like to add milk to my hot cereal, but this had enough liquid in it that the milk would have made it liquid.

Go here for cooking instructions.

Whole Wheat Bread

I have found the key to making whole wheat bread is to keep the dough sticky feeling and knead the dough with wet hands.  Knead the dough for a long time to get the gluten working.  By hand, kneading 30 to 45 minutes is typical for a beginner.  20 to 30 minutes if you are an experienced kneader, and 8 to 15 minutes if using a Kitchen Aid type mixer with a dough hook.

Add Dough Enhancer if you can find it.  Gluten is not the same as dough enhancer.  Many stores say that it is, but gluten is just gluten.  Dough enhancer is gluten, soy, ascorbic acid.  Probably more, but those are the things I remember.

There are several things you can add to help make wheat bread rise.  Try 1/4 teaspoon of ginger or crush a vitamin C pill into powder and add it.  My friend adds 1/2 cup of cottage cheese and I am amazed at how quickly that makes it rise, but since this is about using what you have stored I don't think cottage cheese will be available.

My whole wheat bread recipe is here.

Ready to Use What You Have Stored?

I hope you have your food storage and emergency supplies stocked up.  This year I plan to share recipes and ideas using what I have stored, made, and stocked up on from the last two years of this blog.  I do a lot of my own canning and dehydrating, so I may have a food storage supply that is a lot different than yours.  I will start with the basics to get things going.
I will put my recipes on my recipe blog.  You can go here to look at all the recipes.  I will post links to each recipe I talk about this year.