So very sorry to hear this about your wife. Congestive heart failure is not something that needs to be played around with. One of the coonditions my MIL died of and also something my Mom's Husband has. He is completely on oxygen.
We found that by eliminating all salt and watching the diet extremely closely we would influence the out come some. She also does lots of herbs for heart, lungs, diabetes... The doctors are amazed that she is still alive, they have been for several years now.. This year she got a new pacemaker and cataract surgery and they were talking about making adjustments to the pacemaker to try to extend the battery life to 6+ years... Pretty good for someone who should be dead already!
Back to cooking and pantry meals. The wife actually made the whole Thanksgiving feast for 8 people by herself this year and every thing was GREAT! How you may ask? She started cooking 8 days before the meal, she would do part of a dish in the morning, (chopping and such), then rest, then assemble it and bake, then rest. I was only needed to pull things out of the oven or stir at the end of things! She said that she wanted to do it because it may be her last chance....
I liked the video that
@Weedygarden posted (#25) about using dehydrated stuff to make a variety of shelf stable pantry meals, but I have to wonder about the salt content of the dehydrated sausage and stuff. She used oxygen adsorbers in her quart jars, I would just use the seal-a-meal jar attachment to pull a vacuum on the jar for storage and save the adbsorber.
I'm wondering about making a stroganoff type meal using venison or beef....
We make a 2 jar shelf stable meal, 1 has dry egg noodles and the other has a scratch made chicken soup; to prepare you pour egg noodles into a large sauce pan, add just enough water to cover the noodles and cook until almost tender, pour off some of the water to make room for the chicken soup, add the soup and finish cooking. The first time we made it we used a quart of noodles and a quart of soup, it was okay but too many noodles, in the future will will use half as many noodles.
In January we are planning to can a few cases of low salt shelf stable meals, right now the list is: stewed lentils, pea soup with ham, venison stew, beef soup with vegetables and barley, chicken noodle soup, potato leek soup, chili, and Cannellini bean soup. Actually, we will be making everything from my list on post #20 from this thread except the meatloaf and the sloppy Joe filling.
My wife makes a weekly Quiche with mushrooms, broccoli, green onions, bell pepper, and Gruyère cheese, we cut it into 8 slices and she eats 1 for breakfast each day. Sometimes she switches it up by adding spinach or some other vegetable.
I scrambled a dozen eggs yesterday and I will be adding crumbled cooked beacon to it, measuring it out into single servings and then freezing it for my breakfast menu.. it's a first for it so I can't say how it will turn out yet.
with someone wearing a mask in their own home even in 2021? Only time I wore one was at work when they forced us, so I could keep my job. I won't ever again. Just an observation. It's only a comment. Not trying to take away the focus of the original pantry meals.
