Cheating

It's probably no secret that I'm pretty busy. When a new coworker looked at me and pointed out that I am "into sports" (meaning, I work out regularly), I work full time, have a toddler, etc. - well, it made me kind of tired. It all started with how I was torturing him with the smell of my homemade food, and I pointed out that I cook three big meals on the weekend to eat for lunches.

But I digress...I've been pretty busy and stressed, and I'm looking for ways to simplify dinner. I don't cook as much on weekdays, so I am leaning to the emergency tuna sandwich for lunch more often than I used to. My husband and I were discussing making Friday nights (which used to be leftover nights, but now leftovers are gone by Thursday) "frozen pizza night". We used to eat out on Fridays (pre-kid), and for monetary and health reasons, I just don't want to go back there.

Then I struck on a different idea.

Enter the "powdered food". See, I waffle - I have this idea that I'd like to have an "emergency stash" of food in the house. In the case of a disaster (fire, flood) or job loss (lack of funds), I think it's a good idea to have a fair bit of food on hand, that you can't lose due to loss of electricity. Some religious groups (Mormons) even believe in keeping 1 year on hand.

I think that's excessive for us. Namely, I have a 2br, 1 ba, 1100 sf house. One year is ridiculous. Also, I really like eating healthy, fresh food. If I have a lot of canned fruit, vegetables, fish, white rice etc. on hand, then I have to actually eat it.

So, I compromise. I have usually about 5-10 lbs of dried beans on hand. Plus some brown rice, whole grain pasta, canned tomatoes, canned fish. Recently, though, I decided to answer the "emergency kit" with Costco's emergency kit. For $75 each (I bought two, it was on sale), I have sealed containers that supposedly last 20 years. And they are advertised as being great for camping! Which we haven't done recently, but plan to.

So tonight I decided to give it a try. I mean, 5 cups boiling water, one packet (at $1.27 each), 25 minutes. Add a side of vegetables, and how bad could it be? I figured I could test it out, occasionally take some camping, and still rest assured that I have a month of food on hand in emergencies. All of the meals are vegetarian, but not vegan.

Tonight, we had the "cacciatore". It wasn't bad. Now, compared to the food that I actually COOK, yeah, it sucked. But compared to processed/packaged food that you'd take camping, it's not bad. I ended up mixing the frozen steamed vegetables in, which improved it greatly. My son liked the broth. He loves broth.

So, certainly not something to be part of your regular repertoire. But not bad on occasion, and still - good for camping.

My son stole my apples.