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Fermentation Friday: Sourdough Pancakes

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Between these Sourdough Pancakes and the Soaked and Veggied Blender Waffles, my kids are totally in love with breakfast again! I haven’t heard a request for cold cereal in ages, and I couldn’t be happier.

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Real Food Storage- Deep Pantry Principles for Traditional Foodists

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Our Food Storage 101 article on our website was so popular, we decided to expand it into a blog series! Over the next several weeks, we will walk you through the whys and hows of food storage, whether you wish to have a week or a year of food on hand.

Why Should I Store Food?

There are many reasons why people choose to practice some form of food storage, and none of them are wrong. So many people are concerned right now. Since I began working with food storage in 2007, I have seen many reasons to choose to stock a deep pantry.

  • You wish to be prepared for a hurricane, a snow storm or an extended power outage.
  • While you might currently have a stable job, you know that unemployment is over 10% nationally, topping 15% in some areas. A recent Gallup poll showed that under-employment was at 19%. You aren’t currently dealing with unemployment, but you’re concerned it might be around the corner.
  • You’re looking to wisely invest your tax refund, knowing that currently the rising price of food is outpacing the interest rate, so the purchase of bulk food at a discounted price is a doubly wise investment of your funds.
  • You are a family facing unemployment or struggling through under-employment, or you are facing the end of your unemployment checks.
  • You don’t wish to have to purchase food on a credit card if you’re unemployed.
  • You currently know a family who is forced to choose between food and housing or food and heat due to a limited income.
  • You’re not particularly interested in food storage, but you’ve decided that buying in bulk is the best way to cut your whole-foods based budget.
  • You have food allergies, and you know that you would not be able to sustain your family between the offerings of a food bank and food stamps should something happen to your income.
  • You have food allergies, and you desperately need to bring down the grocery bill.
  • Due to being self-employed, you would not qualify for food stamps in an emergency.
  • You hate shopping and would rather shop less, or you live miles from convenient shopping locations.
  • You wish to leave the food at the food bank for those who are less fortunate than you.
  • You’ve read about the potential looming food shortages from the floods in many countries and droughts this year. Multiple countries have suffered flooding or freak snow and freezing weather in the last few months, and their effects on the price of food has been in the news.
  • You’ve met a family who sustained themselves with their food storage after a job loss or other tragedy. If you are a forum member, you know that last year we sustained ourselves for eleven months on food storage while my husband went through unemployment.
  • You see the need to not be a burden on others should an emergency occur, so that those who are less fortunate or can not prepare can utilize the food banks without you also needing to go there. This creates less of a burden on the safety nets meant to help families through a crisis.
  • You are trying to return to a more sustainable food production cycle in your own family, beginning a homestead or a hobby farm.
  • You are looking to unplug from a modern life-style.
  • You wish to save money by only purchasing fresh and in-season.

In 2009, our family sustained a major hit in the form of income loss when my husband, along with 90% of his co-workers, were laid off. Three months prior, everyone in the company had taken a salary reduction in a move to delay those lay-offs. We knew it was coming, we just didn’t know the day. Thankfully, we had one year of food storage in place when the lay-off happened. [Read more…] about Real Food Storage- Deep Pantry Principles for Traditional Foodists

Surfin’ Saturday- March 5, 2011

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On Surfin’ Saturday, I share links from around the web. It’s not always food related and not always blogs. It’s anything I find inspiring or helpful for any part of life.

Food

Baby Steps- Transitioning to Traditional Foods in March

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Last year on the forum, we started a Baby Steps section to help people new to traditional foods. Each month, I will be posting those baby steps to the blog in case you’re wanting to start your own Traditional Foods journey.

For March, our theme is to begin reducing sugar intake now that we’ve upped the vitamin and mineral content of the meals.

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What’s in Season- March

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Produce is always cheapest when you buy it in season for your location. While I can not list every single area of the country and what is in season, this is a general over-view of what is currently in season for most of the United States. If you only buy local produce, not all of this will be available to you, but if you do purchase from stores, this is what should be the least expensive and the most fresh right now, even if it’s being trucked in from another state. Use this as a guide for purchasing large amounts from non-local farmer’s markets for canning, freezing, lacto-fermenting, dehydrating and preserving. If you can purchase locally and it is within your budget, please do. However, if you are new to eating seasonally or don’t have a local farmer, this list will help you make the best purchasing decisions.

Artichoke
Asparagus (early)
Avocado, Haas [Read more…] about What’s in Season- March

Product Review- Lundberg Brown Rice Couscous

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If you haven’t already done so, don’t forget to enter our Menu Mailer giveaway here. It closes on Wednesday, March 9th at 11:59 PM EST.

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I’ve been gluten free for four-and-a-half years now. In that time, I have watched a myriad of products come onto the market. It’s rare that I try a product new to the GF market and am completely disgusted.

Tonight, that happened.

And not only was I disgusted, I was downright mad.

Wednesday, I took the kids for their dental check-up. On the way home, we swung by the store. I was completely excited when I saw Lundberg’s new Brown Rice Couscous. I have a couple of favorite recipes for couscous that I had back when we went gluten-free. I had held on to them, hoping that eventually someone would debut a gluten-free couscous. So I happily grabbed two boxes from the shelf and danced all the way to the check-out line. I planned on making my favorite chicken dish for dinner on Thursday night and the couscous dessert this weekend. It would be a special treat. If the couscous was good, it would be the meal I would request for my birthday coming up shortly.

So, tonight I started making dinner, very excited to once again have a favorite dish available for special occasions. I popped open the box and my heart sank. I took one look at the ‘couscous’ and immediately felt like I had been duped. It’s not really couscous. Couscous is a pasta. This product is nothing more than cracked rice! It’s simply grains of rice that have been cut unto three or four pieces each. I was mad that I had paid so much money for something I could have simply made in my grain mill for a quarter of the cost! It works out to be over $5 a pound!!!

Well, disappointed or not, I decided to go ahead and fix the dish. The couscous is toasted, so it does have the nutty flavor I remember. And the pieces are cut to the right size. So it gets good marks on flavor and mouth-feel. It cooks just like whole rice, so it gets good marks for the ease in fixing it. It also gets good marks for being certified non-GMO. But it gets a big, fat zero from me for value for the cost and false advertising, and that over-rides all of the other considerations. I will not buy this product again, and I have written to the company to express my disgust. Couscous is a pasta, not a cracked grain!

So, I recommend you save your money and run your rice through a grain mill instead. It will be far cheaper and you won’t be supporting a company that is engaging in some false advertising while charging a quadruple price for it!

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Disclaimer: I have received no payment or free product in exchange for this review. I have no financial interest in the product or the company.

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KerryAnn Foster runs Cooking Traditional Foods, the longest running Traditional Foods Menu Mailer on the internet. KerryAnn has over nine years of traditional foods experience and is a former Weston A. Price Foundation chapter leader. Founded in 2005, CTF helps you feed your family nourishing foods they will love. Each mailer contains one soup, five dinners, one breakfast, on dessert and extras. You can learn more about our Menu Mailers at the CTF website. For a free sample Menu Mailer, join our mailing list. You can also join our forum to chat with other traditional foodists and learn more.

2 Responses to “Product Review- Lundberg Brown Rice Couscous”

1. Tas says:
February 25, 2011 at 03:02 | edit

Maybe they were getting mixed up with burghal which is cracked wheat.
2. KerryAnn Foster says:
February 25, 2011 at 19:35 | edit

That’s possible, Tas, but I sure hope their research department would have better sense! Lundberg is normally a very good company.