USING EGG POWDER TO YOUR ADVANTAGE + first giveaway!!!

When I have said the word Egg powder, most people say, " Oh that sounds kinda gross!" Well, yes in a way it does sound kinda gross, but when you look into it, its a really great way to have eggs on hand but last all year round. I hadn't heard of egg powder until a friend told me about it. My first thought, was cool, I want some. I looked online to see if there was anywhere close by that sold it. I found a place in Melbourne and they referred me to a company in western Sydney called Talsar. You can only purchase in a 15kg bag, and I am currently purchasing a bag with several people going in on the bag. I am hoping to have this by the end of next week, fingers crossed (been a few delays and school holidays have got in the way!). If you are interested, just let me know, I do have a bit of excess.
It seems a lot of bakeries make use of egg powder and you can get whole egg, egg white and, whole egg with sugar. I particularly like the egg white powder because there is no issues with cracking eggs and seperating and then working out what to do with the egg yolks. I use my egg powder for baking and I tend to use fresh eggs for dinners. For each 1kg of whole egg powder you get approx 80 fresh eggs (59g), which is pretty amazing and great to know you have these on hand all year.  Here is a recipe that makes use of the egg powder, but basically, anything that has fresh eggs, you can use the egg powder. I wouldn't concern yourself with making scrambled eggs or anything like this.

Chocolate Chip Pancakes

2 cups plain flour
2 cups milk
Egg powder - 1tbspn + 1 tspn
75mls water to hydrate egg powder
1/4 cup sugar
baking powder - can't remember amount, will post it when i find recipe!
dash salt
Handful choc chips - or more if you want!

Mix all dry ingredients. In seperate bowl mix egg powder and water a little.  You can also add egg powder straight to bowl and add water and milk together. Add egg and milk to dry ingredients and gently mix until all combined. Fold in choc chips.

 Cook on pan as you would any other pancakes. Flip when bubble appear.

Then add ice cream and maple syrup (I'm half Canadian, its in my blood to add Mayple Syrup!)

Or whatever takes your fancy!

The good thing about egg powder is you can make up a mix with the dry ingredients and store in an airtight container all year round and add wet ingredients when you want to make it up, kinda like the shaker pancake bottles you get in the supermarket, but its your own and its cheaper!

Now to the juicy stuff! I believe so strongly in the good works of egg powder that I am giving away 250g to a lucky follower! If you have never tried and would like to give it a go, then now is a good time to get it for free. I will post to anyhere in Australia. I can't send overseas, sorry. You will get the conversion chart to hydrate your egg powder and how to store it. This amount of egg powder equates to approx 20 eggs, yes, so you will get some good use out of it. 

All you have to do is follow me if you don't already and comment to this post and tell me your favourite recipe that has eggs in it. I will randomly choose someone who has commented and is also a follower of my blog. You can tweet about it if you want. I will leave this open until Friday 23rd April. Good Luck:)

Convenient White Sauce Mix

Ok, I do believe I wrote something before about having more time to do things becasue it was school holidays. Pause that, as my son would say. PAUSE THAT! I wish I had some spare time to do what I wanted these holidays anyone feel the same? They've kinda come and gone almost. My kiddies are watching ABC 3, the youngest is asleep and I have told the others if they so much as put their hand on my bedroom door, they will be eating porridge for the rest of their lives! I also put my back out these holidays, so it hasn't been the best time for me. I went to a place at Castle Towers yesterday. Its called Acue Point. Its a chinese massage place. My massuse was a kind looking elderly lady who smiled a lot, but had little english. She was good at the massage, but my back was so sore and when she pushed on my sore points I bit my lip and tried so hard not to yelp! I was braver yesterday, but today, I am in pain. I have bruises scattered on my back and I alreadyhad two muscle spasms, that's supposed to be good right? I have always been told to expect pain the next day and I usually do, but I think my back was really out of whack! I am not too suprised really, I bend down to pick up my kids stuff all the time and I use my back  alot at work.  Anyway, I am feeling a little sorry for myself I suppose and my husband won't be coming home til late as he has been in Melbourne on business. I suppose I just wanted to vent.

I better get to the real point of my post. My sister-in-law showed me this great book last year where you can make up mixes of things that can last in storage for up to 12 weeks and sometimes more. A few caught my eye and I thought I would give them a go. This one in particular I liked because I got a cool book, " I can't believe its Food Storage" by Crystal Godfery and she used the same mix and calls it Magic Mix. My mum tells me this mix has been around for years, but I am only new to it and maybe you might be too. It has may uses, which I will explore in the near future, but I will go through the recipe on how to make it and then a recipe to make your own chocolate pudding or Yogo(for the aussies) type dessert.  The basic idea is that this mix is the basic white sauce/ rue you would mix up with butter, flour, and milk. I use white sauce for heaps of things. We like it in our lasagne, tuna bake, and mac cheese, to name but a few. But with this mix, you can make more things. Its great to have on hand, and if you already have it mixed up, it cuts out time for you. You are also making good use of your food storage ingredients and the mix itself stores for up to 12 weeks.

Recipe

2 cups instant skim milk powder (can use full cream if you prefer)

1 cup all purpose flour

250g block of butter ( can use unsalted but I used regular, saves adding salt later)

Side note: The recipe book is american and it used hydronated vegetable shortening. I didn't know what this was so I looked it up and was grossed out. Basically, for us aussies, its Copha, the stuff you use for chocolate crackles. I can't stand the stuff and basically whenever I think about it I remember puking my guts up after parties as a kid until my mum figured out it was the copha in the chocolate crackles. I am not sure why we need Copha, becasue we have butter.  I wanted to mention this incase you use this and would prefer to use it, but butter is better, it tastes better! However, if you use Copha, it will last longer and you can store it in the cupboard instead of the fridge. It's up to you, but you know what I use!!!

Method

I used my food processor, but if you have a kitchenMaid, or something similar, its good to use this. Also would work really well in a Thermomixer - wink!

Put flour and milk powder and process on low to combine. Cut in the butter until its mixed through. In my food processor, I had to do it in two batches.
 It will look like this:

I have stored my mix in an old baby formula can, it actually looks a little like the formula, which is a bit weird.

The first recipe I made with the mix, was not actually white sauce. I have been looking for snacks to make for my kids for school lunches. A lot of my weekly food budget goes into their school snacks and I want to cut down on it. I have spent a little bit of time in the holidays making and freezing slices for them. One thing my kiddies like is chocolate custard or dairy dessert/yogo. This can be expensive but they love it. I obtained this recipe from here and thought I would give it a go.

Yogo Dairy Dessert

2 cups of white sauce mix

1 cup sugar - would say maybe half this as we found ours pretty sweet

1 vanilla bean - can use 1 tsp extract

1-2 tbs cocoa

2 cups water

Method

Add mix, sugar and cocoa to a saucepan and mix well on medium heat and add water and mix well. Split vanilla pod and scrape seeds into saucepan and add pods as well.

 Mix until bubbles appear. Take off heat, take out pods, cover and allow to cool. The mixture will thicken while it cools.

My kids gave it the thumbs up approval. I would say you can make ice blocks or freeze in little tubs for a frozen dessert. My kiddies will get little tubs in their lunch boxes too.

Other suggestions:

Add a banana(or fruit of choice), some ice cream and little extra milk, process to make a yummy milkshake.

Add diced fruit

Omit cocoa powder for a vanilla flavoured dessert

Hope you found this interesting and useful. I will be making something savoury soon. I have also made up a brownie mix and pancake mix, so look forward to these posts too!

Flog Yo Blog Friday

If you check out my side bar you will see the Flog yo Blog thingy ma jig! It goes to a blog I like and follow. I hope what I am about to do is correct..'biting fingers'! I want to be part of the blog hopping biz, and share the love. Follow me, if you don't mind doing it and check out all the other cool blogs so that everyone gets a bit of traffic. I love this becasue its a great way to find new blogs that I would not otherwise find!

More on Convenient Food!

Now that Easter school holidays are here, I will have a little bit of spare time to spend on my FoodMuster projects. I am working on some great recipes that anyone can make and are a great addition to your convenient food store, so stay tuned for that!

If you have started collecting empty bottles for your water storage good on you! I forgot to mention, by all means, if you prefer to purchase water there is no harm in this. Just make sure you check the used by dates.

If you want to keep working on your convenient food then here are few things you can do to start planning your convenient store. Before you start purchasing, go through your pantry/cupboards, and see what you already have. If you are like me, I purchase things and don't end up using them, or purchase a few of something that goes on sale and forget I have it! Going through the cupboards is also a good time to chuck anything out of date and also anything you know you won't eat. Try not to throw out unused food, give it away to neighbours, friends or family.  Check your best before dates on items. Store your longer lasting food items at the back and the ones you need to use next at the front. It might be a good idea, if you can to jot down what you have and when you need to use it by so you can rotate these goods.  When you use something, replace it as soon as you can, so you know you have it.  If any food as weevils or moths, it has to be thrown away. See my post on pantry moths. The traps are best and do your best to make sure your cupboards are as clean as possible. When you purchase any kind of grain or pasta, you can put it in the freezer for up to 6 hours to kill anything that might be still living in it! It sounds grose, but is unfortunately true! Most flours and other grains may have organisims living in the grain while it is sitting waiting being packed and while it is in storage or on the shelf waiting to be purchased. The freezing process will kill the organisims.

Here is a list of items you can start purchasing and putting away in your convenient store:

Cereals - weetbix, nutrigrain, museli
Flour - if you purchase flour alone, you can make up Self Raising Flour from flour, so it will save you space.
Tinned Fruit
Tinned tomatos
pasta sauce or passata
tinned tuna
baked beans
maggi noodles - any dried noodles of choice
Oats - for porridge and baking
Sugar - white, brown, etc
Salt - this is a good one to have as is it lasts for 30years plus.
Honey - honey doesn't have a used by date, its last forever! It will crystalise but you just have to heat it to get it back to a runny conistency.

Its just a start to get you thinking about things. I will always be posting recipes that incorpoarate convenient food, things that you may not even think about. So stay posted and I will also post a list of items that you can add to your store as well on a monthly basis.  If you have any questions or suggestions just leave me a comment:)

LET'S GET STARTED!

So I have introduced you to convienent food. I hope you are well acquainted because now you have to become really good foods to make it work! The best way to start your convienent food store is to start little. If you start with small things, then you can get a feel for it and then add a little more and a little more until you are 'gung hoe' and you are searching the net and local guides on where to purchase the best bulk buy wheat, pasta. and the like. You can even start 'gung hoe'  if you want, but I would guess that most of us are watching our budgets much the same as our waistlines, so I will put it down one step at a time.

 In a lot of natural disasters and other occurences like these, most people turn to water. Water is such an important part of our survival. So your goal is to keep as many large containers of soft drink or juice. Don't concern yourself with milk containers, these won't last long. 2L soft drink or juice and even those ones that carry upto 4L are best. Wash them out. Then fill them up with regular tap water and a few drops of regular uncented bleach. The bleach kills any microscopic bacteria and life forms from the water and because you are only using a small amount it is fit for human consumption.  Store your water in a cool dry place, like the garage, under the stairs, a spare pantry shelf(congratualtions if you do have one!!) anywhere in your house that you can think of. Water like this can be stored for a good couple of years. Its good to check the water at least once or twice a year to make sure its doing well. If you haven't made use of it after a couple of years, by all means if it makes you feel better, use it and restore. 

Water is very important in cooking. So its good to stop and think about how much you will need not just for drinking but also for cooking.  This is just a start. It is best to have larger water stores, like the 10L canisters you can get from camping stores. We fill ours up and use it when we go camping then restore water again when we return. Before you start getting overwhelmed is is not realistic to store water for a whole year, but if you can store enough water to help you over a 2 week period you are doing well. From my research an adults needs about 55L of water for a 2 week period for drinking. Add extra for cooking.  If you are storing a couple of bottles a week and a couple of the larger canisters, you can reach your goal in no time and you will have a very convienent store of water!

HOW MUCH IS A STICK OF BUTTER??

If you are like me and surf the net far and wide for great recipes, you will come across American terms that may puzzle you. I love Martha Stewart, FoodBuzz, Joyofbaking and many other sites as well as everyday people's blogs. I always see "1 Stick of butter" and I always wonder, what the heck is a stick of butter? Here in Australia, we don't call our blocks of butter sticks. Generally the butter we use for cooking comes in a block of 250g or 500g. There are some brands like, Western Star, that sell butter in 50g portions but not individually, you will still need to purchase 200g at a time. So as math tells us, that is 4 lots of 50g portions. Would you be purchasing these portions at a cheaper price because you get less? It would be nice wouldn't, but as per usual convenience overrides price and you will pay more for the convient 50g portions. I always opt for the 250g block.

Anyway, I digress. The reason for this post is to let you know I have searched for the answer and found that a stick of butter is 113g. In the past I have whacked the full 250g block into recipes thinking this would be fine, but my disasters have proven otherwise.  I have also seen cooking shows that use the sticks and I realised quickly that it ain't the same as our blocks.

So, nex time you see a recipe that calls for 1 stick of butter, you know it calls for 113grams of butter!