Dehydrated Apple Recipies

We had a great night! It was almost like a Thanksgiving Feast! So many people helped out and had great ideas. I want to express a huge Thank You to Dawn and all those who helped out. Through all their work, stress, and time, we now have some wonderful ways to use our food storage - and it was great fun tasting all the recipes so we know which ones our family will actually eat. Remember, one of the points of food storage is to store things your family will eat and are accustomed to.

To re-hydrate the apples - most resources suggest that you use equal parts of apples to hot water, such as 1 cup of apples to 1 cup of hot water and let it sit for at least 5 minutes. I like to let mine sit for longer. Then you can drain off the liquid or better yet use the liquid in whatever recipe you are making and it will add more flavor!

Michael Barr will be back on Thursday March 25th at 7:00 p.m. at the church. We have a few new sheets of info to add to the others that we have posted. These are demonstrating how to do laundry without power. Have fun experimenting!

Canning Meats and Butter

Dawn, Karen, and Lisa have done it again. They have made something I was nervous to do, seem so easy. I haven't tried canning meat yet, but I sure plan to as soon as some hamburger goes on sale. I did try canning the butter though. We did it for family night and it worked out great. I poured the butter in the jars, Sarah put the lids on, and Scott tightened them down. Then we all went in and watched a movie and shook jars. I didn't have enough room in my jars for all the butter so I put what was left of the butter in a tupperware type jar and we shook it with the rest of the jars. I wanted to have a sample of what it would be like with me doing it, since recipes turn out just a little different with each cook, to know if I wanted to can more butter in the future. Generally, whenever butter has melted and then sits, it tends to get that gritty texture and it just doesn't seem to taste right. But to my surprise (not that I doubted Dawn) the sample butter in the tupperware blended back together just fine and we have used it on our toast for the last week.

Just a few side notes from the meeting:

A cold-pack canner, some call it a water-bath canner is not the same as a pressure canner. If you buy or receive an old pressure canner or if you haven't used yours in a while, make sure to get the pressure checked just to be on the safe side.

A 22-lbs turkey cans about 9 pints.

Recommended book: "Pressure Perfect"

The Utah State Extention Office (4-H) is a great resource for canning. They are in Provo on Center Street and just off University Avenue.

When canning butter make sure to use salted butter.

All of them recommend canning with someone, especially if you are going to do a big batch. It sure helped to have three of us taking turns shaking the jars. You get tired after awhile.

Breads, Rolls, and Pie

What a fantastic night of delicious food!! We have such talented sisters in our ward and they all shared their tips and secrets. I must say that the best part of coming to these activities is the tasting of all the wonderful recipes. Diane demonstrated her recipe for pie crust and it's not temperamental at all. My recipe is picky if there is not enough oil, too much oil, or too much handling so I think I'll switch over to her recipe now. There's 6 pages of recipes here and they are all delicious. Okay I know I've used that word already but they really were delicious. Hope you enjoy them as well.

Cardboard Apple Box Oven

We made some cardboard apple box ovens that cook just like a regular oven and you use charcoal briquettes. Each briquette is about 25 degrees of heat, so if you need it to be about 350 degrees, just use about 14 briquettes. Basically you take either the top or the bottom of an apple box and cover any holes that it might have with more cardboard and tape in place. You'll cut out a section for a window on one of the large sides, then you cover the whole box with heavy duty aluminum foil. Each of the seams (areas where two pieces of foil overlap) then needs to be covered with a metallic type tape you find in hardware stores. You will also need to cut the window part out again. Cut it in an "X" pattern (see video)and fold back and tape. You'll use a turkey roasting bag cut just larger than the window and tape it in place on the inside. And you're done.

Lay a strip on foil down on the ground to put the lighted briquettes on. You'll also use four cans (soda or something like a can of corn) that are the same size, filled with water or sand. Put the cans in the corners and make sure the box can go over them. Put a cookie rack or similar grate on top of the cans, this is where your food will sit. Cover and let the "oven" preheat. Then put your food on the rack and cover leaving a small space at the bottom for air to keep circulating for the coals. You can use a small rock to prop it up.

We tried it out that night and made 2 sheets of cookies and a casserole and muffins and they turned out great. The cookies took 3-4 minutes longer than in her oven at home but that was all.

Spaghetti Pie Recipe

Sorry the recipe wouldn't let me post it with the Four night post - but that okay - it was such a good dish it deserves it's own post.

Spaghetti Pie - Karen said this is a great recipe that you can make ahead and freeze for a busy night, just allow extra time for it to cook.

Flour Night

Hey everyone - sorry it's taken so long to add a post but things have been busy this summer and we took July off from having any classes since everyone was busy. Below is a copy of the handouts from our last Provident Living cooking class. It was on Flour and it was fabulous. We we able to sample many yummy things - and the spaghetti pie was a hit.