Favorite Off Grid Recipes: Simple Cooking From Scratch

Our generation has lost the art of cooking. At the same time, we are more fascinated with food than we have ever been. Cooking shows are a big hit and pictures of beautiful dishes are so popular on social media. But that fascination doesn’t seem to translate to time spent in the kitchen. I think part of the reason is that we realize we cannot duplicate what we see on TV and in pictures. So instead we go the easy route with fast food, take-out, and convenience food from a box. That makes me sad because I believe that cooking is such an important homesteading skill. And it doesn’t have to be difficult!

I am sharing my favorite recipes with you, hoping that it will inspire you to get in the kitchen and learn how to cook from scratch. I get so many emails from people who have the desire to learn to cook, but many don’t know where to start. I say, “Start with the basics and stop looking at a bunch of complicated ingredient-heavy recipes!” Here you will find simple, delicious and versatile recipes that are the building blocks for meals that I make every day for my family.

Since I’m a modern homesteader, I often think about what the first homesteaders cooked, well over a century ago. I imagine the pioneers with their chuck-wagons making camp for the night, cooking up a pot of beans, skillet of corn bread, and smoked venison or any animal they had killed that evening. Their “recipes” consisted of things that they grew up knowing how to make and never needed a recipe to duplicate. They always made them the way that their mothers did.

What makes us think we need recipes for elaborate food to make our families happy? I need one good biscuit recipe, pie crust recipe, spaghetti sauce recipe, corn bread recipe, etc. that I can make time after time. My Grandma cooked that way. She never used recipes because she had them all in her head after making them for so many years. Her meals were always delicious and she got them on the table in no time! I hope that I can be like her by the time I have my own grandchildren. It makes me happy to need to refer to a recipe or cookbook less and less. You can get there too! It definitely saves time in the kitchen when you have it all in your head!

Many of my recipes are things that I learned to make growing up. Some are ones that I found after I was married, and became regular meals on our table. And some are things that I made-up myself after frustratingly looking at online recipes and never having all the ingredients. All of them use things that you most likely have on hand in your pantry, and if you don’t, you should! Because I live off grid most of my ingredients are shelf stable items like dry goods and canned items. So these are great recipes for learning to be prepared in a grid goes down situation. Learning to cook from the pantry also means less trips to the store and more time in your life for other things. Anything fresh that I use is usually produce from our garden or meat we have raised and butchered ourselves on our homestead.

Healthy food with simple ingredients that can be prepared quickly. Does that sound too good to be true? That’s how I cook for my family every day and you can too. Please check back again. I will add one of my favorite recipes every week.

Recipe Links:

Baked Pancakes

Baking Powder Biscuits