About a month ago Misty Marsh from http://www.yourownhomestore.com/ sent me a couple of free samples of Thrive freeze dried food. I received Cooked White Meat Chopped Chicken and also a chicken salad spread. I promised to use them but with all the traveling I've been doing lately I hadn't gotten around do trying them out. Tonight's dinner includes the cooked white meat. We are having pasta and chicken (the freeze dried chicken) with alfredo sauce (including powdered milk), peas from the garden, and peach juice (canned during the summer from our fruit trees) to drink. I'd make rolls but I just don't feel like it. I have to travel again tonight and tomorrow so I'm just not in the mood to do lots of baking.
I'd read other reviews about freeze dried meats and some have been good and some have been not too good. Well I think it's great stuff. At least if you compare it properly. Have you ever boiled a chicken? No seasonings, just boiled the chicken. That's exactly what this tastes like. Boiled chicken white meat without any seasoning. After all, I'd like to be the one to season the food the way I want it seasoned. I say it's great. The taste, the texture, exactly like cut up pieces of boiled chicken. Yum. You must be thinking right now that I'm a little nuts. Well, maybe, but back to the food...
First I do want to say if you didn't read the packaging well, or you didn't do the simple math, you would really mess things up and be disappointed in the product. On the front it shows the net weight of the package as 2.29 oz and it serves six. On the back of the package in the nutrition facts it tells the serving size, which is 1/4 cup dry. This would mean 1 1/2 cups of dry chicken (6 servings x 1/4 cup). I opened the package and yes, there was 1 1/2 cups of the freeze dried meat.
The confusing part was the rehydration instructions. That starts out with, "To make 1 lb. of chicken, combine 2 1/2 c. Thrive Chicken with 2 c. warm water." If I hadn't read the package any more thoroughly I would have wrongly assumed that the 2.29 oz. package that serves six would rehydrate to 1 pound of chicken. Wrong! It rehydrates to a little over 1/2 pound! 2 1/2 cups of freeze dried chicken is ten servings worth of chicken and this pack was six servings.
At $35 for the can of 48 servings, you are paying about $7.00 per pound for white meat chicken. It's certainly cheaper to pay $2 a can for the 12 oz. Costco canned chicken white meat, which comes to a little under $3.00 per pound. Of course, freeze dried is long lasting and much lighter in weight so there are advantages to having it in your storage program along side the bulky canned chicken. At some point I would like to have both options in my storage program.
Misty does offer free samples, so please check out her website. Don't take the free sample if you have no intention of ordering. While she doesn't know if you are going to order or not when she sends you the sample, she does have to pay for these samples. They are free to you, not free to her, so don't take advantage of her generosity, please.
I am going to purchase the freeze dried shredded cheese from Misty once my month of no spending is over. I'm sure at some point I will add the meat to my storage program but for now, no. I'd rather buy the cheese!
I got a comment from Misty but messed up posting it and erased it. I had it copied before I messed it up so I'm posting it this way.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the wonderful review! I wasn't expecting a review at all so this was a very pleasant surprise. I'm glad you liked it. One thing I have done to be able to afford the more expensive meats and cheeses is to purchase and regularly us some products (like eggs, tomato powder and blueberries) that are less expensive than at the grocery store. Then, I use my "surplus" to splurge on the bigger ticket items!