Food Storage: Maintaining a one year supply of long term storage foods

Have you heard you should store a one year supply of foods? It is a good idea. It has been said that the day will come when a bushel of grain will be worth more than gold. (It might be hard to find a lot of nourishment when you are eating that gold!)

It is wise to have food around and to store it properly.

I've read about and like the recommendation to store things that are easy, simple and have the ability to feed many people - in order to prepare for the worst possible situation.  I feel that probably soups and stews are the best solution for longest term storage - and there are so many different variations to them - it doesn't have to be the same old soup every day. Plus, soups only use one pot!

You can put in them anything you grow in a garden, hunt and fish for, or scavenge could potentially all go towards a soup/stew.

You could use and easily store our favorite four main filler items: white rice, dried potatoes (diced or sliced), pasta noodles (macaroni / elbow, spaghetti, any kind of egg noodle), and beans.
For example, the 10 bean mix gives a variety of different nutritional values. You can add dehydtrated veggies (carrots, corn, peas, green beans, onions, etc.) and meat or TVP.  The key to this will be your seasonings. You can add bouillons, green or red peppers, slat, white cream sauce, tomato powder or ay other seasoning you have on hand. The more stored, the better when it comes to seasoning soups and stews!

For breakfast, you could use boiling water and adding something to make one pot - like oatmeal, cream of wheat, 6 grain rolled grains, or a 9-grain cracked cereal. You could also store pancake mix to throw in some variety. Don't forget you will need some kind of sweetener such as honey, sugar and powdered milk.

We also suggest fruits, desserts, drink mixes and kitchen aid items, such as baking soda, salt, dehydrated eggs, dehydrated margarine, etc.) Don't forget the basic supply of wheat as well!


I know it is well worth the time and effort to get this done and best of all - find a place to store it!


p..s. If you need some help figuring out a very space efficient way to store your goods, I recommend checking out Timberline Storage Solutions- they just redid my storage area and I LOVE IT!!!!

Food Storage - How do I Start?

Food storage is one of the most frustrating things you will do or be involved in. You may wonder where to start, what to store, how much to store, and where to put it? These are only a few of the concerns you may have.

The following suggestions will help to take some of the frustration and confusion away.

Putting your food storage together:

To start, we recommend maintaining a three to six month supply of the foods you are already eating.  Later, I'll talk about how to maintain a month or two month supply of ready to eat foods (No water/no cook type, grab and go foods) and a one year supply of long term storage foods – bulk grains, dehydrated or freeze dried foods.

To start: How to store a 3 to 6 month supply of the food you already eat:

I recently went to a food storage class and learned this. It helped simply things for me. So, get lots of scratch paper or your Excel spreadsheet out to figure this out. Make a list of 7 different breakfast menus, 7 different lunch menus, and 7 different dinner menus you eat and love the most (hopefully, for storage sake, they are also fairly simple recipes). For each menu, list all of the ingredients you need for each meal. Once you have done this, simply multiply the number of items per meal you need to last you for either three to six months.

Example:

Breakfast:  2 cups raisin bran, 1 cup milk, 8 oz orange juice, 1 piece toast, 1 tablespoon jelly. This will be eaten once a week, or 4 times a month, or 24 times in 6 months. 

So, for 6 month supply, multiply your original meal ingredients by 24. So, I would need to store for one person:  48 cups raisin bran, 24 cups milk, 192 oz (or 1 gallon + 2 Quarts) of orange juice, 24 slices (or 2 loaves) bead, and 24 Tablespoons (or 1 ½ cups) jelly. This will definitely take some math work and a little planning, but once you figure this out, keep all your notes. If you add more people, just add on to the original figures, or remultiply from the original numbers.

Review:

1. Figure out each of your menus and write down all ingredients (including water if your recipe needs to be cooked or boiled with water.)
2. Multiply out the quantity of ingredients needed. You will need to decide how long you are storing your food and how often you are eating it.
3. Multiply each ingredient stored by the number of people you will be providing food for.
4. Do this for all seven meals – breakfast, lunch and dinner through the week.

Before you know it, you will have 6 months of food stored for any kind of emergency!

(Please let me know if you need more ideas or suggestions on this.)

p.s. I have more ideas, so I'll get those published in a day or two from now... check back for more!

Augason Farms - Part 2: Biscuits

I need to report on the Biscuit Mix that Augason Farms sent me a while ago. I found my pictures, so I am ready to report!
I wanted to make biscuits and gravy. It took me no time at all (hardly) to prepare the "top secret" dough recipe they have printed on the side of the can. You just add water and baking powder to the mix and stir it up. The consistency was easy to get and they rolled out very nicely as you can see here. I even used my best biscuit cutter (a small glass). =)Biscuits

 Here they are - thrown onto a baking sheet.

 My baby was so excited he watched them bake the ENTIRE time they were in the oven!

 Here they are just fresh out of the oven. Aren't they beautiful - and golden brown, no less!

 I didn't fold them over during the dough stage to create an easy open after they were baked, but they still split nicely. The biscuits weren't dry and crumbly, they had a wonderful consistency! And I ate a few by themselves - nothing on them - and the flavor was very good - how a buttermilk biscuit should taste!

 We spiced things up with a little sausage gravy:

 And here is the plate full of food: biscuits and gravy with eggs on the side. It was a wonderful meal!

Result: Easy to make, tastes great and I will continue to use the biscuit mix from Augason Farms.

Freeze Dried Chicken

I posted a while ago about the Freeze Dried Chicken going into Hawaiian Haystacks. I've done that several times and still love how fast and easy it is! The hardest part is cooking rice and that isn't very hard.
I tried this pizza a little while ago (and just found the pictures again) and thought I'd share with you... since I did this a while ago, my memory is a little sketchy. I remember very well that it tasted good and was a fabulous meal, but I can't remember all my toppings.

I made a chicken pizza. I was running low on other meats, so I decided to try the Augason Farms Freeze Dried Chicken.
First, I rehydrated it: (little chicken, little water, let it soak up the water for at least one minute.)

 

 Here it is almost soaked up:

 Add chicken to my pizza on top of regular pizza sauce:

 Add other toppings: mushrooms, cheese, bacon bits? I can't remember what else... sorry.

I obviously tried a piece before I remembered to take a "final" picture. I just remember it was very good. I'll probably do it again!

Result: I'm still impressed with Augason Freeze Dried Chicken Chunks. Check it out!Freeze Dried Chicken

Augason Farms - Part 1

Hi! I know I've been pre-occupied, but I have recently been in contact with Augason farms. They sent me some samples for me to try and let you know what I thought of them. I got the freeze dried chicken breast chunks (AMAZING!), Chicken Gravy mix (which is gluten free), and some buttermilk biscuit mix.

So, Sunday we decided to start sampling. I was anxious to try the freeze dried chicken breast chunks, so we made Hawaiian haystacks. We started with rice and chicken gravy and all the fixin's over the top. So, I made the chicken gravy mix (following the easy directions on the back of the label) and added the (rehydrated) freeze dried chicken (also followed exact easy instructions). The gravy was totally easy to make quite tasty. The chicken rehydrated in ONLY one minute in water and tasted like CROCK-POTTED CHICKEN! It was nice and tender - not rubbery, like I expected. Everything tasted good. I even sampled it to people who stopped by, and they agreed that it was really good. Something I will definitely want to have in my regular food storage.

And just for your information, we like to top our Hawaiian haystacks with Chinese noodles, cheese, celery, diced tomatoes, chopped olives, pineapple or mandarin oranges, coconut, peas, and whatever else we can find... 

Augason Farms does food for everyday, food storage and emergencies. I'll report on the biscuit mix as soon as I sample it. (Soon.)

Mango Chutney on my Food Storage Shelf

This is my mango chutney I made TODAY! I don't normally can anything during the winter or spring, but it was kind of fun to pull out my canning stuff and process a little "special sauce."

So - here's the story. I went to this amazing restaurant in Orem, Utah called La Jolla Groves. It was a very nice restaurant. (Think linen napkins.) I ordered the Beef Tenderloins. They came with this sauce called a mango chutney - in a little metal condiment dish. I'd heard the word chutney before, but didn't really know what it was or if I would like it. So, I timidly tried it. Obviously, (because I came home and attempted to replicate it) I loved it and I even asked for more sauce to finish my tenderloins!

For those of you wondering, I looked up a definition of chutney:  "a spicy condiment made of chopped fruits or vegetables cooked in vinegar and sugar with ginger and spices." As defined by wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

So, I decided to make this recipe:
http://www.pickyourown.org/mango_chutney.htm

My only real variation was that I used frozen chunked mangoes. That made life really easy and fairly quick in making up the sauce.

And then, to make sure I liked it, I made steak - especially so I could try my sauce. It was very good- very comparable to the original one I tried, and now I have eight jars to put on the shelf for later usage! I am so excited with myself today!

Next adventure:  mango salsa... I'll let you know how that goes.

p.s. I don't even like mangoes, normally. If you gave me a plain mango - I would have a hard time eating it. But I really like the mix of flavors in the chutney sauce and usually in the mango salsa.  Until next time...

Flour in Food Storage & Notes on Hard Red Wheat

Question of the day:  (I haven't done this in a while. I'm glad for the opportunity.)

I have just started my food storage in earnest and... in my eagerness to begin my storage, I went to Costco and bought 300 lbs. of flour. I have come to realize that is A LOT of flour, and I am skeptical that I will go through it before it spoils. I have decided storing flour is probably not the best option.

I have a ton of red wheat in storage, but I have been told that only having red wheat in bread is bad for digestion, and therefore having 1/2 red wheat and 1/2 flour is best. Because I do not wish to store flour as stated above, I am wondering if I can store white wheat to replace the flour and therefore avoid the digestion problems?

I bake all of my own bread, and that is primarily what the wheat in storage would be used for.

Do you have any other suggestions about storing wheat that would help me in my food storage voyage? Any information you can give me would be greatly appreciated!

My Answer: 

Great questions. Well, first of all, hard red wheat is not necessarily BAD for digestion. It depends on the person and their individual digestive system. Though, Hard red wheat is typically harder to digest than others.

I used to store a lot of flour in my food storage. I now only store about 150 lbs for my laziness (when I don't have time to grind flour or energy and just need a quick cup for some cookies or something) and then store several types of grains. As a matter of taste, I do not love to use only hard red wheat. It is too much "heavy" whole wheat flavor and texture for me. I do not enjoy hard red wheat by itself. I do enjoy using hard red wheat in portions, though. I store hard red wheat, hard white wheat, spelt and bread flour. I use the flour, like I said, when I'm being lazy or my kids want to bake something. (At least for now.) Otherwise, I'll grind my own flour from the red, white wheat and spelt - usually in equal portion and use that. The flavor is so much better when I mix my grains. Even if you use 1/2 red wheat and 1/2 flour (so you can use up some of that flour faster than you normally would if you ground all of your own flour for your bread), your bread would be much better than just using whole red wheat and you shouldn't experience such drastic digestive problems.

As a matter of interest, hard white wheat is great in breads and will give your bread a sweeter flavor. Spelt has a bit of a nutty taste to it. So, mixing all of these grains together and storing them for such use is my preferred method.

Does that help?

p.s. Plastic Buckets (5-6 gallons) or large rubbermaid or metal garbage cans are a great way to store your grains (I don't take mine out of the original packaging, though you could) and/or flour. It helps keep the rodents out, helps maintain dryness (supposing things flood sometimes) and basically keeps the air and sunlight off of your food storage.

Until later.

p.s. Important note on Canning butter

Once upon a time on this blog, a friend posted about canning butter. Well, I have since learned the following and think you should be aware of it:

IMPORTANT NOTE: The canning of butter is extremely dangerous and should NEVER be done for home consumption. The National Center for Home Food Preservation at the University of Georgia-Atlanta says that it is not an acceptable way to preserve butter. You aren't "processing" the butter to kills the bacteria...you are only heating the jars to form a seal. This still allows botulism to grow and flourish in the butter....and because botulism is odorless, tasteless and colorless, it can be toxic to your family!

Check out their website www.uga.edu/nchfp for more information. (The link will take you to a specific question about canning of butter.)

Until next time...
-Jamie

Applesauce

Does anyone not know how to do applesauce?

During part of the fruit stand chaos, I found some time to do some applesauce. This is how it turned out:


The space at the bottom is all the extra juice - you just stir it up when you open the jar and it is totally fine and yummy. (I've had a lot of people ask about it when they saw it sitting on my cupboard.)
This year, I used some apples called summer red apples - they are a softer apple, so they cook down pretty quickly, and they were so sweet and yummy, I hardly added any sugar at all. I really prefer to use "free" apples from someone's tree, but these were available and needed using and I didn't pay much for them, so for future reference - Summer Red apples are great for applesauce!

Do I need to add instructions on how to make applesauce?

NOTE: I use my steamer/juicer to cook the apples down - then I don't have to worry about burning my apples! Then I just mix the apple juice back into the sauce (most of it).

I love fall and harvesting!

Sweet Cherries in Food Storage

So, part of our recent fruit stand adventures have included cherries. We bought these beautiful, LARGE, sweet cherries by the bin. That means about 400 pounds worth to prepare and sell at the farmer's market and to whoever else signed up and wanted some.

We had the crazy idea to put them in the back of our vehicle in order to keep them more temperature controlled. It worked - here are the pictures to prove it!



We had a few people who forgot to pick up the fruit they had ordered. After a few days, cherries don't last, so I started canning cherries. This is a first for me - I'd never bottled cherries before, but they were so easy! Just wash them and remove the stems. Pack them in a jar with a light sugar syrup and process the jars in a water bath canner. Easy. And they are so pretty! I haven't wanted to open a bottle yet to see how they processed, but I'm sure they are still just as sweet and good as before I put them in .

Here is the middle of processing. I ended up with 20 jars to put in my food storage on my shelves. We love to have good food when we want to eat it in our storage.

(How is your storage coming? Do you have any questions, concerns, inspirations?)

Yummy Glazed Chicken

Another recipe that uses apricot or peach jam that is really easy and delicious is called Yummy Glazed or for a better description, Apricot Glazed Chicken. I wish I knew who to give credit to for this recipe. I just know that one of my aunts introduced it to my family.

So, without further ado, here is the recipe for your use:

Yummy Glazed Chicken

Note: I got the picture from my sister's food/recipe blog. Check it out for more "in-process" pictures and ideas for foods and leave her a comment for me. Click here for her blog: Taste The Joy

1 small jar apricot or peach jam

1 pkg dry onion soup mix

1 (8 oz) bottle Russian salad dressing

¼ C water (put the water into the empty dressing bottle to get out as much dressing as possible)

Mix together and pour over 4-6 chicken breasts in baking pan. Cover. Bake 350 for 1 hour or till chicken is done. Serve over rice.

Enjoy.

Sweet and Spicy Chicken (with secret ingredients)

Where do I start?!? (I think I forgot how to blog!) I apologize for my blogging absence. (I have written several blogs in my head that never made it to your view. Oops.)

First, we have been swamped with running a bit of a local fruit stand and participating in our local (Rexburg) Farmer's Market. After working with that most of the week, and going to pick up fruit across the state one day a week, I am generally wiped out.

However, since I have been thinking and preparing things to write, I will attempt to share some wonderful ideas with you that I've been working on...


One of the yummy fruits we have been getting is apricots. They are about done now, but for those of you who still have access to apricots or have apricot jam in your food storage wondering how to rotate your food in good time, here is a yummy way to use your jam - aside from the typical toast and jam idea.

Recipe for Sweet and Spicy Chicken

Note: I got the picture from my sister's food/recipe blog. Check it out for more "in-process" pictures and ideas for foods and leave her a comment for me. Click here for her blog: Taste The Joy

Cut 2 uncooked chicken breasts in ½ inch squares. Toss with 3 TBS taco seasoning. Brown in oil.

Add:

1 to 1¼ C Salsa

½ to ¾ C peach or apricot jam

Simmer together and serve over rice.

DONE!

This recipe is almost too easy to make and it tastes so incredibly good. It is one of my favorites.
(Look for other ideas coming soon.)

Pruning Photos, as promised

As promised, here are pictures of our pruning adventures. Only the "after" pictures though - sorry.

So, if you don't know much about pruning, allow me to tell you a little bit about it.

First, you want to prune trees annully, starting when they are pretty small, so they don't get out of control and the tree can focus on maybe 7-8 good, solid branches on which to really produce good fruit. (This advice works with lilac bushes, too.) Otherwise, the tree doesn't know where to focus and you may get hundreds of tiny little apples or fruit that are hard to do much with. Ever had that happen? (I have.)

Next, you want the branches to have room to move and grow with a couple of inches between each one.

This example looks cluttered in the picture, but in real life, it looks pretty good. Boy, you should have seen it before its makeover. This is a COMPLETELY different tree. It has what is called a "central leader" type of pruning where you allow a solid central branch to grow and produce.

This tree also had a serious makeover. You want to make your branches relatively low, so you can stand on the ground and pick your fruit. You don't really want to make ladder fruit trees. That is no fun at all. So, if the branches branch out (like below) you will have more success. Plus the sun can more easily reach and nurture the entire tree.

This is the "vase" method where you basically cut out the center of the tree so the sun can easily access all of the tree and its fruit.

Here is a close-up of an example branch. You look for opportunities to branch out from the tree and cut out the ones that go straight up or down. See where it kind of looks like a hook of some sort? That is what you want.
Confession: Our trees were a little out of control because I haven't lived here very long and I am just learning. I knew trees need pruning, but didn't know how to go about it. It is possible to get them back in control, but it may take us some time.

Thank goodness for good friends and willing teachers!

Hooray for Food Storage!

Is anyone getting excited for gardening and harvesting and then canning that food?

I am getting WAY excited! We don't plant much around here for another week or two in our gardens (we live in a colder zone), but I have seeds ready - more things than I usually plant- and I bought lots of canning pamphlets for my friends and neighbors.

We are planning to run a fruit stand this summer here at my house. We will have loads of fruits, and vegetables available for people to eat or bottle or whatever. So, if you don't live in Idaho, I can send you this canning pamphlet (for a minimal fee, of course) - it is my best reference for canning that I have used for years.

There are three pamphlets that I use... one for fruit, one for vegetables, and one for tomatoes. It is easy to read and follow instructions and I refer to it every year to refresh my memory of canning. Plus there is an easy reference table in the back on how to prepare the food and then how long to process each type of food.

I'm getting excited - practically giddy about summer and food, gardening and this fruit stand!
Look forward to out fruit stand....

Food Storage Room Make-over!

I updated my fruit room (a.k.a. food storage room) Saturday and today (Monday). I am so happy!! One entire wall was lined with several unused doors, wood scraps, and other random items. And these random items were blocking a couple of feet shelving in the corner that held lots of my empty jars for canning.
To fix it, I used two of the doors as shelves. I used cinder blocks to prop up the bottom shelf and as you can see, I wanted to maximize available space, on both shelves, so I used those shelf hangers (can't think of their real name right now) to hang the upper shelf. This is my new "store" area for my HiStakes-Spelt store inventory, leaving more room on the other shelves for my personal storage!
I am so happy to have maximized more space in my house (especially in this room).
Beneath the first bottom shelf, I have the small boxes of wood scraps so they are still accessible for whatever project we need them for.

And below - enough room to access all of my canning jars in the corner. I love it.
I'm not sure the picture does the space justice, but I'm posting it anyway.


p.s. Sorry there is no "before" picture. I just got ambitious and did it.

Food Storage Binder Give Away

My blog friends over at Food Storage Made Easy have created this cool binder that they are going to give away - actually, they will give away 10 of them! Want to be one of the ten? The rules for entry are on their site: Food Storage Made Easy

It will be the perfect combination of functional and cute, I'm sure. (Knowing them it really will be - wink, wink.)


Here is the list of things they said will be inside the binder:

• Instructions for how to make it cute and functional, exactly like ours!
• ALL 26 BabyStep Checklists (no more waiting for the next list!)
• 100 pages of detailed information about each of the ten BabySteps
• Our very best posts, handouts, and extra information
• All the spreadsheets and documents you need to plan your 3 Month and Long Term Food Storage without needing a computer
• Recipe Appendix including all 33 recipes that we encourage you to try out in the Checklists
• Sections for additional research and personal notes to be added in
• Cute cover pages and dividers (because you know we have to make it fun)

I love easy and helpful all in one spot - great idea to get it all in one binder!

Don't forget to enter their give-away before Thursday. Here is their site: FoodStorageMadeEasy.net - and even if you don't win, it is totally worth visiting their site and learning all about their easy tips. Or they will have this awesome binder for sale as a downloadable book.

Check it out at Food Storage Made Easy!

Simple Spelt Bread -- Cheese Deal

My turn. Heather tried the "Very Simple Spelt Bread" recipe and said it wasn't that bad. I finally tried it and hated it. Not sure what I did wrong, but I couldn't eat the bread. It was dry, WAY to heavy and tasted strongly of baking soda. It was aweful!!
I did a few variations - is that what happened to this recipe? I used flaxseed rather than sesame seeds, I threw in 1 teaspoon of xanthan gum, and used honey rather than molasses. So? Any ideas? (Although, even if you have ideas, I might not try this recipe again.) It went bad really fast, too.
I think our cows enjoyed it, so the bread didn't totally go to waste.

Here is the photographic evidence that I really made the bread:
It kind of looked like pumpkin bread when it came out of the oven:


Now, on a happier note, I got a phone call recently, and was asked if I had any friends who might want to share a 40 pound brick of cheese with me. It was a steal of a deal, so I said I would call around. Everyone I talked to wanted in on the deal. So we got this 40 pound brick (which turned out to be closer to 44 pounds) and learned a lot about cutting cheese with a 16 gauge guitar string into 5 pound loaves. (The 16 gauge worked really well, by the way.) We wrapped each brick in saran wrap. (How do like that Sam's Club roll of saran wrap? It lasts us like 10 years - I love it!)

And here is the final stack (minus one). It was awesome to have that much cheese on my kitchen table.
I love a good deal!

BYU-I Home and Family Conference

Have you heard about this?

If you are at all close to Rexburg, Idaho, you might want to consider going to this "Preparedness Fair" tomorrow, March 21, 2009 starting registration at 8:00 am and classes go until 2:30. You can look it up online at www.byui.edu/ce/homeandfamily for the schedule of classes- there is a fee for going, but I think it will totally be worth it.

I am hoping I get to go to the "Cooking with Wheat" class and I would love to go to the "Food Preservation - A Family Affair: Canning, Hot and Cold Packing, Pressure Cooking, Freezing, and Drying" as well as the "Manage Your Finances Before They Manage You" classes.

They have over 40 classes for you to choose from. They encourage community patrons - even couples to go and learn. It looks like so much fun and so informative. Check it out and get registered tonight online so you can go and enjoy your day tomorrow.

Hope to see you there.

Here is the link one more time: www.byui.edu/ce/homeandfamily

American Family Preparedeness

Here is one of my contacts for additional food storage items: Mark Richardson 208-524-1558 or 208-524-7475. There are a lot of options here. There are usually 3-5 things on the monthly special through Mark Richardson. You do have to add tax & shipping is only .25/#10 can (if you can pick it up here in Idaho Falls). If you don't live locally, give him a call and see what you can work out with him. Another fabulous resource for those of you living outside the State of Utah is Emergency Essentials! Go to www.beprepared.com and sign up for their monthly catalog, sign up to be a "group leader". If you have friends/family/church/work groups interested in food storage you can get great savings on the "group buys" they offer. Often times and order of 6 of the same items will get you the group rate, so it can be done with a small group too! Best part is you get it tax free & NO SHIPPING!! I've been doing the catalog order the past few months and it's wonderful!! Such a huge variety of things for not only food storage for emergency preparedness too!

There are A LOT of food storage options available in so many areas (granted UT & ID are spoiled a bit, UT especially!), so keep your eyes open and get on the internet and get catalogs/newsletters for preparedness sites, you'll be surprised how much you can learn to do on your own too!

Good News for Diabetics and Hypoglycemics

Disclaimer: I do not have diabetes or hypoglycemia however, I found this to be a great idea for food storage options! So, read on even if you are extremely healthy...

My friend was asking me the other day if I had ever heard of or tried diastatic malt.

My response? Nope... never have heard of it, let alone tried it! What is it? What do you do with it?

I know, you are asking the same thing, right? Well, let me tell you a little bit about it - what little bit I have learned thus far.

According to a well-known book "Set for Life" by Jane P. Merrill and Karen M. Sunderland, "diastatic malt is barley or other grain soaked in water and spread until it sprouts, then dried and aged. It has a sweet taste."

Diastatic malt is a natural sweetener that completely takes the place of sugar in breads while still accomplishing the same purposes as sugar.

Use 1-2 cups whole wheat
3 cups lukewarm water

Now, these instructions come from Merrill and Sunderland's book "Set for Life." I have heard lots of good things about this book and it would definitely be worth owning. (Sorry for the lack of a picture, but for the whole book - you can get it here):



As I was saying, you sprout your wheat in a quart jar, (soak for 24 hours, drain well and use a sprouter. Cover with a cloth. Rinse and drain your wheat at least 2 times a day until your sprout is just longer than the seed. Should take about 48 hours.

For diabetics, SPROUT SPELT, for a lower glycemic load! According to NutritionData.com, Cooked Spelt has an estimated glycemic load of 21. Which is relatively low compared to wheat which ranges from 63-75 in the whole grains. (You can look up more specific foods on your own.)
I'm sure sprouted spelt is a little different - but still easier on your body to digest.

After sprouting, dry your sprouted grain - either in the food dryer or in the oven (at about 150 degrees for 3 to 4 hours, until thoroughly dry.)

After it is dry, place your dried sprouted wheat in a blender and blend it on high for about 30-45 seconds or until it has a fine meal consistency.

You can store diastatic malt in the fridge or freezer in a tightly closed glass jar. It will keep indefinitely.

You can reduce the amount of sweetener in the recipe or replace the sugar with this diastatic malt using 1 teaspoon of malt for each 2 loaves of bread or every 5 cups of flour. You can also use it as a natural sweetener on cereal or in other baked items.

Good luck! I hope this opens new options for you if you miss eating bread because of diabetes or hypoglycemia. Or if you happen to run out of expensive sugar - you could use this as a backup option.