The Home Front: Gluten Free Prepping

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Cream Potatoes and Peas

Cream Potatoes and Peas
Photo by Stephanie Dayle ©2013

The ultimate combination of potatoes, peas and cream (a white sauce). This recipe is rural living at it's best!

Cream potatoes and peas (or sometimes called Creamed Peas and Potatoes) were a staple in my family when I was growing up, as an adult I still make it occasionally every now and then, but it is not as well liked by my hubby. I am not sure what the origins of this dish are - if I had to guess though, I would say that it came out of the Great Depression. It has all of the hallmarks of something that is really inexpensive and easy to cook - and I have noticed a lot of dishes that involve a white sauce base (flour, butter, and milk) can be traced back to the Great Depression.

It's really easy to make and is best with garden fresh peas, and red potatoes (click here for a great article on how to grow your own peas). Depending on how much you'd like to make you can tinker with the ingredients to your hearts content. Like more peas? Add more peas! Like more potatoes? Add more of those! This is also a great recipe to use on your kids to get them used to eating peas. Worked like a charm for me!

Ingredients (for Gluten Free read below)

1-2 Cups of Garden Fresh Peas
5-6 Whole Potatoes - cut into chunks (if using red potatoes, leave the skin on).

Standard White Sauce

1 TBS (real) Butter
1 TBS Flour (All purpose flour, Hard Red Whole Wheat Flour will also work if you want to stick to whole grains)
1 C Milk - Real milk from a cow, if you have half and half that works even better!

Instructions:
Boil potatoes in a big stock pot, you want them done, but not falling apart. Test with a fork, the chunks of potato should stay on the fork when poked. Boil peas in water in a separate sauce pan - do not over cook them, check for tenderness. While these two are cooking, get to work on your white sauce. This is how I make a white sauce: Melt the butter in a sauce pan of med low heat. Sprinkle in the flour and cook until it just starts to brown. Add a little bit of the milk and whisk until you have a thick slurry. Add a little more milk, maintaining the thickness of the sauce. If you add too much milk it will take FOREVER for it to thicken back up again. Add some salt and pepper to the sauce to taste, then add the rest of the milk. You are shooting for a sauce that is thick - kind of like a thinner gravy.

Drain the peas and the potatoes.

Then combine all three - cook it for a few minutes and let it set up. Serve as a side dish or as a main dish. Enjoy.

Gluten Free Option (same as above - only use this White Sauce)

1 TBS (real) Butter
1-2 TBS Sorghum Flour
1 C Milk - Real milk from a cow, if you have half and half that works even better!

Sub in 1-2 TBS of sorghum flour for the wheat flour in the white sauce. You will notice this doesn't thicken up as nice - no problem. Do not kill yourself trying to cook it down. Add in 1-3 TSP of corn starch to the white sauce and whisk away the lumps. You will not notice a difference in taste between this gluten free white sauce and wheat flour based one. Sorghum Flour is my secrete weapon in gluten free cooking.

All the food in The Home Front General Store is clearly marked whether its gluten free or not. When you see that "Gluten Free" bullet off to the side - rest assured the product is certified gluten free and is safe for celiacs or those with an intolerance to eat.

Can I make this with food storage? YES! And the finished product will not look or taste much different! Here's what you need:

Rehydrate Dried Diced Potatoes and sub in those for fresh potato chunks.
Rehydrate Dried Garden Peas and use those in place of fresh peas.

Make the white sauce using:

Stored Whole Wheat Flour or grind your own flour with stored Wheat Berries.
Reconstituted Freeze Dried Milk.
And Butter Powder in place of fresh butter.

Please note: There are many recipes out there on the internet, this recipe came from my mom, she got it from my grandmother, beyond that I don't know, any similarities to other recipes are merely a coincidence.

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Cake Mix for Food Storage and Recipe!

By Stephanie Dayle - via American Preppers Network

If you are like me and enjoy something sweet every now and then, you might want to consider adding some cake mix to your food storage. Some people may think this is a frivolous item, but some good 'easy to cook' comfort foods may come in handy to help keep everyone sane. Plus, I believe in prepping what you eat and eating what you prep. This is the surest way to have a store of food that you know how to cook, like to eat, and will eat. This also means that you are rotating your food and using it.

There are lots of things that you can make with cake mix. You can make cake pops, you can make cupcakes, you can make cake mix cookies, you can make cake batter waffles, and you can use cake batter to turn simple popcorn into a delightful dessert. No oven? No electricity? You can make cake batter pancakes topped with some warm frosting (cause nothing goes better with cake batter pancakes than more sugar) with a frying pan over a wood stove or even a fire. You can also use it to help out cornbread, and you can make brownies with chocolate cake mix.

As you can see its a very versatile item to add to your rotation. Anytime I can find something like cake mix, that has many uses, and that stores well, its a no brainer to add it to my food rotation. You can safely keep a 1-2 year supply on your shelves and rotate them or you can stick them in long term storage for perhaps up to 5 years. There are two main approaches you can take to cake mix.

Buy it in the Box.
For the most part I will buy mine in the box. I wait for there to be a couple of coupons then I wait for the mixes to go on sale somewhere, ideally for .89 to .99 cents a box, then I apply the coupon which knocks at least half of that off. I will buy as many as I have coupons for. At .50 cents a box, you might be able to beat that by making your own mix, but not by much once you count for all the ingredients. If you can't get the price per box down that low, you may want to consider making the mix from scratch.

For those of you out there who are gluten free, Betty Crocker has several different types of gluten free boxed cake mix, as do several other different companies - but you guys are going to save the most money by making the mixes from scratch as food companies are still charging a premium for gluten free food. Click here for a simple GF Yellow Cake Mix recipe.

With Food Storage
I already have the ingredients needed for these mixes in my food storage already, if you don't plan on picking up some egg powder, and powdered milk for your storage. Some people add these ingredients to the mix prior to storage so when it comes time to cook it, all they have to do is add water and butter. If the mix calls for butter or oil you can do a few things, you can either make sure you have enough butter and oil stored to get you through a disaster, you can add powdered butter or margarine to the mix, OR you can sub out the butter or oil for a bean puree.

Now before you wrinkle your nose, I have done this several times to make cakes a little more healthy and/or to make them vegan for friends of mine and it has tasted JUST FINE. Really! In a long term emergency, replacing butter or vegetable oil with some (soaked and cooked) bean puree, in cake mix will save that precious resource for other uses, it will also increase the amount of protein in the cake mix making even more useful in a situation where protein might be a luxury. The amount of beans you would want to add is about 1/2 cup of bean puree per box maybe a tad more. That is just about a can of beans, drained and rinsed and pureed. Think black beans for chocolate cake and white beans for yellow cake.

From Scratch

Learning how to make cake mix yourself is a good thing to do whether your are storing it or not. It's another exercise in self sufficiency and your end product will inevitably be more healthy than the store bought version. Plus, in a long term disaster, you will eventually run out of pre-made mix, and if you want cake, you will have to know how to make your own from scratch.

THE MIX (this is based on Everyday Food Storage's recipe for yellow cake mix but I made a few modifications to make it work for me, keep in mind cake made from scratch will have a slightly different texture than the store bought stuff):

9 Cup flour total - If you are milling your own flour from wheat berries you will want to reach for some soft winter wheat as you want the lower protein content of that type of wheat for cakes; you will also want to mill it a tad more fine than all purpose flour but you don't want it so fine that you make something like wheat starch. If you are not milling your own flour, you can use 9 cups of pastry flour (which is almost just like cake flour but not bleached) or 9 cups of all purpose flour with one tablespoon of flour out of every cup replaced with a tablespoon of corn starch) OR you can just use cake flour (I am not a huge fan of cake flour because it is bleached and so refined and, therefore, not real good for you but it does really make the best cakes).
6 Cup sugar - just regular sugar
Heaping 2/3 Cup dry non-instant milk powder or 1 1/3 C. dry instant milk powder
Heaping 1/4 Cup baking powder
4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla powder - I have found that vanilla powder is a little easier to incorporate into baking mixes for storage.
1 1/3 Cup dry egg powder (this assumes the egg powder ratio is one large egg = 2 Tbs dry egg powder + 1/4 Cup. water, if your brand of egg powder is different you will have to adjust the recipe).

Combine ingredients thoroughly and store in an air tight container. You can mix this up - freeze it a couple of times to kill any dormant bugs in the flour and seal it in a Mylar bag with an oxygen absorber. Don't forget to write the type of cake mix and the cooking instructions on each package. Or you can mix it up as you need it, if you are already stocking all the ingredients.

Using the Mix:

4 1/3 Cup yellow cake mix (make it a heaping 4 1/3 Cup if you used instant milk powder)
1/2 Cup softened butter or bean puree
1 3/4 Cup water
1 tsp vanilla (or 1/2 tsp of vanilla powder)

Heat oven to 350 degree F. Grease bottom and sides of 9×13 pan, two 9×9 pans, or two 8×8 round pans. Beat all ingredients with electric mixer on low speed for 30 seconds, then beat on high speed 3 minutes. Pour into prepared pans and bake 9×13 35-40 minutes, 9-inch 25-30 minutes, 8-inch rounds 30-35 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Public Domain Image

Everyday Food Storage suggests these variations: Add 1 Cup freeze dried fruit hydrated in the 1 3/4 Cup water to make it fruit flavored. OR my variation: add some fruit jam which you made yourself in-between the layers of cake! You can also experiment with adding jello or kool-aid to flavor and color your cake mix.

Click here for a Chocolate Cake Mix recipe also from Everyday Food Storage!

Do you stock boxed mix or make it from scratch? I hear about people making cake from scratch less and less these days, it is truly becoming a rarity. Also let me know if you give this a try!

Basics of Gluten Free Prepping

By Stephanie Dayle - via The American Preppers Network

Nearly three years ago, after a serious car accident, I began having serious lower intestinal issues whenever I ate. After a while, I sought the help of my doctor who ran me through a barrage of tests, one of which was a celiac panel. All came back negative. So I was given a couple of prescriptions and a diagnosis for IBS.

When the meds I was given failed to have any real effect on me, I saw a specialist who took a look at my celiac panel and declared that while I didn’t have the celiac disease (that much was very true), I was still “gluten intolerant.” My regular doctor back pedaled by saying I had a “false negative” test – however my specialist said that there are no “false negatives” there are only doctors who don’t know how to order or read the test.

Apparently I’ve been gluten intolerant my whole life and the stress related to my accident exasperated my gluten intolerance symptoms which, until that time, had been fairly dormant. No more wheat, rye or barley I was told. For a little while, I about starved because I didn’t know what to do, let alone how this would effect our emergency preparedness plans. But he was right, my worst symptoms disappeared within days of ditching the gluten and other symptoms (like fatigue and anemia), took a little longer to go away but within a year I was back to my normal healthy self.

Gliadin: The small part of the gluten protein that people react to. Public Domain Image

Quick Review of Gluten Intolerance and Celiac – It’s Important to Know the Facts

Celiac Disease is “villous atrophy” (the little finger like structures in your small intestines that absorb nutrients have become short and blunted due to your own immune system attacking them) triggered by gluten intolerance, however, it is not “gluten intolerance”. Celiac Disease results in an autoimmune reaction (where your immune system attacks the body as opposed to the gluten).

Non-celiac “Gluten Intolerance” is when you don’t have villous atrophy yet, but you still have problems triggered by gluten. “Gluten intolerance” is an immune reaction to the gluten. Both of the reactions for Celiac Disease and Gluten Intolerance involve IgA and/or IgG antibodies in your body reacting to Gliadin. Gliadin is part of the gluten protein that is present in wheat and several other cereals, such as rye and barley.

“Lactose Intolerance” is also different from ‘gluten intolerance.’ When you are lactose intolerant, you are missing an enzyme you need to digest ‘lactose (a sugar)‘ in milk. So when you consume a dairy product, it digests very poorly. Gluten Intolerance is an Immune Reaction. They are VERY DIFFERENT.

A “Wheat Allergy” is also not the same thing as ‘gluten intolerance’. Wheat allergies are even more difficult to diagnose, as your standard ‘celiac panel’ doesn’t even cover that one. Although the symptoms can be very similar to ‘gluten intolerance’, they are two different medical conditions – someone with a ‘wheat allergy’ may eat products like Rye Bread which has plenty of gluten in it, and be just fine . A more in depth ‘food allergy’ blood test for IgA, IgG, and also IgE antibody levels to gluten and also to wheat would need to be performed to pinpoint that one.

Millet

Gluten Free Prepping

We make almost all of our own food from scratch, to eat, and to store. That way, there is no question in my mind as to whether I can eat it or not. We put many different kinds of grains in storage, not just wheat. When we do buy freeze dried food, it has to be special ‘gluten free’ food. I have also stocked up on a few extras to treat myself, in case I accidentally get into some gluten. Here are some things to prep:

Rice: Not rice pilaf, as it contains gluten, – plain white rice, we have doubled the recommended amount due to it being something I can eat and because you can grind it into flour for baking.
Fruits and Veggies: Any fruits and veggies you put away yourself through canning and dehydrating will naturally be free of gluten and ready for you eat or make into something else.
Beans: Besides being a great survival food, some beans also make great baking flour when ground down.
GF Macaroni and Spaghetti Noodles: These can be purchased relatively cheaply bulk at WinCo stores, through certain co-ops, or individually through health food stores and/or specialty sections of your grocery store. Notice how I am not mentioning “Whole Paycheck” stores, aka Whole Foods, there is a reason for the nickname!
Sorghum: Aka Milo, it is a grain can be stored whole then ground for later use as flour.
Millet: Can also be stored as a whole grain and then ground into flour, it also can be cooked up like couscous or rice).
Buckwheat: Can also be stored whole and cooked up like rice as Kasha or ground into a flour that can be used to make breads, wraps, and noodles.
Oats: Are in fact gluten free naturally, but are often cross contaminated as they are usually processed with the same equipment as wheat. Therefore, care needs to be taken to ensure you are purchasing certified gluten free oats for storage. You can cook oats up for oatmeal, use it in cereal, and grind it down to make oat flour.
Corn: Dried corn can be store for long periods of time, it can be rehydrated and eaten, or ground into meal, starch or flour).
Potatoes: Are easy to grow, can be dehydrated and canned, they can also be liquified and made into potato starch which is often called for in gluten free cooking.
Tortillas, store Masa Harina: Found in the ethnic foods section of your grocery store, is almost always gluten free and you can make the best tortillas out of it adding only water.
Soups: We make our own by either canning it or by using dehydrated ingredients to make soup kits. But you can also purchase some for yourself see links below.
Condensed Soups: We have a year’s supply of condensed soup in a rotating system as they are just so convenient – Pacific Foods makes several wonderful MSG free, gluten free varieties.
Meats: We use home canning as our main method for storing right now, freeze dried is just too expensive for us but it may be an option for you. (see below) We store chicken, beef, tuna, hotdogs (Oscar Meyer and Hebrew National brands are both gluten free), ham, and brats.
GF Flour Mixes: There are a lot of these on the market now, and there is no reason why you can’t stock up some. Just keep in mind that because they are ‘pre-ground’ flour mixes that their life span is more limited than whole grain. If you freeze and re-freeze the mixes to kill any insect eggs, and seal them up properly, storing them in a cool dark place they could last up to three years. But you will want to try to eat them before that time. As with any other supply, keep your flour mixes in a rotation. Eat the old stuff first and replace it with new stuff.
Xanthan Gum, Guar Gum and Gelatin: Since the gluten found in wheat is missing in gluten free baking, binding agents are needed to help hold the dough together. These ingredients are handy to for anyone in case you are ever challenged with making bread or baked goods with a grain other than wheat. They turn mission impossible into mission doable. Xanthan gum is used to give the dough or batter a “stickiness” that would otherwise be achieved with the gluten. Guar Gum also helps this process and is often used in conjunction with Xanthan Gum. Plain powdered gelatin that one can find in the cooking section of the grocery store can also be added to GF breads to help achieve a “Xanthan Gum” like effect in bread. Gelatin is cheaper than Xanthan Gum and has a longer shelf life making it an affordable prepping option.

Rolled Oats – Public Domain Image

First Aid Needs
Be Prepared to handle your symptoms in case you can’t get into gluten and can’t see a doctor. Since symptoms vary so widely – make sure your supplies are customized to treat your symptoms.

Imodium: Loperamide (controls diarrhea)
Pepto-Bismol: Bismuth subsalicylate (we all know what pepto does)
Ibuprofen: Helps with inflammation caused by and auto-immune reaction.
Peppermint: Leaves or Tea: Helps settle your stomach and discourages diarrhea.
Vitamin B 100: Will provide a good ‘pick me up’ after a reaction to gluten if fatigue settles in.
Electrolytes: For rehydrating after a reaction.

Gluten Free Skills

There two really important skills that should be learned if you are a gluten free prepper. While not necessary for short term emergency preparedness, these skills will help to protect against hardship in the future if a long term emergency were to ever strike and help you along your path to self -sufficiency. One: Learn to cook from scratch with gluten free grains, and the other is: Learn to grow your own gluten free grain, something beyond meats and veggies.

Learning how to cook with gluten free grains is different than cooking with wheat. There is a prominent learning curve, but, with some practice, you’ll get the hang of it. It is also important to be able to dowithout the aid of a mixer or bread maker. This doesn’t mean you have to do it all the time, but you should at least know that you can do it if you need to.

Next, find a grain that you enjoy, can cook well, and that grows well in your area (for me that’s buckwheat, others might be millet or sorghum) and learn how to grow and harvest it. Visit your local county extension office, explain to them that you would like to grow whatever grain it is that you picked out, and would like some information on it. Not only will they have information that you can use, they also may be able to sell you seeds at a discounted rate.

Gluten Free Prepping Products

The Home Front General Store: All of the storage food in the Home Front General Store is clearly marked if it is 'gluten free' just look under "specifications tab" for that designation - if no allergens are listed the item is also gluten free but it is not certified. Many of our products are gluten free!
http://www.azurestandard.com/ Bulk natural food store and co-op, meet all of your GF grain and bulk food requirements here.
http://www.wildernessdining.com/ Short and long term food systems, plus they have gluten free freeze dried meals for your bug out bags.
http://augasonfarms.com/ Individual and long term kits of excellent gluten free, freeze dried food, dehydrated food, and bread mixes.
http://www.freezedryguy.com/ All Natural gluten free soup mixes.
http://www.glutenfreeemergencykits.com/ Short term and long term gluten free emergency kits.
http://www.gopicnic.com Small meal packs that are good for short term storage, vehicle kits, camping, and bug out bags.

Any questions on gluten free prepping? Ask away in the comment section or click the "ask an expert" button to the right! I will respond to questions as soon as possible.