Recently I received an email from Valley Foods asking if I would like to try two of their new recipes. Of course, I said yes! They sent a couple of packets each of Irish Pub Cheddar Potato Soup and Mango Habanero Chili, which I have not tried yet but will try soon and will let you know. It sounds quite interesting.
Before discussing our opinion on the potato soup, I don’t think anyone who’s been watching the news would question the value in having some sort of food supply on hand, at all times, for any disasters that may come our way. You’ve heard me say it many times before, but our food supply is fragile. It doesn’t take much to interrupt it. Stores don’t keep a lot of inventory on hand. People panic and buy more than they need, leaving nothing for those who arrive at the stores later.
I’ve also always given the example of our hurricane preps when I was a kid. We bought lots of stuff that had a long shelf life, but it was never the kind of things we would eat, short of being desperate, and thankfully, desperation never set in and those hurricane preps mostly got tossed.
It is so important to (1) have a supply of food and (2) make sure it’s food that you don’t mind eating, or, may even look forward to eating.
Valley Foods is a reputable company. They care about the products they sell and they want to produce the best quality they can possibly produce.
Even though I’m a canner and a freezer and a dehydrator myself, I still keep a good bit of freeze dried food on hand for several reasons:
- It’s fairly inexpensive, especially if you buy a little at a time.
- It’s commercially sealed and has a 25 year shelf life so, no matter how well I process my food, it isn’t going to last as long as the freeze dried foods I buy.
- It’s light weight! I could pretty easily throw a month’s worth of food into a back pack and carry it without any problems at all.
- It’s tasty!
So . . here’s our review of the Irish Pub Cheddar Potato Soup:
Valley Foods Freeze Dried Foods
My first thought was wrong, but when I initially opened the package, I thought . . this is a skimpy amount for two people. I know that suggested serving sizes and what we eat are often very different and we should probably be eating much smaller amounts. The package directions indicated I should boil 2 cups of water and add the soup mix. I did everything according to directions and ended up adding about another cup of water because it was really thick!
Irish Pub Cheddar Potato Soup
The potatoes rehydrated perfectly and tasted fresh! You can see there are plenty of potatoes! The seasoning was great. I could have added grated cheddar, green onions, sour cream . . and a number of other things but I wanted to try this straight out of the package just to see what it would taste like without added ingredients/garnishments . . just in case I was in an emergency situation and didn’t have other ingredients to add.
Even Vince loved it. The serving size ended up being completely sufficient. We had soup and sandwiches for lunch and we each had more soup than we would get at most restaurants if we had ordered soup and sandwich.
Again, I encourage you to have at least a few days of food stored and if you want an easy way that takes not much planning and very little storage, I highly recommend Valley Foods.