5 Food Storage Essentials you might have forgotten: A Guest Post

Today's post is by my friend Heather from Cooking with my food storage.  She is also a consultant with Shelf Reliance.  She is not on my team, but I have an enormous amount of respect for her and I sure wish she was!  I have found her to be an incredibly ethical, kind blogger with a sincere desire to help others succeed both in their Shelf Reliance businesses and in their food storage goals.  She has become a friend and I greatly value her opinion and ideas.  I hope to actually meet her in person someday soon.  Be sure to stop by her blog to read more of her great ideas and tips!

I asked her to give you a list of 5 items she can't do without in her food storage: items that maybe aren't typically thought of as food storage, but that she can't do without nonetheless.  She came up with a great list!  Here are her thoughts:

     Misty asked me to write about items that I can’t live without in my food storage, specifically things that you might have overlooked. 

 1.   Rooster Sauce

     Okay I have a love affair with rooster sauce, if you have never tried it you NEED to.  It is a Thai spicy hot and so delicious.  You only need a small amount to add a ton of flavor and it lasts forever.  I live in a small town in the country and the local grocer carries it on the oriental isle, so I am sure you can find it.   But if Rooster Sauce is not your favorite condiment then store whatever is.  No one wants to eat hamburgers without ketchup, or salad without ranch.  You don’t need to store lots and lots, but having an extra bottle or two on hand is really a good idea.  

The Condiments I Store:

·Rooster sauce (the real name is Sriracha Sauce)    

· Miracle Whip

· Ketchup

·  Mustard

· Ranch

· Barbeque Sauce

2. Pam Cooking Spray and Bakers Joy

      I use some form of cooking spray every day.  Here are a couple of ways I use cooking spray that you might not have thought of.

•      Spraying the inside of measuring cups before you measure sticky ingredients such as peanut butter or honey.  This makes removing the ingredient a snap and makes clean up much easier.
•      When making bread/rolls/sugar cookies or anything that needs to be rolled out. Spray the counter with cooking spray instead of flouring.  This helps keep the bread from incorporating too much flour and becoming tough and it is much easier to clean up than a counter covered in flour.
•      When storing leftover spaghetti sauce (or other foods that tend to stain) coat the inside of the container with cooking spray before adding the leftover, this will prevent staining.
•      When working with sticky ingredients like meatballs, coat your hands with cooking spray to keep your hands clean.

3.  Vinegar

Image source:  Paul Lowry

     Vinegar has so many uses in the kitchen (and beyond) that I think it is an awesome thing to have you in your food storage.  I love to store vinegar because it is inexpensive.  It stores well.  It is widely available. And most important it is very useful.    I recommend that you choose a type of vinegar that you like and store an extra bottle or two.  I really love rice vinegar.  But I also store plain white vinegar. 

    

     What do I use vinegar for in the kitchen?

• ·         Substitute for fresh lemon juice.  It has similar acidic properties and produces a similar product.  Although vinegar lacks the vitamin C contained in lemon juice
• ·         Buttermilk Substitute:. For each cup of buttermilk needed,  1 tablespoon of white vinegar plus enough milk to measure 1 cup. Stir, then let stand for 5 minutes.
• ·         To make salad dressings
• ·         To make mayonnaise
• ·         To make pickles
•       To clean with

4.  Canning Supplies

 Image Source: thebittenword.com

     This includes jars, lids, lemon juice, sugar, and pectin.  I do a lot of canning, and my home canned goods make up a large part of my food storage.  I like to buy these items on sale and in bluk, saving money and time the next time I am ready to make jam. 

5. Good Cookbooks

      In a disaster if I am going to be cooking without the internet then I need some awesome cookbooks.  Here are my favorites:

What's For Dinner?
The America's Test Kitchen Healthy Family Cookbook: A New, Healthier Way to Cook Everything from America's Most Trusted Test Kitchen
Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables
Blue Ribbon Preserves: Secrets to Award-Winning Jams, Jellies, Marmalades and More
I Can't Believe It's Food Storage

Heather is the mother of three beautiful rambunctious children.  She graduated from Utah State University with a Degree in Family and Consumer Science Education.  After graduation she started teaching  Home Economics at the Junior High level.  She left the classroom to become a stay at home mom.  She loves being able to such an active part of her children't life.  She is still involved in education as she participates her children's Joy School, a cooperative preschool program, where the mothers take turns teaching the children.   Heather has been cooking with her food storage for ten years, and blogs about her adventures with food storage at http://www.cookingwithmyfoodstorage.com