Larder

[Montana Rancher]

Ok, nothing else posted here so I'll bite

I keep a large amount of store bought goods on hand, most them to help with my personal brand of "scratch" cooking.

I find a can of cream of mushroom or chicken soup can be made into a kings meal by adding some rice, beef, potatoes, beans, taco meat or chicken most of the time.

My most favorite pheasant is a can of cream of mushroom soup poured over a dressed pheasant and bake for an hour.

Really it isn't any harder than that.

Or take 3 different kinds of canned beans and put them in with a half an onion, a green pepper and a pound of meat and you have chili fit for a king (don't forget a tbs of chili powder)

Or can of cream of chicken soup, can of green beans, and some French fried onions (maybe some pepper or some garlic) and bake for an hour.

Haha as I was googling some other examples I found this

http://www.campbellskitchen.com/

A canishborg of easy to make meals on the cheap.

Ok that being said you need to shop around for your soup. If you go to wallmart right now you can easily pay $1.75 for a can of condensed soup. But if you pay attention and watch for a sale you can get them below $.80 cents on sale not only at wall mart but the Sams and Costco venues.

I always keep about 48 cans of each of the soups in stock and when we use 6 of them I start shopping around and restock, rotating my larder and making really tasty dishes at the same time.

Most of the dishes listed above is a great meal or side dish for $2-3, (I usually put in harvested elk so it may be more where you live)

My point is this

SHTF

Put in 1 cat, 1 raccoon, 1 squirrel, 1 can of cream of mushroom soup, half an onion, dash of pepper and garlic, bake for 1 hour...... the best tasting scratch cooked meal you have ever had... Really!

[hawgrider]

can of cream of mushroom soup On pork chops is to die for !!!

[Jerry D Young]

My Tin Can Prepper Soup. I keep all these grocery store items in my food stores. Makes about 6-quarts of a hearty soup. Can always add additional cans of beef. Everything will store for a year of more.


Tin Can Prepper Soup

2 ~16oz cans Hormel Canned Roast Beef with gravy (cut up into smaller chunks)
3 ~16oz cans plain diced tomatoes (not stewed – ewww!)
3 ~16oz cans diced potatoes
1 ~16oz can whole kernel corn
1 ~16oz can early sweet peas
1 ~16ox can diced carrots (or sliced if you cannot find diced)
¼ cup dried onion flakes (or 1 whole sweet onion, diced)
3 beef bouillon cubes
2 – 6 bay leaves

Combine ingredients in 6-quart pot, making sure to rinse gravy from beef cans
Bring to boil and then reduce heat to simmer
Simmer approximately one hour
Serve with saltines

Just my opinion.

[Inor]

The last couple years we have been changing our strategy some on the items we store. We used to buy cans of soup, stews, veggies and fruit by the case when we found a good deal. But we noticed a couple negatives to that strategy:

1 - It takes a buttload of space to store all that stuff

2 - It is still more expensive than canning it ourselves

3 - It does not taste as good as homemade.

So, as Mrs Inor's canning skills have increased and both of us have learned how to make food from scratch, we have not been replacing the store bought cans of stuff. Instead we have beefed up the quantities of ingredients we store. For example, we presently have almost 500 pounds of hard red wheat and 120 pounds of steeled oats in #10 cans. We have about 100 pounds of salt and 200-300 pounds of white sugar. We keep a BUNCH of spices and herbs that will not grow in our climate. Edit: Mrs Inor does buy frozen vegetables when they are on sale and dehydrates them.

We are moving to storing just the raw ingredients rather than the finished food. That gives us a bunch more options for how we combine the ingredients to make a meal.

The other thing to consider, is that it does take some time for your body to adjust to eating real food if you are presently on a steady diet of processed foods. I would rather go through that adjustment now instead of waiting until SHTF happens and I have so many other things to worry about. For example, if we are forced by circumstance to eat an extremely high protein diet anchored with squirrel, rabbit and venison every day, I really do not want to have to worry about also being able to find a laxative to stay regular. Or the opposite is also true if we are forced into an extremely high fiber diet. Either way, I think getting our bodies used to real food now is a wise thing to do.

[Deebo]

Having very limited room right now, we are eating all the canned products I have stored up. When we consolidated houses, she had about three cases of canned goods, and with the four is so I had, we have plenty. Don't know why I doubled up and got four small cases of greenchile, so my next soup is gonna be ham and greenchile, maybe some beans...
Start looking tommoro for a bigger storage shed. Possibly build my own.
Need more room

[Deebo]

Nice site, thanks Montana Rancher.

[Coppertop]

The last couple years we have been changing our strategy some on the items we store. We used to buy cans of soup, stews, veggies and fruit by the case when we found a good deal. But we noticed a couple negatives to that strategy:

1 - It takes a buttload of space to store all that stuff

2 - It is still more expensive than canning it ourselves

3 - It does not taste as good as homemade.

So, as Mrs Inor's canning skills have increased and both of us have learned how to make food from scratch, we have not been replacing the store bought cans of stuff. Instead we have beefed up the quantities of ingredients we store. For example, we presently have almost 500 pounds of hard red wheat and 120 pounds of steeled oats in #10 cans. We have about 100 pounds of salt and 200-300 pounds of white sugar. We keep a BUNCH of spices and herbs that will not grow in our climate. Edit: Mrs Inor does buy frozen vegetables when they are on sale and dehydrates them.

We are moving to storing just the raw ingredients rather than the finished food. That gives us a bunch more options for how we combine the ingredients to make a meal.

The other thing to consider, is that it does take some time for your body to adjust to eating real food if you are presently on a steady diet of processed foods. I would rather go through that adjustment now instead of waiting until SHTF happens and I have so many other things to worry about. For example, if we are forced by circumstance to eat an extremely high protein diet anchored with squirrel, rabbit and venison every day, I really do not want to have to worry about also being able to find a laxative to stay regular. Or the opposite is also true if we are forced into an extremely high fiber diet. Either way, I think getting our bodies used to real food now is a wise thing to do.

I have the same feelings, but I need to figure out how to get and store the raw ingredients. I have the space just need the knowledge. Its on my "to learn" list as is canning. I think the want is there, just haven't had the time with everything else going on.

Coppertop