How to Make a Mini Apple Pie

How to Make a Mini Apple Pie

Mini Apple pie - My little Piemaker
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52 Unique Techniques for Stocking Food for Prepper
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Today we make mini apple pie.  On a whim I bought the little pie maker set pictured here and started messing with making pie dough and lots of pies.  I am new to making pie crust, but I should have gotten into earlier as much as I like tomato pie.

My son was pretty exited about making mini pies, he wanted us to eat them up, but he had to give permission to specific people who could eat them.

This isn’t a recipe or a review, We are just showing the little silicon pie crusts and how they work.

I am sure that if you made a lot of pie crust you would make better pies than I do

This is a pretty cool thing to do with a kid, or if like me, your wife does not allow whole pies into the house due to being “non-supportive” of her diet.

But I will show you the apple pie filling:

Ingredients:

  • 1 large granny smith apple cored, peeled, and chopped into pieces
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1/4 teaspoon of ground nutmeg
  • 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract

Procedure:

  • Mix all the ingredients
  • Spoon into mini pies and fill about 1/3 full
  • Add egg wash to the top of the dough and then add the tops

How to Cook Fish in Parchment Paper

Easy 20 Minute Oven Baked Trout Recipe – How to Cook Fish in Parchment Paper

WT Cooking Trout in Parchment Paper
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I get to show you how to cook fish in parchment paper because William has been begging to go fishing.  We actually live pretty close to the famous Bucksnort Trout Ranch on Interstate 40 outside of Nashville.

I got him out of pre-school a little early and we went on a ‘venture.

We caught a couple of nice trout and got them filleted.

William was pretty excited to watch them get cleaned and would not stop talking about eating them.  If was adorable to watch him scrunch his nose and rub his hands together like he was some evil genius planning to take over the world.  Of course not long after we go on a canoe trip and he didn’t want to fish

Who knows that his 4 year old mind associated eating a fish with.

If you want to skip to the cooking, it starts at 1:20

How to Cook Fish in Parchment Paper

Ingredients

  • Trout
  • 1 cup of white wine
  • salt and pepper
  • Olive oil
  • Cherry tomatoes
  • Green beans
  • Sliced lemon
  • Dill springs

Procedure:

  • Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
  • Cut parchment paper squares about a foot wide
  • Put olive oil on parchment
  • Lay out vegetables on the paper
  • Cover vegetables with a trout filet
  • Sprinkle oil over fish
  • Add salt and pepper to taste
  • Cover with a sprig of dill
  • Add a couple slices of lemon
  • Pour about 1/8 cup of wine over to add moisture
  • Fold the paper to make a steam proof container
  • Bake for about 25 minutes.

Cut and eat right out of the bag if desired.

Emergency Food Bar Recipe

How to Make an Emergency Food Bar

Recipe: Emergency Food Bar
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Emergency food needs to be shelf stable and contain needed nutrients. It is a plus if the food tastes good, is light weight, and not very expensive.

This was not the easiest project to achieve, and I had to test many different recipes until I settled on this particular one.

This particular food bar recipe makes a hard biscuit that is reminiscent of both hardtack and the commercial Datrex bar. It is not a gourmet meal, but it is light and if stored properly can last for well over one year.

This is a very simple recipe, and the base recipe I used can be found on many websites. I found that by modifying the recipe and making small “cakes” instead of the more common loaf makes the food bar much easier to eat and handle.

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups oats (quick or flaked oats work equally well)
  • 2 1/2 cups powdered milk
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 3 TB honey
  • 1 3 oz package jello (orange or lemon)
  • 3 TB water

Equipment:

  • Bowl
  • Measuring cup
  • Spoon
  • Saucepan
  • Parchment paper
  • Cookie Sheet
  • Aluminum foil or plastic bag

Procedure:

  1. Mix the oats, powdered milk, and sugar together in a bowl
  2. In a medium pan mix 3 tablespoons of water, one package of jello and 3 tablespoons of honey. Bring to a rolling boil. Due to the small amount of water and the high amount of sugar, this recipe is very sweet. If you use flavors other than lemon or orange you may find this bar to be TOO sweet.
  3. Add jello mixture to dry ingredients. Mix well. If the dough is too dry, add a small amount of water a teaspoon at a time.
  4. Do not use too much water because this bar only works if it is bone dry.
  5. The mixing process involves work, mixers aren’t strong enough and you will have to use your hands and arms.
  6. Preheat oven to 3500F
  7. Most food bar recipes have you shape the well mixed dough into loaves at this point. I found that rolling the dough into ping pong sized balls that are then smashed into flat disks the end product is much handier and easier to eat.
  8. Bake your bars at 3500F degrees for 10-15 minutes. (If your making al oaf time is more like 20 minutes). You are not trying to cook the recipe, but rather dry it. I find that by propping the oven door open slightly you get a dryer bar (the dryer the bar the safer you are from food borne illnesses like botulism – and the bar will store longer).

Alternatively, you may want to cook for 10 minutes and then place in a dehydrator until completely dry.

Let cool completely.

Wrap in aluminum foil to store. Another benefits of the disk shape is they can be rolled like coins.

If you want to store these in your car or bug-out bag it would be a good idea to seal these in a vacuum bag after you put them in aluminum foil

Yield:

This recipe equals approximately 2000 calories which is the caloric needs for an average adult

Kitchen DIY: How to Nixtimalize Corn

Kitchen DIY: How to Nixtimalize Corn
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This project looks deceptively simple, but it is one that I had to try a couple times to get right. I only stuck with it because Nixtamalization is a vital process for people that use corn as a staple food.

This is because the nutrient niacin is unavailable in unprocessed corn, and by cooking dried corn with a strong alkali (nixtamaling it), Niacin becomes available.

Thereby preventing nutrient deficiency diseases like pellagra.

Besides preventing the typical symptoms of pellagra (diarrhea, dermatitis, dementia and death) this process is how Masa (corn tortillas), hominy, grits, and posole are made.

Hominy
Ingredients for Hominy

This makes the process an essential skill for any culture that is based on corn.

Nixtimalization is simply the process of cooking corn with alkaline, which dissolves the hull and improves the nutritional content of the corn.

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups Dried Corn
  • 6 cups Water
  • 2 Tablespoons Calcium Hydroxide

Equipment:

  • Non-reactive pot (stainless steel, borosilicate glass (pyrex), or an unbroken enameled pot) – Do NOT use aluminum.
  • Non-Reactive spoon (I use a wood or plastic spoon)

Procedure:

  1. Obtain your Calcium Hydroxide – you could make lye from wood ashes, but I buy mine at the local Hispanic grocery store. It is sold as “Cal” and is normally on a rack with dried peppers and spices.
  1. Mix the corn, water, and cal and put the pot on medim-low.
  1. Slowly bring the mix to a boil (this should take 30-45 minutes). When it boils, remove from heat and let the pot sit overnight.
  1. As the lime chemically alters the corn and the hulls undergo a visible change as well as loosen.
  1. The next day, pour off the cooking liquid and rinse the corn in multiple changes of water.
  2. In a bowl full of water, rub the corn in your hands to loosen the hull
  3. Fill the bowl of corn with water and pour off any pieces of hull that float to the top, then drain.
  1. The dehulled corn is now nixtamilized, it can be ground into Masa flour, or dried and broken up into grits.

Yield:

Approximately 3.5 cups of Corn

Notes:

Masa the corn is ground wet, using the retained water from the cooking as the liquid component. Add water as necessary until the dough begins to form.

Grits are made from dried nixtamilized corn, ground into small rice sized chunks