Banana Ice Cream (without cream)

52 Unique Techniques for Stocking Food for Prepper
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My boy loves bananas but he never seems to eat all of them before the rest start to turn brown.

In order to reduce waste I started looking for a way to use bananas.

I found a really cool recipe for 1 ingredient Banana Ice Cream that doesn’t use dairy on this site.

This recipe is great for those that are lactose intolerant – or for whatever reason are vegan.

This, as it stands, is not a “prepper” food, but it is frugal.   I am sure it can be modified for fruits you can raise at your own property.   Who knows I may try 1 ingredient blackberry ice cream next season.

Procedure:

  • Peel bananas and cut into small slices
  • Freeze for 1 hour
  • Blend – scraping the bowl as the frozen banana bits stick to the side
  • add sugar or vanilla if desired – or even some lemon juice to reduce browning – but if you do you obviously cannot call it 1 ingredient ice cream….

I hope you enjoy this simple frozen treat.  I know we like 1 ingredient Banana Ice Cream at our house and hope you like it at yours.

As you can see the boy likes this, and now that Genny is gotten into clean eating and the 21 day fix, she can eat this as a treat instead of higher calorie treats.

Thriftyvac Vacuum Sealer Review

Thriftyvac Vacuum Sealer
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Since oxygen is one of the primary enemies of food storage, preppers, homesteaders, and those living frugally can all benefit having the ability to vacuum seal food. The problem for preppers is that most vacuum sealing options are electrically operated. For the frugal, the problem is that most systems use proprietary bags that are expensive. Homesteaders may have issues with the availability of bags – I know I tend to have a half empty roll of bags when I start to process meat.

A few months ago, while exploring the kick-starter website, I found a innovative device that solves all of these problems. I immediately sponsored the project, and asked the inventor, Dr. Cannon, to come on my podcast and explain his machine.

Last month I finally got his thiftyvac device in the mail, and while it was smaller than I had imagined (a good thing), it was every bit as useful as I had imagined.

Basically the thiftyvac is a fixture that turns a large ziplock bag into a vacuum chamber that allows the user to vacuum seal smaller ziplock bags sealed inside. This is useful because traditional electric powered sealers can only work with their proprietary bags that have tiny ridges molded into the plastic – use something smooth like mylar and they cannot pull a vacuum.

Since the bag is placed inside a chamber, as the air is sucked out of the chamber pressure is equal inside and immediately outside the bag so that even smooth bags can be emptied of air.

All you do after the vacuum process is complete is to press the inner Ziploc bag closed.

Let me tell you, I kick myself every time I see it, as it is so simple and elegant, I wish I had thought of it myself.

Dr. Cannon stayed with many commercially available parts both to keep prices low and to ensure reliability. One integral such part is the air pump – the thriftyvac includes a small hand powered pump that allows the device to be used without electrical power. I find that not only is the thriftyvac cheaper to use than my food-saver, it is smaller, and much easier to use.

What is even more impressive is that he did not stop there, Dr. Cannon also invented a new set of mason jar lid adapters, and an adapter to use the thriftyvac with commercial vacuum sealers for those that choose not to use the hand pump.

I am planning on experimenting with it more and see if I cannot use a mylar bag clamp and my 7mil mylar bags. I also want to see if I can use his pump instead of my break bleeder pump as I like using the mason jar adaptors I bought previously.

I haven’t received anything for this article, or the 5 star review I posted on Amazon – I bought my own thriftyvac. I just believe in the product, and think that it serves to solve a need that I have had for a longtime. Namely a cheap way to vacuum seal food and ammo when the power is out…

How to Make Sweet Potato Baby Food

 

Homemade Baby Food: Sweet Potatoes
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We like making our own homemade baby food from sweet potatoes.  We put in the effort so we can control the ingredients and ensure our boy William Tell has foods without a lot of chemicals we can’t pronounce.

For example, today’s recipe for sweet potatoes is….

Wait for it…

Sweet potatoes and water.

Making it could not be simpler – peel and cube sweet potatoes, boil until soft, mush and serve.

I find it is easy to use a food mill to get a consistent texture, but you don’t have to do so.

Our boy likes it, and it saves quite a bit in food costs.

Now that Genny is getting healthy, she constantly searches for healthy recipes.  She is proud of the lifestyle changes she has made, and I can see a difference in he – both physically and emotionally.  She is wanting to slim down some more before we get serious about another child.  But I can see a new baby eating homemade food exclusively.

To be fair, homemade food is more time consuming to make than opening up those little jars, but it is not hard and does not take that much time to make.

How to Use a Play Dough Machine to Make Pasta

Improvised Pasta Maker from Play Doh Toy
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I have always wanted to make my own pasta, and its been on my list for a long time, but I really didn’t want to mess with hand cutting my own noodles, and I did not want to buy a $50 dollar pasta machine.

However, while researching another project I happened to find a $20 sheet press for polymer clay that looks exactly like a pasta roller. Being the cheapskate I am, I started thinking about even cheaper ways to solve the problem when it hit me. Play Dough is Dough… A play doh fun factory is around 6 dollars, and if it didn’t work, my wife could use it in her class (she is a special educator that works with autistic children).

Here is my attempt to make an Improvised Pasta Maker from a play doh fun factory toy.

To test I just made a simple pasta dough recipe 2 cups flour, 2 eggs, knead until you have a ball of pasta dough.

I dug through the package to get the dough press and the two sliding bars with different sized holes and shapes.

After some experimentation, I found that the bar with the 4 small squares made the best compromise between shape and ease of use. If I tried to press the dough through the very small holes, the pressure created caused the dough to escape from every available orifice on the machine.

Once I had the noodles made, I simply dumped them in a pot of boiling water and cooked for about 3 minutes.

This works, but unless you want to make stars or some other funky shaped noodle, then I found it much easier just to hand cut the dough into noodles. But I think it was a neat experiment, and as I said in the video, once my boy gets to the age where he likes playing with play dough, we will recreate this experiment to start crossing over into cooking.