Michelle Snow has a different take on food storage. Rather than storing food in bulk quantities that are difficult to take with you in an emergency, she stores all the ingredients for each meal in an individual sack, including the water necessary to cook it. This way, she knows she has everything she needs and never runs into surprises.
"We lived on food storage for a year, and you would not believe what we had too much of and too little of—when you come upstairs saying, 'Honey, guess what, this is our last bag of this,'" she said.
Each meal makes enough food for 6-8 adults. She provided these two recipes from her book Gluten-Free Food Storage: It’s in the Bag! exclusively for LDS Living readers.
Caribbean Chicken and Rice
5 cups water
Resealable bag:
2 cups rice
Resealable bag:
2 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. onion powder
½ tsp. black pepper
4 Tbsp. brown sugar
2 Tbsp. dried celery
¼ cup dried bell peppers
1 Tbsp. dried parsley
1 tsp. thyme
1 tsp. curry powder
1 Tbsp. chives
2 Tbsp. dried onion
2 gluten free chicken bouillon cubes or 2 teaspoons granules
1 (15-oz.) can black-eyed peas, drained
1 (13-oz.) can chicken meat, including broth or 1 pint home-canned chicken breast
To cook rice: In a heavy bottomed saucepan with a tight-fitting lid, place 3 cups water and add 2 cups rice. Boil on high heat for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside for 10 minutes, then fluff. Do not lift the lid while rice is resting. If you have a rice cooker, just add water and rice and depress the lever. Fluff rice when lever pops up.
In a medium saucepan, add spice packet to remaining water and cook over medium heat until peppers and celery are tender, about 10 minutes. Add black-eyed peas and chicken meat and heat thoroughly. To serve, pour black-eyed pea mixture over rice.
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Pancakes
2 (15-oz.) cans evaporated milk
1 cup canned pumpkin puree
Resealable bag:
1 cup amaranth flour
1 cup gluten free oat flour
3 Tbsp. brown sugar*
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1¼ tsp. pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. powdered egg
Resealable bag:
1 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips
Pantry:
2 Tbsp. oil
In a large bowl, stir all ingredients, except for chocolate chips, until batter is smooth. Add chocolate chips and ladle pancake batter onto a hot oiled griddle. Turn pancakes when bubbles appear and edges are golden brown.
NOTE: Be sure to combine brown sugar with other ingredients when you bag your mix, or you will have a hard lump of brown sugar as time passes.
Buttermilk Syrup
1 cup granulated white sugar
½ cup canned butter
½ cup buttermilk*
1 cup light corn syrup
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. vanilla extract
In a medium saucepan, bring all ingredients to a boil except vanilla extract. Boil for 7 minutes. Remove from burner and stir in vanilla extract. Stir until foam dissipates.
*Can also be made with evaporated milk.
For more information on Snow's book, click here.
A list of companies that provide gluten-free products can be found at celiac.org.
A list of Utah stores that specialize in gluten-free products can be found at gfutah.org.