A bit of extra protein?

A couple of years ago we decided it would be a good idea to have 6 weeks of nonperishable food on hand in case of a disruption in the food supply, whether from a pan epidemic of flu, or an earthquake on the New Madrid fault destroying the infrastructure, or some other reason. So we bought canned fish, canned vegetables, boxes of dehydrated potatoes, that sort of thing.

The canned food lasts a very long time, but some of the boxed items, like the dehydrated potatoes and saltine crackers, are prone to infestations with insects (weevils, miller moths), and so we find it helpful to periodically eat the emergency food and then replace it.

And being that Fall is in the air – we could see our breath this morning when we left at 7:30 AM for our morning walk – I decided to use some of the dehydrated potatoes to make a hearty cabbage-potato soup that we enjoy.

This is the basic recipe – of course I did not follow these directions exactly because I was using the dehydrated potatoes. It comes from the “Natural Healing Cookbook”:

Browned Potato and Cabbage Soup

3 cups cubed potatoes
6-7 cups chopped cabbage, about 1 lb
1 cup water
3 cups chopped yellow onions
2 tsp corn oil
2 tbsp whole wheat flour
2 1/2 cups skim milk
1 tbsp tamari (I use soy sauce)
Dash cayenne pepper

Cook the potatoes and the cabbage in the water until tender. Saute the onions in a large skillet with the oil until golden. Add flour and toss until onions are coated. Continue to cook and stir over medium heat for a minute or two. Add the milk slowly, stirring after each addition until milk is incorporated. Add tamari. Stir onion sauce into the undrained potatoes and cabbage. Add cayenne pepper if you want to. Simmer soup an additional 10 to 15 minutes over low heat. To thicken soup, remove about 1 cup of vegetables and potatoes and process in a blender at low speed and stir back into the soup. Soup tastes even better the next day.

So, I got ready to make soup and picked up the pan and found this.

The government allows a certain percentage of insect parts in processed foods and an Ohio University fact sheet estimates that we eat from one to two pounds of insects each year, and without knowing it.

Well, we did not get any extra protein from little fellow in our soup. I took it outside...

 
and it made a clean getaway.