More Taste Tests: Maine Goodies
 

The canned lobster products from Maine Goodies in our comfort food category flunked as 'fishy tasting, and not canned fresh enough' but the Seedless Black Raspberry Jam was a winner deluxe, though pricey. All these comfort foods are pretty expensive. (Though I expect they are cheaper this year than they will be next year.)

We taste tested canned sweet cherries from the grocery store and pie filling and both got the thumbs up. Pie filling is good baked in a pie, good topping a hot cereal, and good chilled and mixed with a milk product to make an ice cream substitute. It is even good as a stand alone dessert at room temperature.

We are aiming for very easy food preparation.

It is a good feeling to be filling in comfort foods with the beans and grains and Mt house already put by.

I just got in some more freeze dried fruit too. We love steel cut oats with dry fruit cooked in it for breakfast and that is inexpensive and we like a variety of beans, which are also inexpensive, and many forms of corn, which supplement bean protein profiles well, and are not yet very high. We will use Mt House sparingly as a fast food substitute. It is too salty and full of chemicals to be very healthy. Mostly whole grain, beans and sprouts, with just a little junk food for variety is the plan. And a garden when we can. That depends on why we are using stored food.

In hard times comfort food is a real cheer up luxury. I think getting the basics, and plenty of them, first is important. But once you have that, this kind of addition will be very appreciated if we need to live on stored food.

Re: More Taste Tests: Maine Goodies
 

Thanks for the review. I'm a big believer in stocking some comfort foods. Canned pie fillings, canned fruit, bakery mixes, nuts, drink mixes (especially hot apple cider mix! great for cold mornings!), and chocolate are tucked away with my freeze-drieds, as are a good selection of spices, karo syrup, chocolate powder, and other baking and cooking niceties. I particularly like the pound cake MREs sold by Life Depot as a comfort food. The vanilla pound cake works well topped with canned fruit. My only problem is rotating the comfort food into my day-to-day diet. That's a lot of high-calorie food that I don't need in my daily diet!

I used to do 19th-century open-hearth cooking demonstrations at a local history center (kind of funny, as I'm well-known for my aversion to cooking!), and I have a separate recipe book for historical open-hearth recipes, so I've stocked items that work particularly well with open-hearth cooking, too, including some modern innovations we didn't use for demos (try the famous cast-iron cooking recipe for pineapple upside down cake substituting Angel Food cake for regular cake, and you'll never go back to the regular cake!).

Re: More Taste Tests: Maine Goodies
 

Oh thanks! We had not heard of the pound cake MREs and I think learning cast iron open hearth cooking is a great idea.

As for calories, yes, even taste testing has been pretty sugary for us. Much above our norm. We have a few years before we have to rotate, but I am sorry to say that I think if we are going to need them at all, it will be before they expire in 4 or 5 years. I hope we never need them. But things just seem pretty critical right now with the elite tussling and the current administration wanting to have WW3 underway before they leave office. I hope the split in the elite stops that, and I hope we never need our emergency food.

It could still go that way if more compassionate thinking prevails.

But if we rotate it through in 4 years or give it to a food kitchen for the poor and restock at higher prices for our waistlines' sakes, someone will get some good eating from it.

Re: More Taste Tests: Maine Goodies
 

Maddie, I could not find those pound cakes. Do you have a link?