Uses for sweetened condensed milk?

[natdscott]

A local restaurant uses it in their dessert milk shake icee slush thing...

... it. Works.

 

[Karl-just-Karl]

Suddenly, the light went on yesterday. After throwing out about half of the stuff I put away years ago, things started making sense.

Beans and rice are a no-brainer. Easy to keep. I bought some plastic totes to keep them in so they don't pick up a weird flavor from being stored in a wooden cabinet. Lesson learned there. 9 lbs of beans and rice less than $10. I don't make a lot of beans and rice in bulk, but $10 seems like pretty cheap food insurance especially after recently signing up for health insurance again.

Big-ole jar of peanut butter. When the one in the "daily use" cabinet goes empty, the one from the back-up comes out and a new one is bought as a back-up. Duh!

The same goes for the oatmeal, pasta, salt, BBQ sauce, ketchup, apple sauce, canned beans, meals and vegetables. I just can't be lazy about this anymore.

I don't need 50 cans of canned fruit. 10 are easier to keep track of and rotate. A lot of canned fruit isn't consumed in my household, choosing the fresh option whenever possible. Consuming 10 cans before the end of a two-year shelf life best-by date isn't difficult. The same goes for the pie filling, evaporated milk, SWEETENED CONDENSED MILK, canned chicken, tuna and salmon.

Flour, sugar, corn-meal, baking powder might be good things to have for trade or for long-term strategies, but I am trying to focus on thirty days here, not opening a bakery.

The final category is really cheap and easy stuff like Ramen. It is a little bulky but few other things are easier to prepare as a hot meal. Pasta is pretty compact and stores well. I should probably have more pasta in my storage. I don't want to think of them as throw-away foods though.


I might have to consider some chocolate syrup for my mac and cheese though, no probably not. I haven't tried it, maybe I should, but i probably won't. Mexicans have a cacao based mole that is used with chicken. My former mother-in-law used to also add a big spoonful of peanut butter. Yep, Reese's peanut-butter chocolate chicken.


In my experiences, "store all that you can" might not be the best advice if it is neglected and becomes a burden and is wasted. It makes me wonder about the hard-core prepper folks that have stuff stashed by the pallet load.

So, biggest lesson that I have learned is that it is possible to have too much stuff sitting around if it isn't being regularly used, maintained and rotated. Huh, now that I'm thinking about it, I guess that might be one of those life-truths that extends to a lot of things beyond food-stores.

 

[spencer rifle]

Home canned stuff has upsides and downsides over store canned stuff.
Upsides:
Can last nearly forever. Wife's grandmother had jars in her basement from the 60s that still appeared good. We have 10 year old maple syrup that is just fine. We try to rotate it and use it regularly, and make more every year of what grew well that year (just put up 14 pints and 11 half pints of apple butter).
Everything can be reused, including metal lids. While intended for a single use, if removed carefully we are still using lids with 3 old labels on them. Not so sold on Tattlers, though. Higher failure rate.
Old jars can still be found cheap at garage sales - just check the rims for chips.

Downsides:
Glass. Must be stored in such a way that New Madrid part 2 won't shatter them all.
If you remove the rings you have to watch moving them around. More than once a bump on the cap has unsealed a jar.
Takes more work and time and energy. Our gas bill always goes up during canning season. Had to run the pressure canner last night for 1.5 hours to finish jars of kale.

As far as store-canned items, got a story. We know one of the owners of Grabill Meats. He said that the cans are good for 10 years officially. Unofficially, he says as long as the can is not bulged or rusty, the contents will be good forever.