FSF from the Archives: Recipe Roundup

Lately I've been loving some of the oldie recipes from the blog. This week I've made Super-Charge Me Cookies a big batch of whole wheat  bread and one morning when I found myself without eggs (!) I made the pantry pancakes for my girls.  Delicious!

What have you made recently?

Food Storage Recipe from the Archives: Homemade English Muffins

Don't you hate when you reaaaally want a certain thing to eat, but it's nowhere to be found in your house?


I hardly ever buy English Muffins, but I love them.  Instead of hopping in the car to go buy some, it's a bit easier to just make them at home sometimes (because let's face it, when you have kids at home all day, there's no such thing as hopping in the car and going to the store for just one item).


Abs shared this English Muffin recipe a while back, and it's definitely worth a shot if you're a bread lover like I am!



Do you ever see a recipe and decide to make it right then? That's what happened when I saw an english muffin recipe at The Happy Housewife. I love english muffins and started them mere seconds after reading the recipe. They were delicious, so naturally I thought that I ought to see if I could make them food storage friendly. So I did, and here they are.




And just because they are made with only non perishables, didn't stop me from slathering the freshly baked ones with loads of butter.


Ingredients: Flour, powdered milk, water, honey, oil, salt, yeast and cornmeal. When 70% of the food is in nontraditional packaging, you know it's food storage.


Start off by adding your powdered milk to a mixing bowl. When you reconstitute powdered milk you add 1/3 cup of powdered milk to 8 oz or one cup of water. Perfect measurements right? Well, when you only need 1/2 cup of milk you can still do 1/2 cup of water but you have to eyeball the powdered milk because, unfortunately for me, I don't have a 1/6 measuring cup. Oh, how I wished I did if only for the sake of food storage.


Add the water to reconstitute the milk, as well as the water called for in the recipe.


Add the salt


and the honey and mix together.


Now add half the flour


and the yeast


and mix again until it looks like pancake batter. I did this all by hand by the way.


See? Pancake batter.


Now cover and let rise for one hour.


When you come back, the dough should look like this, all bubbly and hopefully bigger.


Now add the oil, I used canola oil.


And the rest of the flour. The first time I made these, I used half white flour and half whole wheat, and they were delicious. This time I used all white flour, and they were still delicious. It's a win-win situation.


Mix together, if you aren't using a mixer, you may have to get your hands dirty a little bit to combine the dough.


Sprinkle a clean surface with cornmeal


And roll out the dough


Dip a cup or cookie cutter into flour to keep it from sticking to the dough


Princesses are very big at our house and coincidentally are perfect size for making english muffins.


Cut out the english muffins, and when you've cut out as many as you can out of one rolling, gather up the leftover dough and roll out again to cut out more muffins.


And place them on a sheet of wax paper. Place them cornmeal side down (not like I did) and then they won't stick to the wax paper.


I can't remember from making these how many the recipe turns out, but it looks like from this picture there are 18.


Cover with a clean dishtowel and let rise for another hour.


They should look like this, nice and puffy.


Heat a griddle over medium high heat and drizzle with a little oil to make a nonstick surface.


Grill your english muffins on each side. You'll have to watch your first batch carefully to determine what your optimum cooking time is. You want them to be browned on each side and it's okay to taste test one to make sure its done in the middle.


Hello, beautiful. You can actually pull this apart with your hands, just like the store bought ones, no knife necessary.


Eat straight off the griddle, or toast to have with your breakfast in the morning. They are delicious any way you try them!


English Muffins
adapted from The Happy Housewife


1 cup hot water
1/2 cup prepared powdered milk or 1/2 cup water and half of 1/3 cup powdered milk
2 tsp honey
2 tsp salt
4 cups flour (you can use 1/2 white 1/2 whole wheat)
2 tsp instant yeast
2 Tbsp oil
Cornmeal


Add water, powdered milk (and water for powdered milk), honey and salt to a mixing bowl. Combine. Add 2 cups of flour and yeast and stir until combined. Cover with a clean towel and allow to rise for one hour. Add remaining 2 cups of flour and oil and stir until well combined. Roll out onto a cornmeal covered surface and using a cookie cutter or cup, cut out round shapes. Let cut muffins rise, covered, for another hour. Heat a griddle to medium high heat and grease with a little oil. Grill muffins on both sides until lightly brown and cooked in the middle. Eat!

FSF from the Archives: Chicken Barley Chili

This week we had Chicken Barley Chili again and I was reminded how much I love barley. It's such a delicious grain. I used regular barley instead of quick this time, and used (fresh) chicken instead of canned. Yummy recipe, you must try!
Today's recipe comes from the back of the quick barley box. I can't remember why Mountain Man was holding the box (maybe shifting contents of the cupboard?) but he looked at the back and said, hey this looks delicious...hey! it's food storage friendly! What a catch.



Canned goods: Salsa, black beans, diced tomatoes, whole kernel corn, chicken

Mountain Man commented that a good way to get onions into a food storage dish is to add salsa.


Seasonings: cumin, chili powder, and chicken bouillon. The recipe calls for chicken stock, but I store bouillon instead for space saving.

Star of our show! Barley has a delicious texture. I like it better than rice.


In the pot add the tomatoes, salsa, and bouillon

Don't forget to add the water for the bouillon when you add the water from the recipe.

Add the barley
chili powder

cumin

And bring to a boil. When it's bubbling nicely, turn the heat down to a simmer and let it go, covered for 20 minutes.


Use this downtime to drain your canned chicken


and shred it for better texture.


Also drain and rinse your beans now. You drastically reduce the amount of sodium in your canned beans by draining and rinsing them.

After the soup has simmered for 20 minutes, it's time to add the rest of the ingredients.

Corn, undrained!

Beans
chicken
Stir it all together.

Bring to another boil over high heat. Then reduce the heat again and let simmer for 5 minutes or until your barley is done. My barley was done before five minutes were over.

The result? A delicious and hearty food storage chili.


Served with a little whole wheat focaccia is just what the doctor ordered for a chilly night.


Chicken Barley Chili
on the back of the Quaker Quick Barley Box

1 (14oz) can diced tomatoes
1 (16oz) jar salsa
1 (14oz) can chicken broth (or I used 2 chicken bouillon cubes and 2 cups of water)
1 cup quick barley
3 cups water
1 Tbsp chili powder
1 tsp cumin

Combine these 7 ingredients into a (big) pan. Bring to a boil over high heat, cover, and reduce heat to low. Simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

1 (15oz) can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 (15oz) can corn, undrained
1-2 (13oz) can chicken (I used one can and I thought it was plenty)

Rinse and drain black beans. Shred chicken in separate bowl. Then add chicken, black beans and corn to the chili mixture. Increase the heat to high and again bring to a boil. Cover and reduce to low and let simmer for 5 minutes or until barley is tender. Makes 11 cups.

Originally posted March 11, 2011