Thursday, November 29, 2012

Food Storage, Rice and Beans

A few weeks ago I came across this blog called Earthineer. It is pretty neat in general but I found this article called "Long term food storage, done cheaply" about storing food long term, on the cheap. They just use 2 liter bottles and put rice and beans in them with bay leaves to kill any bugs or larvae that might be in the rice. It keeps for years and stacks nicely in little crannies. How ingenious. Right now I have 20 lbs of rice taking up room in my freezer.

Did you know that some rice comes complete with bug larvae? That is why when you leave it in a warm (sealed) container in the cupboard you still get bugs in it. Personally, I don't care about the bugs as long as they aren't alive destroying my pantry. So I freeze them and kill them. Problem is that now I am out of freezer space. So I am now going to try this bottle storage trick. We don't drink much pop out of 2 liter bottles but I do save all of our old liquor bottles. Something about the glass feels classy, even though its not.

So here I go. Being all frugal and stuff. I will update later when I find out how well it works. Until then, Live and Love.


Saturday, November 17, 2012

Cucumbers with Hummus

One of my main goals during this pregnancy is to eat and keep healthy. This means remembering to walk and do my squats. I had icky 'morning sickness' my first trimester, dropping 15 pounds in about 4 weeks. Also, at the moment I am craving lots of healthy foods such as celery with ranch, oranges, and cucumber. So I need to remember to try adding lots of protein to my veggies. Here is my lastest protein packed concoction.

Cucumbers with Hummus.
For the hummus I take and rehydrate dried chickpeas (cheaper than buying them in a can), blend them in the blender adding lemon juice, olive oil, and chickpea juice all to taste plus a dash of salt. That is it. I don't add the tahini because it is something that I don't think I have ever had in my household. I know the tahini makes it just that much more yummier but unless I specifically put it  on my grocery list, it never ends up in my hummus.
I just put the hummus on my cucumbers and made it pretty with Paprika. Simple, to the point and delicious.

Live and Love