Welcome back! On today's show, we have the amazing Food Backpacks 4 Kids (FB4K) program that provides local families with food boxes every week. There are no income requirements to participate, you just need to have children. And children I have.
I have resisted the siren call of FB4K for years. I love emergency food storage and making sure we have enough to survive disasters and 2020 is no exception to that! But we have been receiving these generous boxes since spring and my pantry is not just overflowing with shelf stable foods, my second pantry is overflowing. In fact, my living room is starting to look like a grocery outlet. They have added perishable food to the program now that the food doesn't come home with kids in backpacks from school. So in addition to the canned food, we are receiving dairy, meat, fruits, and vegetables. We never know what we are going to get!
We haven't eaten canned food as our normal menu, finding meals cooked from scratch in large quantities is better for our health, our wallet, and the landfill. However, I need to use this food before I go crazy. Oh no, too late!
This morning, I made baked oatmeal. This is an amazing easy breakfast. After preheating the oven to 350 degrees, I mixed up the following from FB4K: three little boxes of shelf stable milk, 1 c liquid egg, 2/3 can applesauce, 1/2 c melted butter, 6 c dry oatmeal, and a bag of Dried Fruit and Nut Mix. From my pantry came 1 c brown sugar, 2 t cinnamon, 2 t baking powder, 1 t salt, and 2t vanilla extract. I baked it for 40 min in an oil sprayed pan. And that's breakfast!
Tonight I will be making something using one of our million cans of cream of mushroom soup... I wonder, do people ever just heat and eat cream of mushroom soup? Or is it for casserole use only?
Mark suggested I write a book with my FB4K recipes and call it Recipes for Disasters. He is mostly poking fun at my distaste for cooking AND my negative feelings about having too much food around here. If this were a real disaster for us, we'd gladly eat the canned beef ravioli instead of trying to give it away on Buy Nothing (no takers).
Follow me for more tips on disguising disgusting food!
Love,
Anna
