What to Do When You Get Low on Food in the Bush

Earlier this year, I posted about how we have to stock up on food supplies to last us until Christmas because there are very limited resources out in our corner of Alaska. Now, as we near Christmas, we are definitely starting to feel the effects of getting low on food. Some items are easy to replace, like canned goods and dry goods because they can be ordered through Target or Amazon. Meat, dairy, frozen and fresh vegetables, and many other items cannot be shipped by simply ordering online though. We either have to pay a personal shopper or go back to town and restock. Judging by the state of our deep freeze, which was previously so packed we could barely open it, I’d say it is time to start looking into our next big trip.

In the meantime, we’ve been getting a little creative. Our meals keep getting more and more inventive, like these mini pot pies that I made last week.

While pot pie isn’t in itself a very inventive meal, we faced some unique challenges. First of all, I am completely out of flour and our shipment from Amazon hasn’t come in. Luckily, I had some crescent rolls in the fridge that we’d never used. So, I rolled the crescent roll dough out flat and sliced it into small squares. The second problem we ran into was the lack of vegetables. All we had was canned and we didn’t have any mixed veggies. So, I decided to make my own using a variety of canned veggies that I mixed up in a bowl.

 

 

 

Obviously, using this many cans made a TON of mixed veggies and we weren’t going to use them all up that quickly. I didn’t want to waste them though, so I decided to try freezing them in little individual-sized servings. I probably won’t attempt to just eat them plain, but I think they’ll work alright baked into things (like more pot pies – haha).

The pot pies themselves came out pretty tasty. I mixed the veggies with cream of mushroom soup, cheddar cheese, and various spices. Cody wanted meat in his so I added beef for him (usually we do chicken in his and faux-sausage crumbles in mine, but we are currently out of both). I did have a little bit of dough leftover too, so I rolled those into crescent roll shapes and stuffed them with a little leftover peppermint chocolate I had. After I baked them, I topped them with a little powdered sugar.

Overall, things turned out good, but we are definitely starting to feel the strain of needing to do our next big shopping trip. We’ve been buying more and more stuff at our local store, which I like to support, but when milk costs $20/gallon and bread is $10/loaf and they don’t carry 99% of what you need, it can get a little tricky. I’ll be excited to stock back up soon.


2 Responses to What to Do When You Get Low on Food in the Bush

  1. Can you order powdered milk from Target or Amazon? I know it’s not tasty to drink alone, but we live in a country where the milk isn’t particularly safe to drink, and powdered milk is helpful for baking, oatmeal, and in our coffee. You may already be doing that, but I thought I’d bring it up, because it might make your dairy possibilities a little more reliable.

    • We do! We actually buy powdered milk, eggs, and butter. We also have a group of 10 or so chickens living in town, so luckily eggs are regularly available. Amazon will ship almond and soy milk to us, so we do buy that often. It’s hardest to get dairy items like cheese, yogurt, heavy whipping cream, etc. I really miss regular 2% milk though…it’s my guilty pleasure! Haha.

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