So I've recently been expanding my pantry/emergency food supply to include a lot of canned items. To the dried rice/beans/sugar/salt that I had already amassed in the hundreds of pounds, I've started adding canned beans, olives, diced tomatoes, soups, SPAM, etc. Anyway, sorta unrelated, but I want to start buying canned foods that I could take in my lunch to work. Just looking for some brain storming, canned items that would be healthy and easily eaten from the can. Here's what I have so far: Collard Greens/Spinach/Kale Tuna I'd really like to find some Indian spiced veggies, but so far I'm not finding much.
About the Indian spiced veggies, there's some at the fine groceries store at the corner of my street. I'll check that for you and we'll be able to check if those are available near you. Do you like stuffed vine leaves? I like to bring them at work. Also smoked herring, mussels or oysters.
The main problem I have with canned foods is all the sodium content. The wife has very high BP so the only canned foods in our pantry are ones I canned myself.
^ This. I was thinking about it just before reading your post. It's genetics on my side, and I must watch my BP. So I cut as much sodium as I could. Now, when I eat canned food, I can taste the difference. It's possible however to find some low-sodium stuff. There's a brand of soup in Canada which is low sodium. What about soup MSP?
Soup is a great idea, and there are a ton of choices available. The main trouble I find is that a lot of them tend to be loaded with noodles or rice, and I'd like to keep the carbs to a minimum. But yeah, thankfully my blood pressure is under control thanks to my exercise and diet. The weight has been creeping up though, so I figure I need to drop about 15 pounds or so. I think it's the damn beer I've been brewing...
Beer and the lack of exercise horizontal-wise One of my favorite canned soups contains lentils. A great source of proteins. Some quality chowders also have more fish and less potatoes inside!
Soup is almost a regular meal nowadays at home, at least 3 times a week, but yeah...the sodium. But I go for cheap stuff and wow...one can of soup helps me almost exceed my daily sodium intake. When I get groceries this weekend, I'm going to take a MUCH deeper look at the soup aisle. Yes, I might pay a bit more, BUT if the calories and sodium are down, all the power to me.
You like to cook? You put a potato, 1-2 oignons, a brocoli and some broth in a pot. You cook those and then you blend. You've got a brocolli soup, without an excess of sodium. Add a little bit of cream if you like. Replace the brocolli with other veggies for endless variants.
I glass jar my own and know what every ingredient is that's in them. I've been tempted to start canning soups too. When I make soup, I usually make about 3-5 gallons at a time.
Yeah, canning my own stuff is of interest. But my property really isn't well suited for a garden, I would almost need to put in a greenhouse. Plus there's just so much time in the day, I'm already making my own beer and filling lots of voids where a wife should be. I just don't have the time.
It is very time consuming. I have to justify some of the time by subtracting the time it'd take to make the money to buy questionable food stuffs at the store. All that produce is grown with production quantity, rather than nutritional quality as the motivation.
I have some baggage related to gardening too, had a bad experience with it as a kid. My old man grew a huge garden every year. The old fuck planted way too much stuff, was ignorant on how to properly take care of it, and would dump most of the work on us kids. So we'd work like dogs every year for produce that would rot, or we would give away, etc. All that effort for very little payoff. To this day I don't even plant flowers around my house. At some level I would like to get a greenhouse and garden some just for personal growth, to finally get past all these negative feelings.
Therein lies the biggest challenge of home agriculture. What, when and how much to plant. I know what you mean, my dad tried the same thing. I try to plan it so we have enough to get us through until we can scarf down fresh veggies the next year. That's why I like green beans, we get tons, all you really need do is snap them and freeze them and they are like a steady diet of 'airBorn' cold remedy with all the zink in them. I really prefer canning them as that does not require electricity to keep them after they're canned. I ate so many canned tomatoes last winter (Vitamin C) that I was almost affraid we'd run out. It looks like we'll make it on the tomatoes and salsa though. By the end of the growing season, we should have 9-12 months of food for three. add a few salmon, deer, upland game, turkeys and geese to the mix and our grocery store bill weighs in at about $200 a month for things that we don't provide for ourselves. It used to be $800. So the work does pay a bit of a wage. After subtracting the cost of fuel, soil ammendments, seeds, electricity to run the pump, canning costs, and tools, it comes out to not much more than minimum wage (here it's $8.80/hr), but they haven't figured out how to tax that yet so it's equivalent to a bit more/hr. :wink:
Well, just reporting back on the canned spinach. It's a hit. I'm keeping a bunch at work, and when I start to get hungry around this time of the morning I crack one open and eat it straight out of the can. Talk about a healthy breakfast - a glass of V8, a can of spinach, and coffee. :thumbsup: EDIT: He Wiskas, how are you freezing your green beans? Just big ziplock bags, or you have one of those vacuum things?
the weather down here is destroying all my veggies. we had almost zero rain for 30ish days, then a week straight of monsoons, now it is about to be balls hot plus no rain gyaaaaaaaaaaaargh
The growing seasons here have been a crap shoot for the last few years. I split my plantings this year so if the first sets get nuked, there's a second and third chance to get some yields.
