Vanilla Whipped Topping

I LOVE Thrive's Instant Milk. Not only is it the best powdered milk I've ever tasted, but because its all cow's milk, it actually thickens and creams up. It makes a wonderful homemade ice cream (recipe posted previously) and it also make a great whipped topping. Here's how to make it:

Ingredients

1/2 cup ice water

1/2 cup Instant Milk Powder

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla

It is really easy. The most important part is getting everything nice and cold. Put the bowl and the beaters in the freezer to chill. I would even put the 1/2 cup water in the bowl to get ice cold (but don't let it turn to ice!).

Once it's cold, take out the bowl with the 1/2 cup water, add the 1/2 cup Instant Milk Powder, and turn on the beater. It'll take 3-5 minutes of beating (the colder it is, the faster it goes) and you'll see the milk start to thicken into a cream. Once it's thick and creamy, add the powdered sugar and the vanilla, then continue to beat. It will turn into a wonderful whipped topping for pancake, brownies, fruit, pie, well, just about anything!

Mine never formed super stiff peaks like in the Shelf Reliance picture, but it did achieve soft peaks. The consistency is more like Dreamwhip than Coolwhip. My husband said as an every day whipped topping, this was a 7 or 8, because he would still prefer to use Coolwhip on an every day basis. But as an emergency recipe, it rates a 9 or 10 and he's grateful we can have whipped topping whenever we want.

Here's a link to Kelsey Nixon (of food network stardom) showing you how to make it. (Shelf Reliance has a you tube channel with great videos). I figure this is better than my personal pictures. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ8D94teNkg

Sweet Potato Muffins

The following recipe is from the THRIVE website, as well as on the back of the #10 can of Sweet Potatoes. The original recipe called for 1/2 cup apple juice concentrate and 1/4 oil, but I didn't have concentrate, and I wanted to cut some fat out, so I just substituted 3/4 cup applesauce instead. I also cut back a little on the amount of nuts and butterscotch, again, trying to tone down our fat intake.  I think the applesauce might have made mine a teeny bit "gummier" than the original recipe would have produced, but they were still YUMMY! Hubby hasn’t tried them yet, but a friend of mine did and she said she really liked it, and there were no leftovers from the party I took them to this morning. It’s a good way to sneak a little fruit and veggies into your kid’s diet as well. Anyway, without further ado, here’s the recipe.

Ingredients

• 1 cup THRIVE Sweet Potatoes (dehyrdatred)
• 3/4 cup Unsweetened Apple Sauce
• 1/2 cup THRIVE  Instant milk (1 T powder + 1/2 cup water)
• 1 Tbsp THRIVE Whole Egg Powder (+ 2 Tbsp water) 
• 1/2 cup Honey, warmed 
• 2 1/2 cups All-purpose White Flour
• 1 tbsp Baking Powder
• 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 2 tsp Cinnamon
• 1/2 cup Chopped Pecans 
• 3/4 cup Butterscotch Flavored Chips

Dehydrated Sweet Potatoes in can

 Directions

Bring 3 cups water to a boil and dump in the 1 cup Sweet Potato pieces. Boil 10-15, or until rehydrated. Drain.



Place rehydrated sweet potatoes in a blender with the apple sauce, milk, egg, (you can reconstitute ahead of time, or just throw the powder and the water in together) and warmed honey. Puree together until smooth.



Puree mix

In a separate bowl, combine all the dry ingredients. Pour in sweet potato puree and mix. Mixture will be thick and sticky.



Final Muffin Batter

 Grease your muffin tin or use liners. Preheat oven to 400.  I baked mine as mini muffins, and they baked for 15 minutes. Larger muffins will take longer. I doubled my batch, and I still have what looks to be about half the batter left.  Based on that estimate, a single batch should yield 4-5 dozen mini muffins. And here's the nutritional breakdown on each muffin. Enjoy.

Instant Milk - Product Review and Comparison

Today's Product Review is on THRIVE's Instant Milk.  Now, THRIVE also offers a Non-fat Powdered Milk (part dairy, part soy), which they recommend for baking. But for drinking or having a bowl of cereal, you'll want THRIVE's Instant Milk (which is also a powder and happens to be non-fat, but is 100% real milk), and that's the one I'll be discussing today.

As with all powdered milks, you can adjust the powder to water ratio to get the taste that you prefer. The standard recommendation is 2 Tbsp powder per 1 cup water.  Personally, I prefer 3 Tbsp per 1 cup, or 3/4 cup powder per quart). The ideal way (in my opinion) to make this milk is to mix the powder with room temperature water, and then chill overnight before drinking it. I just have some arrowhead bottles of water stored in my pantry. I open them up, add the powder, shake it up in the bottle, put it in the fridge, and its ready to go in the morning.  When I have followed this ratio and those steps, and then served it to people, every single one of them has been surprised. Here are some of the reactions I've gotten:

 "Oh wow. I wasn't expecting it to taste that good."

"It tastes just like skim milk."

"There's no grittiness. It's powdered milk. Powdered milk is always gritty."

"That is hands down the best powdered milk I've ever had."

Yeah, I love it too. I, like most, was a skeptic when I first went to try it. I had a can of powdered milk  from a church cannery that has been sitting in my pantry for years. It's opened. I used a little, and have never been able to bring myself to use the rest. It doesn't smell appetizing, and was something I could never see myself just drinking a glass of. So I was expecting similar results with this Instant Milk.

But THRIVE Instant Milk has revolutionized the way I think about milk.  It tastes great, and it has made cold cereal a viable part of our food storage. That alone is motivation for me to stock up on a case of it (not to mention the additional savings I get by ordering by the case). And as if that weren't enough, this miracle product keeps wowing me with its ability to make desserts I never thought possible with "food storage" - such as whipped topping (recipe to come later) or homemade Ice Cream (see my post from earlier this month).  Considering this will last a whopping TWENTY FIVE YEARS unopened on your shelf, and once you open it, it'll still last another 2 years, this is a wonderful product to have in your home store.

Now, the only other powdered milk I have heard people say even tastes good, is one called Morning Moo. Personally, I have never tried Morning Moo. But I checked it out on-line, and for a #10 can, it's priced pretty comparably per serving to THRIVE's Instant Milk (they both average between 19 and 20 cents per 8 ounce serving). But there is at least one HUGE difference between the two of them that I noticed.

Here is a list of the ingredients in the popular "Morning Moo" taken straight from the manufacturer's website.

 Ingredients: Sweet whey, creamer (coconut oil, corn syrup solids, sodium caseinate [a milk derivative], dipotassium phosphate, sugar, mono and diglycerides, polysorbate 80, sodium silicoaluminate, tetrasodium pyrophosphate, soy lecithin), nonfat milk, sugar, guar gum, vitamin A, vitamin D.

No wonder people like it. The whey is sweet, it has corn syrup, and sugar is listed on there twice! Milk isn't even listed until the end of the ingredient list. No wonder the label on the can says "Milk alternative." Now, let's compare that to the ingredients in THRIVE's Instant Milk:

Ingredients:
Real instant nonfat milk, vitamin A palmitate, vitamin D3.

If that weren't enough of a selling point, THRIVE Instant Milk also has twice the calcium per serving as Morning Moo, and none of the fat.

To order your Instant Milk today ($19.59 for a #10 can, or $111.29 for a case of 6 #10 cans) please contact me at ThriveWithHemsath@gmail.com. If you live locally and want to try a sample, shoot me a message. I'll mix some up for you the night before so you can come and try it.

THRIVE Homemade Ice Cream

I saw this recipe on the THRIVE website from a fellow THRIVE consultant and was very excited to try it. Let's just say it did NOT disappoint!

What you'll need:

Ice Cream Maker (I borrowed a Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker that requires no rock salt)
8 cups (2 quarts) THRIVE Instant Milk, prepared
1 1/2 cups THRIVE Butter Powder
1/2 c + 1/8 c water
2 cups sugar
2 1/2 Tbsp Vanilla

1. If using an ice cream maker like this one which requires no salt, the key is to having everything very cold. Put the Ice cream bowl in a plastic bag (helps form frost) and stick it in the freezer overnight.

2. It also helps if you prepare the milk ahead of time and chill it. 8 cups water + 1 1/2 c Instant Milk Powder = 2 quarts milk. It's important to know that this will NOT work with the powdered milk. It MUST be the Instant Milk. I had chilled my water in the fridge over night, then I added my milk powder this morning and stuck the pitcher back in the fridge while I prepared the butter.

3. Put the butter powder into a large mixing bowl. Whisk in a 1/2 cup water. Then whisk in the 1/8 cup water slowly until the butter is a pancake consistency. Whisk in the sugar and vanilla.

4. Pour in the 8 cups (2 quarts) of prepared, chilled, instant milk.

5. Put the frosted ice cream bowl into the machine, and pour in about half of the ice cream mix. (I filled mine up a little too full the first time and it started over flowing and spilling. Even filling it all the way up, I still had 2 cups of mix left over for a second batch.) So I would recommend pouring in half for the first batch, and keeping the other half chilling in the fridge until you're ready for it. Or cutting the recipe back a third (I'll do the math for you at the end)

6. The Cuisinart Machine has an open hole at the top so you can see how its thickening up as it goes along. I put the first batch in and after 17 minutes, it had already started thickening up to the point it was over flowing again, so I had to take it out.



The frothy goodness when I first poured it in.



After 17 minutes! Look how thick and yummy!


7. It was thick and creamy, about the consistency of a Wendy's frosty. I decided to dump the whole batch into a Tupperware and stick it in the freezer to further harden while I put the second batch into the machine. The bowl wasn't as cold anymore, and there wasn't a risk of it overflowing, so I left the machine on for 30 minutes. Here's how thick the second batch turned out to be. Frosty consistency again.

8.I added it to the first batch in the freezer (which still wasn't hard enough to maintain a scoop). After about 2 and a half hours, it loosely maintained a scoop shape. So I left it in for a few more hours.

9. After 6 hours, it had crystallized a bit more, and here's what the scoops looked like in my bowl. 

So that's how I made it, but how did I enjoy it? Tremendously!!! I had a small bowl with caramel sauce, another small both with chocolate chips, another small bowl with strawberry freezer jam mixed into it... you get the point. My husband said its one of the best THRIVE items I've made and rated it a 9 as an everyday and 10 as an emergency. He said it isn't as creamy as store bought ice cream (which is to be expected since its made with fat free Instant milk, not Heavy whipping cream) but that the flavor was very rich, and overall, he called it excellent. I was impressed with how creamy it was given that I made it with ingredients from my pantry! Dustin agreed this would be PERFECT on top of pie, cobbler, brownies, etc.

The next day I had some, it had hardened even more from being in the freezer over night. At that consistency, it was more like shaving ice than scooping ice cream. But it was really yummy vanilla shaved ice, and if I got some chunks out and let them soften and mixed it all up with my spoon, it was creamy ice cream like the night before.  So we love this recipe and I'm thinking I might buy an ice cream maker just to keep making this with my food storage items.

For those who want a reduced quantity recipe to make only one batch, here you go:

5 and 1/3 cups (1.5 quarts) THRIVE Instant Milk, prepared
1 cup THRIVE Butter Powder
6 and 1/2 T water
1 and 1/3 cups sugar
5 tsp Vanilla

*Side note* I pureed some strawberries from my freezer and tried adding those to another batch, but after an hour, it never thickened up. I think the weight of the berries kept the butter/milk mixture from whipping up into the cream. I think I should have waited for the mixture to thicken up first, and then added the strawberries. Still not sure if would have worked even then, but for sure, if you're attempting variations of the recipe, wait until the mixture is almost done before adding anything else.

Cheese Blend - the quest for the perfect Mac and Cheese

THRIVE makes a product called "Cheese Blend" that I have been curious about for a while. So I bought some with the intent of making some Mac N cheese with it and seeing how it fared. Here's what the Cheese Blend looks like when you open it up:

(Mine seemed a little brighter orange in person than shows in the picture)

So I had the Cheese Blend, now I just needed a recipe. Well, between the THRIVE Cookbook, THRIVE website, the Cheese Blend pantry can and the Elbow Macaroni #10 can, I had 5 different recipes to try. I could tell that the one on the website submitted by a woman named Lindsay Budge was not going to be any good just by the reviews and the amounts of the ingredients. But the other four were worth trying. So here's the four I tried in order:

1. THRIVE Cookbook recipe
2. Natalie Riley recipe from website
3. Cheese Blend pantry can reconstitution instructions for "cheese sauce"
4. Elbow Macaroni #10 can Mac and cheese recipe


#1 - THRIVE Cookbook Recipe

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup THRIVE cheese blend
• 1/8 cup THRIVE Butter Powder, dry
• 1 1/2 cups THRIVE Instant Milk, rehydrated (9 T powder + 1 1/2 cups water)
• 3 cups THRIVE Elbow Macaroni

Instructions

* Cook pasta in boiling water until soft.
* Combine Cheese blend, butter powder, and milk in a saucepan over medium heat.
* Add cooked macaroni to the sauce pan, stirring until noodles are coated.

Review:  First of all, if you use 3 cups dry noodles and then cook them, you wind up with WAY too many noodles. I think I had close to about 8 cups of cooked noodles by the time they expanded. So that was a flaw in the recipe. Convenient for me, because I had plenty of cooked noodles to use in the rest of my recipes. As for the rest of the ingredients, they mixed up beautifully into a nice smooth orange sauce. I had high hopes, but it never thickened up. It stayed incredibly liquidy.

I tested a little taste and it wasn't too great. I thought if I let it cook longer, it might thicken up, maybe the flavor might improve. But I left it on too long and it started to boil.

I removed it from the heat, and surveyed the damage. The rapid boiling had changed the texture and caused it to separate into a more clear orange liquid with little yellow clumps. I added a tsp of flour mixed into a tsp of water to try and thicken it. It thickened, but the separation caused by the boiling was irreversible.

It looked so unappealing, I just tossed it and started on the next recipe. So the THRIVE Cookbook Recipe was a disappointment. Even if it hadn't boiled, I still think the sauce was WAY to liquidy. So the next recipe down, instead of calling for 1 1/2 cups milk, only called for 6 T.  I was eager to see if that made a difference.

# 2 - Natalie Riley Website recipe:

Ingredients

• 1⁄2 c thrive cheese blend
• 1⁄4 c thrive butter powder or 6 tbsp butter
• 6 T thrive powdered milk, prepared
• 3 c cooked thrive elbow macaroni

Instructions

* Combine cheese blend, butter or butter powder, and milk in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir and heat to the desired consistency.

* Add cooked macaroni to the saucepan, stirring through until noodles are coated

Review: I used the 1/4 cup butter powder rather than the actual butter. Following the recipe, the sauce came out a perfect consistency. You can see how thick and creamy the sauce was, because the hole I scooped away at the bottom of the pan didn't fill back in right away. We added the the 3 cups of noodles and here's how it looked.

Following the recipe as is, it was a little too saucy and the flavor was... different. Not bad, but not Kraft Mac N' Cheese.  My husband described it as a subtle sweetness (which may result from the milk or butter rather than the cheese blend) As is, he rated it a 3 out of 10 as an every day food and maybe a 5 as an emergency meal. I probably would have rated it a 5 out of 10 myself on the every day scale.

Modifications to recipe: I added another cup of cooked noodles, and that helped a lot because before the sauce was a bit too prominent. My husband added some salt, and he said that helped A LOT. Just by adding more noodles and some salt, he said he would easily bump this up to a 5 out of ten as an every day. I added salt, and shook some Parmesan on top, and to me, that made it a 7/10 for me for both everyday and emergency. (and I'm not that crazy about Kraft Mac N Cheese to begin with). The real test though was to see if my son Jason would like it (he's my picky eater). He polished off his bowl, asked for seconds, polished those off, and asked for thirds but there wasn't any more.

So in my opinion, with a little salt and some extra noodles, this is a pretty decent recipe. And my kid LOVES it, so its a keeper!

3. Cheese Blend Can Reconstitution for Cheese Sauce:

Instructions: To make cheese spread, combine equal parts water and cheese blend. For cheese sauce, gradually combine 1 part cheese blend with 2 parts hot water. stir together until smooth and creamy.

Review: Since I was wanting cheese sauce, I did the 1:2 ratio. I put a 1/2 cup cheese powder into 1 cup hot water. The result was hot orange water. Very disappointing. It looked more like a drink than a sauce. I didn't see any point to adding noodles to it as it was just way too liquidy.

I tried mixing it 1 part cheese blend to 1 part water, and it was also very liquidy. Not sure what they mean by spread. I'm going to have to write in and get them to change the label. I even tried 2 parts cheese to 1 part water, and it still was very liquidy as well as gritty. A lot of the cheese powder didn't dissolve into the water at the high a ratio. So just cheese blend + water is disappointing as a sauce no matter what the ratio.

4. Elbow Macaroni #10 Can Recipe (Halved):

Ingredients:

• 1/2 pound  THRIVE Elbow Macaroni
• 1/2 T oil
• 1 T butter
• 1 1/2 T flour
• 1/2 c milk
• 1/2 c THRIVE Cheese powder
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
• salt and pepper to taste

The recipe also calls for seasoned bread crumbs as a topping at the end and then has you broil it. I skipped that step to make it more comparable to the other recipes.

Instructions:
*Cook Macaroni. (I just used the left over 3+ cups of noodles I still had. Not sure how that equates to 1/2 pound dry noodles)
* Whisk together cheese blend powder with 1 cup hot water or milk (I just used the 1/2 cup powder I had previously dissolved in hot water from recipe #3.) Let stand 5 minutes.
*Heat oil and butter in saucepan until butter melts. Whisk in flour, stirring until smooth. Let butter, flour and oil cook for about 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Slowly add milk, continuing to whisk. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly until milk has thickened. Add cheese sauce mixture  and cook until heated through. If sauce seems to thin, add 1 tsp corn starch stirred into 1 Tbsp cold water and bring to a boil. Add nutmeg, cayenne pepper, salt and pepper. Add in noodles.

Review: So for those who aren't familiar with cooking, this recipe starts with what is called a "basic white sauce" or a "Roux" sauce. 1 part Fat(oil or butter)+ 1 part flour + milk to desired consistency. It's a lovely foundation for many a recipe. You can use oil or butter interchangeably, as long as its 1 1/2 T worth. Once you've added the milk (I used a 1/2 cup prepared THRIVE Powdered milk) and it's thickened, it'll look like this:

And once you pour in your cheesy water, you'll get a beautiful orange sauce like this:

I didn't feel the need to add cornstarch to thicken the sauce up at all. I forgot to try the sauce before adding the nutmeg and cayenne. I wish I had, because the nutmeg adds so much to the flavor, its not fair to compare to the others. The nutmeg and cayenne gave this one a little more sophisticated taste. I think next time though, I'll just stick to salt and pepper. I think that with salt and pepper only, this Roux sauce recipe from the Macaroni can will be the best of the four recipes for a traditional bowl of feel good mac n' cheese. The consistency was great, the flavor was smooth and mild and cheesy. Dustin hasn't rated this one yet, because he hasn't tried it (That was a lot of Mac N Cheese to make in one night!) But I gave it to Jason for lunch today, and he cleaned his bowl. I also had it for lunch today with a little ground beef mixed in and it was a great meal. I would give it a 7 as an every day and an 8.5 as an emergency.

SUMMARY: The Cheese blend can make a pretty decent bowl of Mac N' Cheese, if you find the right recipe. I recommend Recipe #4 personally, though Recipe #2 is decent as well. If you're interested in buying some Cheese Blend, a #10 can is only $22.79, or a Pantry Can is only $8.49. Or you can buy the Kid's Special 6 pack, which gives you 6 #10 cans - 2 of Cheese Blend, 2 of Elbow Macaroni, 1 of Powdered Milk, 1 of FD Strawberries, all for only $52.99. (Buying them individually at the lowest price each would cost you $105.84, so that's a GREAT deal if you're looking for those items!)