Monday Message

Easy machine bread recipe HERE that you can do so many things with!

“It is . . . necessary that each home and family do what they can to assume the responsibility for their own hour of need. If we do not have the resources to acquire a year’s supply then we can strive to begin with having one month’s supply.” (James E. Faust, April 1986 General Conference)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0XRSENsnYs - how to use a canister to vacuum seal your jars. I have showed this last year. You can use jars with lids from other things you use like spaghetti sauce - yes, you can reuse jars.

http://www.foodstoragemoms.com/2016/10/store-halloween-candy-emergencies/ - I have done this when I could day after a candy holiday, saves lots!

Vacuum sealing helps so much to keep your food longer like chocolate chips and nuts will keep years and years. So if you take advantage of sales this saves so much money. I have my dried foods i.e. celery flakes, sliced dried tomatoes, chocolate chips and nuts and craisins, chinese noodles, hot cereals. I have wheat gluton and specialty flours, though doing powders like flour you need to cut a coffee filter the size of your lid then set it on top of the flour, wipe the rim and affix the lid.  

I keep my sealer plugged in all the time as I do use it that much. This would be a great Christmas item. I even have a back-up for mine as I use it so much. I have a huge list so see how it might help you too.

Food storage is not just old people things, you need to think how you are doing on your storage. I cannot stress this enough that it is a great investment for your family.

Do you have a real cookbook or only internet?? Get your recipes in hard copy and put them in a binder or files, but have a hard copy. 

Something I have found helpful too is those old church cookbooks from many different churches that have everyone’s favorite recipes in there and they are basic and don’t take fifteen ingredients to make. So when you are at goodwill or other thrift stores or library sales, look for them. What's neat is that I find so many that just call for things I have in storage already.

Build your skills, push yourself to learn to make a loaf of bread. I know we have machines to do so but once you get it down you will never forget. Then use your machines happily knowing you could do it by hand if you had to.  

What if I said tomorrow everyone make bread by hand and bring it to show me on Sunday - could you do it? Would you have all the ingredients without going to the store, could you do it? Let's be honest here do you have yeast? Do you know you have to keep it in the freezer? Do you know how much flour it takes? I have kept flour in five gallon buckets with two bay leaves on the flour under the lid for four years and I rotate it every time I use a bucket. I replace a bucket, take it down, put it on the top shelf and to have the empty bucket I brought up the oldest and fetched out my bay leaves and dump in my five gallon using can.  

So it is more physical then financial to rotate but that is that. 

Roughly for the two of us now I go through twenty five lbs a month, give or take, but while that might sound like a lot I make us a loaf of bread every two days.

I make things from scratch. With our funds make cooking from scratch a necessity. Wouldn’t it be great if you did not have to cook from scratch but still did?

But I digress, what would your bread look like when you brought it to me? I think it would truly be wonderful to share a new bread and roll recipes with each other that way if one had problems they could ask each other questions on how to do it. Do it together, I guarantee you will learn while having fun doing it.

http://frugalmeasures.blogspot.com/2013/11/monday-message-bread.html

http://frugalmeasures.blogspot.com/2015/11/english-muffin-bread.html 

http://frugalmeasures.blogspot.com/2015/10/breadmachine-french-bread.html

http://frugalmeasures.blogspot.com/2015/02/lizas-machine-bread.html
  
http://frugalmeasures.blogspot.com/2012/04/four-in-one-bread-dough.html

Once you master bread go on to cinnamon rolls.

You can make rolls and hamburger buns -http://frugalmeasures.blogspot.com/2015/03/monday-message_16.html

http://frugalmeasures.blogspot.com/2015/03/julekaga.html

 http://frugalmeasures.blogspot.com/2014/08/delightful-french-bread.html

Do your best learn by hand first then play around as I have done here experimenting.
  
http://frugalmeasures.blogspot.com/2015/07/monday-message.html - who you love should get good bread :)

Start gathering bread pans and tools, all my pans I got used. 

Stretch your skills, do the best you can. 

Someone once told me they had their year supply of flour in. She had only two buckets. For our family of two empty nesters we use one bucket a month, so for a year we need twelve. So now figure your family size from that. If you have four you would need twenty-four. So check and see, you might need more as you start cooking from scratch, which is another skill you should be looking at working on too.

Now while we have buckets of flour we also have buckets of wheat. Did you know if you do not want to mess with ordering and such, Walmart carries wheat montana gold?

We have been blessed with what ease we can get storage, so don’t waste it.