The meal photographed here is our Easter dinner 2022. When I realized only two of us would be eating dinner on Easter, I decided I didn’t want to bake an 8-pound ham or a huge baking pan of potatoes or pineapple casserole. I decided to shop in my food storage pantry instead. The meal was easier and faster … and delicious! I had few leftovers to worry about and had built-in portion control. Here’s the menu and some notes on each participant:
Baked ham – 1 pint of home canned ham chunks baked for 30 minutes.
Mashed potatoes – from potato flakes. The butter is stored in the freezer so it’s stored food but not shelf stable.
Skillet roasted asparagus – canned asparagus, olive oil, and sesame seeds
Jello eggs topped with frozen whipped topping and red sugar – again, one ingredient was frozen and not shelf stable. Without Cool Whip, I could have used Dream Whip.
Homemade rolls – the only ingredient not from food storage was the egg (see above for the butter used to brush the tops of the rolls). If I hadn’t had eggs, I would have made sweet yeast biscuits.
Strawberries – this is the only participant not even close to being food storage, but I had to take advantage of Spring and strawberry season. I could have made a green salad from my garden, too.
Milk – non-fat dry milk from the Latter-day Saint Home Storage Center. It’s the milk we use 99% of the time.
Buttermilk Pie (not pictured) – Half the filling ingredients were not shelf stable, but the other half were, and the pastry was made from stored food. Any number of other pies could have come completely from food storage.
Why am I showing you this? To help you see that even holiday meals can come from food storage if you store the right foods. Food storage doesn’t have to be strange and different nor expensive. It should be food you eat every day.
