Short term food storage recipe #9 - Sweet and Sour Chicken over rice or noodles

How are you coming on your 3 month meal supply or your short term food storage as we all lovingly call it? I struggle with it a bit because I buy ingredients, use them and don’t replace them. Rotating and replacing used food items is a must. I don’t have any problem coming up with several good dinner recipes that I want to include in my rotation; I have several of my own and have found many more in the books, “Dinner is in the Jar”, It’s in the bag”, and also “I can’t believe it’s food storage”. “Girlfriends on the go” is another great book as is “Dinner is Ready”. If you are interested in one of these books, hurry and talk to Santa before it’s too late to get your requests in.

I’ve talked before about how I love cookbooks. Lots of cookbooks. They make me happy. I love looking at food blogs and more often than not, I find a recipe that sounds really good and can be altered to become a food storage recipe or more correctly a “short term food storage” recipe.

I also find it is easier to think of what I consider “cold weather” recipes for my short term food storage than other recipes. Maybe because soups and stews are more easily adaptable.

If you struggle like I do with your short term food storage, start with 5 of your favorite recipes that can be adapted to food storage and calculate how many ingredients you need to make them each 5 times. Make a list and try to have those ingredients on your pantry shelves by January 1, 2011 (can you believe that is only 1 month?). Then, when we make our New Year’s Resolutions we can start working on more recipes.

Here is one of my favorite quick and easy recipes that adapts well to food storage. I wouldn’t mind having this one a few times a month. Sure beats pasta with bottled pasta sauce 3 times a week! Use fresh ingredients when available but make sure you have the alternate storage items on hand also.

Sweet and Sour Chicken
2-3 c. cooked diced chicken (1 can or bottled chicken breast meat)
4 T. cornstarch
1 t. salt
½ c. brown sugar
½ c. vinegar
1 t. dried onion
2 c. pineapple juice (16 ounces juice)
2 T. soy sauce
1 c. finely diced green pepper (use reconstituted dry pepper if fresh is not available)
2 large cans pineapple chunks
Combine cornstarch, salt, brown sugar, vinegar and pineapple juice. Cook until thickened. Add chicken, green pepper and pineapple chunks. Serve over hot rice or noodles.