Pantry Cooking: Quick and Easy Food Storage Recipes

Pantry Cooking: Quick and Easy Food Storage Recipes by Laura Robins is based on a 5-week menu of 3 meals a day. None of the recipes require fresh, frozen, or refrigerated food except for sprouts, which you grow yourself. Recipes use a number of basic foods as well as cans or jars from the store. She does use a lot of dried/dehydrated/freeze dried foods such as egg mix, cheese sauce mix, sour cream mix, and a whole list of vegetables and fruits. She also uses items available primarily from the Home Storage Centers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints such as pudding mix and instant refried beans, both of which are no longer available. I’m assuming that the canned meats she uses are from the wet pack canneries of the Church because they are 15-ounce cans of beef, chicken, turkey, pork, ground beef, and sausage which I have not seen at grocery stores, at least not in the metro area where I live. (You could substitute home canned pint jars of the same meats and poultry.) Recipes for all of the menu items are in the book.

She also briefly touches on why to store food, storing water, sprouting, non-food items, and 72-hour kits. Ms. Robins does offer a creative idea I haven’t seen before. She describes a “Snack Pack” which supplements 72-hour kits for families with children. It’s a small to medium-size backpack filled with ready-to-eat snacks and drinks. If you throw it in the car whenever you go out you can have snacks on hand to feed hungry kids instead of stopping for fast food before you get home. Using it and replenishing it immediately keeps the food fresh. Something to consider for all day outings.