Petersen Stephanie - The meals in a jar handbook: gourmet food storage made easy

Over the last several years as a corporate chef, cooking instructor, TV chef, and radio personality, Ive had the opportunity to meet people from all over the country. Every time I hear of a new friend using my Meals in a Jar, my heart wants to sing! Ive heard of my meals being used as wedding gifts, as care package additions to missionaries and troops, by new mothers, by aging parents, by individuals in assisted-living facilities, on camping trips for Boy Scouts, and in luggage to different countries all around the world. Ill never forget the first time I heard that one of these meals was being cooked in an underground shelter during a hurricane! While the storm raged overhead, we were comforted by a warm stew simmering on the stove.

Ive had many requests for a book devoted entirely to Meals in a Jar. For some people, using Meals in a Jar is about living a little simpler. For some its about getting a bit more health conscious. Sometimes people simply need something to take to work to cook at the office. For others, its about planning ahead for the unexpected job loss or calamity. Meals in a Jar have been put into action to feed my own family on many a busy weeknight. Many of these recipes are new to this book. You will not find them on the Internet. Some are from my previous publication, Honeyvilles The Gourmet Food Storage Handbook, with updated directions, tips, and ingredients lists. These recipes are some of my favorites, and they are easily used for long-term emergency food storage or everyday use. All are made in a quart-sized jar unless indicated otherwise. Im also including some of my breakfast choices as well as personal-sized meals for those who are cooking for one. Along with this, Im including a few bread, muffin, and dessert recipes.

I hope you wont think of these meals as only being for emergencies because they are also for making your daily life just a little easier, healthier, and delicious. I know youll find this to be the definitive resource for making your own shelf-stable Meals in a Jar. Enjoy!

Meals in a Jar has become one of my most popular classes at the Honeyville Teaching Kitchen. I love being the corporate chef for Honeyville Food Products and having the opportunity to create convenient menu plans using food storage and whole grain. I literally transform food storage items into meals a normal family will actually eat and enjoy. In this book, you will find the outline from the classes I teach, along with some new recipes never before shared in the Honeyville Kitchen. This is a Honeyville cookbook, so expect me to use their products exclusively! If you were reading the Pillsbury cookbook, youd expect me to use their products, right? Well, this is Honeyville. We do things here for our customers and friends to make their lives easier. One of the things I do is provide amazing cookbooks!

As a chef in the restaurant industry, I planned food purchases based on a menu several times a week. I planned my familys dinner menus and purchases the same way. It makes sense to plan for longer-term storage based on a menu so that you are only purchasing things that you will need and love. All too often when people are planning their long-term food storage for emergencies, it is done with the mind-set that it is for a rainy day, and if someone is hungry enough, they will eat what is stored. Truth be known, peopleespecially childrenwill starve to death rather than eat something that is unfamiliar to them. I wanted to store things in my pantry for long-term emergency use that my kids were familiar with and that I would feel good serving them should our emergency be something as simple as lack of employment. I didnt want to feed them high-sodium, flavorless wads of mush. Most of the meals I had tried that were made for food storage tasted the same wayawful!

I began with planning seven meals from my food storage, one for each night of the week based on a seven-day menu. From there I wanted to figure out how to get 52 of each meal from that seven-day menu for my food storage to have on hand. In this way I would easily have a years supply of food that my family would eat should we need it. Initially I knew I could achieve this with 52 jars of spaghetti sauce and 52 pounds of spaghetti noodles if the meal was spaghetti on, say, Monday night for our family. It was a simple way to calculate a familys needs, as well as getting back to the basics of what a normal family will eat. However, I quickly found living in a tiny condo and trying to remember where I had stored the sauce and the noodles became a problem. Several years into the project, getting the food storage and keeping track of cans and locations got tedious. Then I had a stroke of genius! One day when I was making soup mix, I put the entire contents of the mix into a quart-sized jar. I suddenly wondered why I had not planned my whole food storage this way. As time went on, that simple concept kept rising up in my mind. About that time, I found some Honeyville tomato powder at a food storage store in Arizona. (I was not yet their company chef.) It changed my life! Suddenly I realized I could make spaghetti dinner in one jar! Add the sauce and freeze-dried meat ingredients and the noodles together, and presto! Magic was born.

I had set criteria for my meals. First, I didnt want to go searching for the sauce and the noodles or any of the ingredients for a meal on my food storage menu. Next, the shelf-life needed to be around five to ten years. And the meals had to be simple enough that my kids could make them without my help. Seriously, what if something happened to me that kept me from being able to cook for the family? Could my kids walk into the pantry and know what to do with the cans that were lined up? At the time I started, the answer was no way! Now they can look at my cabinets and see exactly what is for dinner, grab a jar, and make a meal. Even my husband, who doesnt cook, could handle this task. He knows how to boil water and dump a jar of dry ingredients into the pot; Ill give him that much.

I took on a challenge, but I loved it! Over time, I started developing recipes that would allow me to fit everything for a meal into one quart-sized jar. I also wanted each meal to have only one rule just add water. I didnt want to have to find oil, butter, sugar, a can of tomatoes, or anything else. The first time I shared this concept with an emergency preparedness enthusiast, I got such a remarkable response that I decided maybe, just maybe, this would be something that others would use. This idea quickly spread to a lot of people who couldnt care less about emergency preparednessthey just wanted fantastic easy meals on hand for every day of the week!