For all the Why’s and Wherefore’s of Survival Saturday, please visit the Intro Post. Thanks!

This month we decided to try Legacy Stroganoff.

Nutritional Info:

Ingredients:

I think this had the biggest ingredients list so far.  Thank goodness “natural flavors” made the cut though. Dehydrated survival food needs all the help it can get!

Things Needed & Directions:

6 cups water

Boil the water, whisk in the package and simmer for 15 minutes. Let stand for 5 minutes then eat the best gourmet stroganoff you’ve ever tasted!  /sarcasm

Optional Items:

We went hardcore this month. We thought we’d try it just as “nature” intended, so there was no softening of the blow, nothing to fall back on, it was this or die! (Yes, before hand I went through and threw all our food off our 3rd story balcony so we couldn’t eat anything else. Honest! 😉 )

Impressions:

Tumeric. I could smell it from the get go. I’ve also eaten my fair share of Hamburger Helper stroganoff.  This stuff looked worse than HH stroganoff, tasted worse than HH and even the texture of the noodles turned me off. I managed to eat the small bowl I doled out to myself but I couldn’t force myself to try any more.

Now Mrs Bookstooge on the other hand, she liked it. She liked the texture of the noodles and didn’t notice much taste of anything. She said the noodles were almost melt in your mouth and she grew up with noodles similar so it was good. She did say if she were to ever make this that she’d add some mushroom soup to give it the little something it was missing flavorwise.  She voluntarily ate a second bowl with a slice of processed cheese and enjoyed it.

Not the worst survival food by any means and considering we had very differing opinions means others will too. I guess when the Apocalypse comes, I’ll let Mrs B eat all of this. I’m just such a gentleman, Ma’am.

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For all the Why’s and Wherefore’s of Survival Saturday, please visit the Intro Post. Thanks!

For those (few) of you who aren’t following the weather here in New England, we have a lot of snow. Admittedly, it is quickly being reduced due to rain, but still, a foot of the white stuff is just sitting around on the ground. You know how snow is * eye roll *   So what better food to try out than a quintessential New England food, Corn Chowder?

Nutritional Info:

Directions & Ingredients:

Things Needed:

4 Cups Water

1 Package Corn Chowder

Optional Items:

Impressions:

After our last run-in with Efood and their “Potato” Cheddar Soup, we honestly weren’t to hopeful. Mrs B made up a batch of cheese sticks just in case we had to throw this away instead of eating it. Thankfully, we ate the whole batch of this Corn Chowder.

It was a mild chowder with a nice white sauce base that we both liked. Mrs B really liked it with the additional corn, while I had one bowl with corn and one bowl with crackers. For me, crackers won hands down. I liked the crackers because they bulked it up and made it thicker  instead of so soupy.. I had put the onions in raw and I wished I had sauteed them first, as they were still a little crunchy, but they sure did add some nice flavor.

By the time we were done we both agreed that we’d eat this again and even eat it voluntarily 🙂 If I were to ever order more through Efoods, I’d buy a case of this.

Edited to Add:

I just searched for Efoodsdirect. They are no longer in business. So no case of this!

–All Survival Saturday Related Posts–

For all the Why’s and Wherefore’s of Survival Saturday, please visit the Intro Post. Thanks!

Last time I did a SS post was back in March with Attack of the Ninjabread Men. Which means it has been 2/3’s of a year. I’m a bit out of practice, so I wanted something fun, easy and still foody.  Thank goodness for Krusteaz! This was so easy. All I needed was the mix, 1 stick of butter and 1 egg. To bring this into survival terms, even if technology craps the bed, the plastic the mix is stored in will last for decades and then all you’ll need is a cow and a chicken and voila, you are set!

This time I learned something from my past experience with Gingerbread. Melted butter and Softened butter are NOT the same thing. So I just let this sit out overnight so it would be nice and soft.

Cracking an egg is much easier than cracking heads!

I put ALL the complicated ingredients into a mixing bowl in the perfect proportions.

Then I hand kneaded the bejabs out of it!

By the time I was done, it was putty in my hand!

Then it was time to divide and conquer.

Finally, I brought them altogether for a family reunion.

The final step was to flatten them on a cookie sheet and cook them. But obviously, a true Chef never cooks and tells!

And that was a good re-introduction to Survival Saturday. Whetted the appetite, as it were. Next month I’ll have a “real” Survival Saturday with another of the long term storage food things. Please look forward to it!

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For all the Why’s and Wherefore’s of Survival Saturday, please visit the Intro Post. Thanks!

Today’s offering is the Efoods Gold (known online as Efoodsdirect.com) Potato Cheddar Soup. Sadly,  our experience fit right in with how my reading has gone this month.  Frakking February!

Ingredients & Allergens:

Nutritional Info:

Directions:

Things Needed:

4.5 Cups of water

1 package Potato and Cheddar Soup mix

Optional Items:

Leftover crescent rolls, from a church ladies’ get together, that nobody wanted. We had 5-8 of these.  *cue ominous and heavy handed foreshadowing music*

Impressions:

As soon as we opened the packet to dump it into the boiling water, we both could smell a bitter, astringent smell that we associated with the Chicken Noodle Soup, also by Efoods Gold. We just looked at each other and said “One bowl then we’re dumping the rest”.  We used the full amount of water hoping to alleviate the taste by dilution.

Sadly, it was not to be.  We only took a small bowl apiece.

We ended up breaking the crescent rolls in half and just sopped up the soup with them. It made the crescent rolls taste good by comparison and we used them up, so not everything went to waste. But when crescent rolls, that nobody else in a group earlier wanted, are the best part of a meal, you know things aren’t good.  The “potato” part of the soup was just as disappointing. They were not little cubes of potatoes or even chunks. They were pinky finger nail sized slices of potato. By the time I was done sopping up with the roll, I had maybe a spoonful of potato, out of a half bowl’s worth of soup.

Mrs B ended up with an upset tummy and I just poured the pot of “food” down the toilet.  This was not good and I’d only ever eat it again if I was starving.  Honestly, I’d rather keep a pantry full of Campbell’s Chunky Soup on hand and just deal with the pain of cycling through them. They’re supposed to last about 2 years and you can eat them right out of the can with no heating, etc. And they taste a heck of a lot better than this stuff.

Lessons Learned:

I don’t feel like I’ve wasted my money on this particular brand, Efoods Gold aka Efoodsdirect.com. Long term food storage is becoming more and more complicated these days and having “something” on hand is much better than having nothing.  That being said, I won’t be buying this brand ever again and I’d be hesitant to recommend them to anyone else. Maybe have a one month supply on hand, “just in case” but for more than that I’d recommend canned goods.

However, since this fit right in with how my February went, I just kind of laughed it off and grumped for a bit. Also, it was a Friday night and I’d had a good day, so it all kind of balanced out.

–All Survival Saturday Related Posts–

For all the Why’s and Wherefore’s of Survival Saturday, please visit the Intro Post. Thanks!

Holy smokes, the last Survival Saturday post was WAY BACK IN MAY!!!!!!  Welp, the cold is here so the food is coming back.

Here’s a picture of today. Looks nice doesn’t it? What you can’t see is that this was the one 30minute period during daylight that it wasn’t pouring like the second Flood was coming.

It was a soup and bread kind of evening by the time we both got home.  So we chose Legacy’s Cheese and Broccoli Soup Mix with homemade bread bowls. Plus some stuff.

Ingredients & Allergens:

Nutritional Info:

Things Needed:

8 Cups of water

1 package Cheese & Broccoli Soup Mix

Optional Items:

Boule Bread cut into bread bowls

New York extra sharp cheddar cheese

Shot of Bang, pina colada flavor

Directions:

Impressions:

Very easy to prepare. The whisk worked wonders and since this wasn’t a real heavy or thick soup, it just flowed together. It reminded me almost of a white sauce.  Mrs B said it reminded her of an alfredo sauce. I think that’s a pretty good comparison.

The boule bread was easy to cut and it scooped right out. It is tough to see the soup inside it, as they’re both pretty creme colored.

I had cut up the cheese into small pieces and added it to mine. Even though this is pretty high in sodium, it is not salty tasting and rather bland. The sharp cheddar gave it a much needed dose of flavor.

Mrs B said it needed a little something to make it thicker. Maybe some kind of vegetables? Rice or potato would also have worked as a good filler if we weren’t using a bread bowl. Other than that, she was happy to eat it out of the bread bowl and used the scooped out bread as a dipper.

I had a little tiny bowl of the stuff by itself and it was decent. Warm and much thicker than say a campbell’s condensed soup.  The cheese made a huge difference in the bread bowl and I was happy to just eat the remnants of the bread bowl by dipping it into the pot of soup and finishing it off that way.

Lessons Learned:

The pina colada Bang, while my favorite, was a mistake. It was just too different and after 1 drink I just put it aside.  I’m wondering if the Lemon Drop Bang would have suited it better, as that flavor is just a tiny bit bitter and would have made the blandness of the soup more palatable.

Overall, we both were satisfied with what we ate while not being ecstatic. The portions were once again HUGE and for 2 people really bordered on just too much. We didn’t end up eating the whole package even though we at it twice. There was that much.

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