"Northern Buttermilk Cornbread" with Fresh Green beans

I call this Northern Cornbread because it's a little sweet, just the way I like it! I have family down in the Southern States that will argue with me...but that doesn't bother me a bit. After all, this is MY blog!

This time of year our garden is producing an over abundance of food. A lot of it will be canned or frozen, but some of it demands to be eaten when it's at the peak of freshness. One of those things is green beans. I absolutely love fresh green beans with bacon & onion, slathered with butter, salt & pepper. What better accompaniment than a big cast iron pan of Cornbread?

Northern Cornbread
Preheat Oven to 400ºF

1 cup Flour
1 cup Cornmeal (I like hand ground or stone ground)
1/2 cup sugar
1 TBSP. Baking Powder
1/2 tsp. Salt
Combine the dry ingredients until well mixed. Set aside.

Use the following fresh ingredients if you have them on hand.
2 eggs
1 cup Buttermilk
4 TBSP. Butter~melted

If you don't have fresh, use your dried storage goods.
2 TBSP. Whole Egg Powder
1/3 cup Buttermilk Powder
4 TBSP Butter or Oil
1 cup + 4 TBSP. Water
Combine and mix well to dissolve the powders

While mixing up the batter, preheat a cast iron skillet until it's almost smoking hot. Right before adding the batter to the skillet add a couple TBSP of oil and swirl it around.

For the batter. Combine the wet & dry ingredients, blend quickly just until the dry ingredients are moistened. There may be some lumps, this is normal. Don't over mix or the cornbread will turn out tough.
Pour the batter into the prepared skillet. Bake until it turns golden brown around the edges and a cake tester comes out clean. Serve piping hot with butter and honey...

Iowa Green Beans
Snap the stems off the fresh green beans and cut or break into pieces. Or, do as I do and just leave them whole.
In a big kettle brown 4-6 strips of bacon cut into bit sized pieces, along with a diced medium onion. Saute' until the bacon is crisp and the onions translucent. Pour off all but about 2 TBSP. of fat. Add the cleaned green beans and toss them around to combine with the other ingredients. Add enough water to cover, then bring to a boil. Boil until tender. About 20-25 minutes depending on how big your batch is. Drain well and serve with butter, salt & pepper.

I don't measure when I'm making beans, just eyeball it. If you want more bacon or onion, throw it in!

Marionberry or Raspberry Breakfast/Energy Bars

Freeze dried fruit can also make a tasty breakfast bar!

These breakfast bars, from “Jan’s Fabulous Food Storage Recipes,” can easily double as energy bars for a quick snack on a hike or any kind of outing.  Just make the night before, place in plastic sandwich bags, and eat one whenever you find your energy dropping!
The freeze dried fruits could also be substituted with fresh berries if such were available. In fact, this would make a great outing: Go pick some wild blueberries or raspberries, or whatever is in season, and include them in a batch of breakfast bars! (Or, you try some of the dried fruit blend on special this week!)
Click here to read the recipe!

Jan's Fabulous Food Storage Recipes: Mushroom Barley Soup

Jan's Fabulous Food Storage Recipes: Mushroom Barley Soup: "Dehydrated mushrooms There are many storage food items that are handy to have around the kitchen, even if there is no emergency! Dehydr..."

Chicken Fajitas

Chicken fajitas are tasty and quick to make!

This week’s survival recipe features Dried Chicken Dices.

These  chicken dices can be substituted in virtually any dish that uses fresh chicken. The chicken dices are great in Chicken Noodle soup, Sweet and Sour Chicken, Fajitas, Casseroles, Chicken Pot Pies, just to name a few.

To read the recipe for a storage food chicken fajita recipe, click here!

Survival Food Recipes and Off-Grid Cooking: Rice and Raisins Breakfast

Survival Food Recipes and Off-Grid Cooking: Rice and Raisins Breakfast: "Start the day right! Everybody knows breakfast is the most important meal of the day. But it is also the easiest to skip! Breakfast re..."

Homemade Noodles

I've been under the weather a bit this past week to the point where nothing sounded good to eat. If you've ever seen me...you'd wonder if that ever happened at all!

But, I digress. When in doubt, go to Grandma's Special Cure-All. Chicken noodle soup! This weeks recipe is for making homemade noodles using your dried , dehydrated and canned products.

As a rule of thumb for noodles, I use 1 large egg per cup of flour, plus added water as needed to make a dough.
So, you ask, what happens if I don't have any fresh eggs? Use DRIED.

Homemade Noodles ala Karla
This is a basic recipe. Feel free to sub different flours, liquid etc.

2 cups all-purpose Flour (or whole wheat etc)
2 large Eggs or 4 TBSP. dried Egg Powder + 8 TBSP. Water to rehydrate.
Additional 1/4 to 1/2 cup water as needed to form dough.
1 tsp. Salt

If using powdered eggs, you may mix the egg powder in with the flour & salt, but I find that you'll get a better dough by first re-hydrating the egg.

On a pastry board, make a mound out of the flour & salt. In the middle of the mound make a well. Pour the re-hydrated egg into this. Take a fork and start stirring the dry ingredients into the center until it pulls together to make a dough. If the dough is shaggy and too dry, sprinkle with water.
On a floured board knead the dough until firm and no longer sticky. I've found that if the dough sort of "squeeks", it's ready. Cover the dough with some plastic wrap, set aside and let rest for half an hour.

Divide the dough in half. On a lightly floured board roll it out until thin, sprinkle flour if sticky. Roll the dough up jelly-roll style, start at one end and cut into noodles. I like thick noodles so I cut mine about 1/4 inch wide. Shake out the noodles and lay on clean dishcloths to dry.
I remember mom making noodles when I was a little kid. She would cover the backs of the dining room chairs with a dishtowel and then drape the noodles over them to dry. I got my fanny swatted more than once for stealing a taste before they were fully dry!

When noodles are dry, drop into boiling water or broth and cook until just firm to the bite, 8-10 minutes. If in a hurry, I use canned chicken broth. Or, if in a real pinch, use water and whatever broth base you have on hand. Reconstitute according to the directions on the jar.

My favorite way to use these is Chicken and noodles, served over mashed potatoes....(must be a Mid-West thing) or Beef and noodles using home canned beef....mmmmmmm

Damper: Australia's Survival Bread

Damper is a quick and easy-to-make survival bread.

Every prepper, survivalist or emergency preparedness enthusiast should have a variety of these simple, tasty recipes as part of their survival kit! Food is a basic survival requirement, but sometimes, even hunger can’t overcome  monotony. Eat the same thing, day after day, and some people might just quit eating.
So survival cooking, of necessity, must be simple and tasty! It makes sense that every region has an emergency-type  ration based on simple ingredients such as flour or meal.
Bannock, that staple among trappers and traders in the Northwest in the early to late 1800s,  probably originated in Scotland. “Ramrod rolls” were common in the Confederate Army because of  a lack of  options. In this recipe, a cornmeal dough was wrapped around a stick or ramrod, and toasted over a campfire.
Fry bread became a favorite among some Native American tribes after they were forced onto reservations and issued flour and salt for rations. Hardtack was a standard American military ration for over 200 years.
Since Australia was colonized by Great Britain, I’d guess Damper is a variation of a popular English bread.
To read the complete story, click here.