Table for One, Please!

Here is the post I promised on what to do with that dehydrated food I talked about in the previous post. I am also going to include some more visual and "fanny" research that I've done since the last post.

Let's start with the additional dry food I found locally.  I found that Drug Emporium carries a pretty wide selection of organic foods. Among these is a wide selection of dried fruits, like mangos, blueberries, strawberries and many other more common fruits. They also had a few dried vegetables that could be put to use in stews and such.  The fruit also had the added advantage of not having any added sugar, unlike the store brands.  My local health food store also had a few things that I picked up, some honey granules and some dry soup mixes where the ingredients were packaged separately. I live in a relatively small town so my sources are limited. Depending on where you are, your possibilities may be more readily available.

So now you have some dry food, what to do with it?  In it's current form it doesn't look very appetizing. The first thing you need to know about cooking dried foods is that it's not instant.  It takes some planning ahead.  You will have to soak those potatoes in water for a bit before you can pan fry them. If you want onions in it you must throw them in with the potatoes too. If you are making a soup or stew then it's just a matter of a longer cooking time.  Dried foods lend themselves to soups the best, but that doesn't mean you can't use them other ways. You can use most dried foods any way you would use fresh, if you understand that their texture maybe slightly different.

If you chose to live in a van, hopefully you planned for how you were going to cook. If you didn't choose it, then maybe this will help. The last few days I have been experimenting with minimal cooking. The one that intrigued me the most was thermos cooking. I own this Thermos (17.00 at walmart). It's not the cadillac of thermoses but neither is it the spiderman lunch box variety (which won't work).  According to some of the sites I read, this is not the best one to use because of the wide mouth top and heat loss.  I did not find this to be true. Also I did somethings intentionally less than perfect.  I started with a simple chicken noodle soup that had dried carrots, noodles, and powdered soup base.  Everything I read said to preheat the thermos with boiling water... I used hot tap water.  But I did use boiling water when I actually made the soup. In 20 minutes I had chicken noodle soup.  Everything was done, but the carrots still had just a hint of crispiness to them.  My next try I used Bear Creek potato soup mix, lately I have been craving a good potato soup.  These soup mixes make a half gallon of soup... waaay too much for me.  The first order was to divide this into four snack size bags (1 cup each).  This mixed with two cups of water will make enough for 1 hearty appetite or 2 smaller ones. Since I am in the latter category I chose to divide one of those bags in half again.  Once again I used hot tap water to preheat the thermos, then used boiling water and the soup mix for making the actual soup. After adding the soup mix (water first), I sealed the thermos and put it's cap on, then gave it a good shake. My final step was to roll it in a towel and lay it on it's side. Laying it on the side gives you more even cooking.  For the next three hours I basically ignored it, except for an occasional shake. When I opened the thermos I had a nice creamy potato soup that was still entirely too hot to eat.  This was my first experience with Bear Creek brand soups, but I have to say this one was surprisingly good for prepackaged.  My only complaint was that it was a bit shy on the potatoes. To remedy this deficiency, I added a heaping spoonful of dried hash brown potatoes to the next batch I cooked. Much better, but I can also see this with some added bacon bits.

As a family of one, I can see great potential for thermos cooking and dried foods. Some of the things I envision making in the thermos are broccoli and rice casserole, mac and cheese, pot roast for one and of course soups. Almost anything that can be cooked in a crock pot would work this way. Also this could be useful in extreme situations, such as being without cooking facilities.  In theory you should be able to fill a thermos with water and heat it in the sun on the dash. Although I should add a few words of caution here. A thermos on the dash has the potential to become extremely hot, don't grab it with bare hands.  Also never leave it unattended. In doing this you have created your own miniature pressure cooker.  If it gets too hot, the pressure inside will build and it will push the top off with force. This is a polite way of saying that it will explode all over your dash or worse. Anyway it is something I will experiment with in the future.

Ultimately this experiment proved to me that my thermos will now go where I do.  It also shows that dehydrated food would be of great benefit to a vandweller. I don't mean just dried beans and rice, but also the more exotic staples such as powder whole eggs, whole milk and sour cream.  Am I going to live on dried foods alone, NO, but I will be sure to carry a basic supply of staples and vegetables.

If you are interested on learning more here are some reference links:
http://theboatgalley.com/thermos-cooking/
http://www.ehow.com/how_2275972_cook-thermos-save-energy-money.html


Here is a link that has some "just add water" mug recipes
http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/recipex/msg0522281311215.html


And last is a link for a free downloadable shelf stable recipe book
http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net/2011/04/25/surprise-3-shelf-stable-cookbook/


on this last one keep in mind this was a member created book by proponents of survivalist food storage. Some of them still had a bit of problem thinking in terms of not having a fully stocked kitchen with all of the latest gadgets.  But it is still an amazingly good representation of what you can do with dried and shelf stable food.