Day 4 - Powdered Parmesan Alfredo

Can you believe it's only been four days of no shopping? It feels like its been a whole week already. Tonight is a crazy night, everyone going in separate directions but me. Good thing I fed the kids an after school snack inspired by my friend Donna. We had pumpkin pancakes and they were a huge hit and so, so easy. This evening I’m keeping the home fires burning with one, now two, now three and finally four children all at home. Don has church meetings and I’m glad we had a nice sit down breakfast this morning because that counts for one family meal in the day.

Something occurred to me as I prepared our leftover pasta for dinner. I thought I’d serve some lovely frozen green beans with the meal because all of the kids like them and one kid in particular eats more of them than the rest of the family combined (Hannah). But, then I thought at the rate my greens are going, we’d better eat all of our fresh before we move on to frozen. So, here’s your tip for the day.

When you are in a pinch, and can’t make it to the store for whatever reason (my sister-in-law once had 6 weeks of blizzard where trucks couldn’t get food in to the stores) use up your fresh food first.

And that’s what we did. Plus, I added canned milk and powdered Parmesan to Bren’s awesome alfredo sauce to stretch it out a bit further. No one even noticed.


What We Ate: All vegetarian, all day (except for the chunky chickens)
Breakfast - Cold Cereal
Lunch - Campbell’s Chunky Chicken Soup rotated from our 72 kits, taste and smelled just like baby food. When I opened the can I had a flash back to earlier days of feeding not-quite-toddlers from a jar. Not a winner, but Hannah liked it and it would get you by in a pinch.
Dinner - Left over penne pasta, food-storage enhanced alfredo sauce, leftover home made bread made into garlic toast, green salad with tomatoes from the garden.

Recipes

Pumpkin Pancakes
Make your favorite pancake recipe and add ¼ cup pumpkin for ever 2 cups flour. Mix and make like you would normal pancakes. Fabulously hale and hearty fare.


Brennan’s Famous Alfredo - Not food storage friendly, but oh so good
2 Tbsp butter
2-3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 ½ cup heavy cream
½ cup milk, with 2 tbsp flour mixed in as emulsifier
1 cup grated hard cheese (Parmesan or Romano)
Salt to taste


Saute garlic in the butter over medium-high heat until golden brown (the garlic not the butter). Turn the heat down to medium. Add cream and milk mixed with flour. Bring to a near-boil (that means you see one or two bubbles come to the surface). Turn down one more notch and add the cheese. Simmer until all cheese is melted. Salt to taste. Makes enough for at least a pound of pasta. When I needed it to stretch further the second time around, I added ½ cup canned milk and ¼ cup parm. cheese.