Free Online Courses from BYU Continuing Education

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About Our Free Online Courses

Our free online courses offer a variety of classes from self-improvement, to academic subjects. While free courses are not for credit, they’re a great way to learn something new at no cost to you! So whether you’re looking to better understand personal finance, learn how to build your family tree, or just try out our site before enrolling, our free courses are a valuable resource.

Recommended Free Courses

• FAMLF 071 — Strengthening Marriage and Family: Proclamation Principles and Scholarship
• MUSIC 071 — Organ Performance, Level 1, Self-Study
• PFIN 070 — Marriott School of Management: Personal Finance
• NT 071 — The New Testament
• CIT 070 — The Citizen's Guide to American Politics

Family History / Genealogy — Introductory

FHGEN 070 — Introduction to Family History Research
FHGEN 075 — Writing Family History
FHGEN 080 — Helping Children Love Your Family History

Family History / Genealogy — Record Type

FHREC 071 — Family Records
FHREC 073 — Vital Records
FHREC 076 — Military Records

Family History / Genealogy — Regional and Ethnic

FHFRA 071 — French Research
FHGER 071 — Germany Research
FHHUG 071 — Huguenot Research
FHSCA 073 — Scandinavia Research

Family Life

FAMLF 071 — Strengthening Marriage and Family: Proclamation Principles and Scholarship
FAMLF 072 — Free! Building A Functional Family: Essential Elements
FAMLF 075 — Dating: Romance And Reason

Family Life — Parenting

PARNT 074 — Rearing Responsible and Righteous Teens in a Wicked World
PARNT 075 — Developing Self-Reliant People

Gardening

GARD 071 — Planning And Preparing Your Garden
GARD 072 — Growing Vegetables, Fruits, And Nuts

History and Government

CIT 070 — The Citizen's Guide to American Politics

Mathematics

MATH 071 — Basic Arithmetic, Part 1
MATH 072 — Basic Arithmetic, Part 2
MATH 073 — Basic Arithmetic, Part 3
MATH 074 — Basic Arithmetic, Part 4

Music

MUSIC 071 — Organ Performance, Level 1
MUSIC 072 — Organ Performance, Level 2

Personal and Family Finance

PFIN 070 — Marriott School of Management: Personal Finance
PFIN 075 — Student Finance

Personal Development

ESL 071 — English as a Second Language--Chinese Speakers
ESL 072 — Basic English for Spanish Speakers
PDEV 075 — Self-Discipline
PDEV 076 — Honesty
PDEV 077 — Trust
PDEV 080 — Study Skills

Recreation

REC 076 — Bowling
REC 077 — Intermediate Swimming

Religion - LDS Temples

TMPLS 071 — Temples Past and Present

Religion - Missionary Preparation - Youth

MISS 071 — Preparing to Serve the Lord

Religion - Teachings of the Living Prophets

PROPH 071 — The Living Prophets

Religion - The Book of Mormon

BM 071 — 1 Nephi 1 through Alma 30
BM 072 — Alma 30 through Moroni

Religion - The Doctrine and Covenants

DC 071 — Sections 1 through 87
DC 072 — Sections 88 through Official Declaration 2

Religion - The Joseph Smith Translation

JST 071 — The Jospeh Smith Translation of the Bible, Part 1

Religion - The New Testament

NT 071 — The New Testament
NT 072 — The New Testament
NT 080 — The Writings of John: The Gospel

Religion - The Old Testament

OT 071 — Genesis 1-50

Spelling

SPELL 071 — Contractions, Capitalization, and 'ei/ie' Words
SPELL 072 — Word Endings And Plurals
SPELL 073 — Word Pairs

Healthy Holiday Feasting

 http://www.hashworks.com/foodstorage. 
 
Holidays are hectic. Between presents, decorating, crafts, holiday performances, entertaining, and snacking on all kinds of treats, it's no wonder we're tired -- and no coincidence that everyone's getting sick in January and February. But it doesn't have to be this way. Here are quick tips and good recipes for healthy holiday feasting. They'll help you save time and money. They'll also help you avoid the cycle of being tired during the holidays and sick afterwards. And many of them use traditional food storage foods.

Don't think of cutting out -- think of adding in!

If you think in terms of not eating holiday treats, you set yourself up for a struggle right when temptation is greatest. Instead of thinking in terms of cutting out treats and traditional holiday foods, think of adding in lots of good, healthy food. Then go ahead and have some goodies without feeling guilty. Concentrate on eating well, with a focus on eating these things:

• Foods that are high in fiber
• Lots of fresh vegetables and fruits (5-8 servings a day)
• Whole-grain cereals, breads, muffins

Make it convenient to eat good food

With tempting goodies so readily available, you have to make it convenient to eat healthy food. This isn't as hard as it may seem at first. First commit to do it, then prepare in advance:

• Include at least one fruit and one vegetable with every meal, and snack on fruits and vegetables during the day.
• Prepare fruits and vegetables in advance so they're easy to snack on (peel and section oranges, cut melons up into chunks, wash grapes and take them off the stems, peel and cut up carrots or get baby carrots).
• To encourage nibbling, put fruits and vegetables where you can see them in the fridge; set a bowl of them out where they're easy to snack on.
• If you're going to be baking sweets, set out a bowl of finger fruits/veggies right where you're working. Then, when you're tempted to dig into the dough or the batter, eat the fruits or vegetables instead.
• For easy whole-grain cereals, put whole or cracked grains in the crockpot the night before and cook overnight on low. Then the cereal is ready in the morning; all you have to do is dish it out. Cereals like oatmeal and germade only take a few minutes to cook in the microwave. Put them on before you step into the shower, and they'll be ready when you get out.
• Bake big batches of whole wheat bread, muffins, pancakes, waffles, etc. Then freeze and take out as needed.
• When you bake goodies, try to put sneak in fiber by using ingredients such as whole wheat flour, rolled oats, and all kinds of nuts. That way, you can get away with some sugar, candy, etc.

Simplify

Holidays are fun, but busy. Here are ideas for simplifying:
Plan quick meals. For everyday meals, plan things that take 30 minutes or less to prepare. The key to doing this is to plan ahead, stock your house with things your family likes and will eat, and make meal plans so you can combine tasks.
Do the day's cooking all at once. Instead of fixing breakfast, lunch, and dinner at different times during the day, do everything at once: Cook the breakfast cereal or whatever, make lunch sandwiches, and start a dinner stew in the crockpot, all at the same time. Then you only have to clean up the kitchen once. Plus, you enjoy the peace of mind that comes from knowing dinner will be ready at the end of a busy day.
Do a bunch at once. Make enough salad to last three days, then store a day's worth in a ziploc bag to keep it crisp and fresh. Prepare fruits and vegetables for snacking this way, too. When you bake, double or triple the batch, then freeze the extras.

Festive Fresh Fruit Salad

Cut up any fresh fruit you wish -- such as apples, oranges, bananas, kiwi, pineapple, grapes. Stir in a cup of lemon yogurt, then sprinkle coconut on top. To make it "Christmas-y," slice kiwis and place on top, along with a sprinkling of dried cranberries. This is really easy and pretty, perfect for entertaining.

Easy, Nutritious Suppers

For easy nutritious suppers, follow this formula:
1) Fix a soup in the crockpot (start it in the morning - try beef stew with stew meat, barley, potatoes, onions, carrots; chicken soup with chicken, onions, carrots, potatoes; chili with canned tomatoes, pre-fried hamburger, and kidney beans, seasoned with chili powder; broccoli soup; potato soup; clam chowder, etc.)
2) Have a fresh salad (prepare 3 days' worth at once, as explained earlier)
3) Have a slice of good whole-wheat bread
4) If you wish, have a whole-grain cookie or some whole-grain cake
Vegetable Bags for Easy Soup
Preparing and freezing "vegetable bags" ahead of time makes it easy to fix a quick batch of crockpot soup. In the morning, just throw in the vegetable bag, water, meat, and seasonings. Cook on low all day, and it's ready for dinner when you are.
To prepare vegetable bags, buy carrots, onions, and celery in quantity (2 lbs carrots, 6 onions, and a large bunch of celery make 4-6 vegetable bags). Run the carrots through the food processor, and chop the celery and onions.
Then combine 1 cup of each vegetable in ziploc bags (3 cups total) and freeze. This is a good basic combination that lends itself to lots of variations. When you make your soup, you can add anything else you want -- potatoes, rice, noodles, canned peas, corn, beans, and so on.

Basic & Expanded Food Storage

  http://www.hashworks.com/foodstorage.htm#Aug%201997:Basic%20and%20Expanded%20Food%20Storage Putting together a year's supply of food can be a daunting task! How do you do it? A step at a time:

1. Acquire and begin using basic food storage.

2. Decide what you'd like in your expanded food storage.

3. Gradually these items as they go on sale, then store, and use.

Basic Food Storage
Basic food storage should include life-sustaining food for a year. It might not be gourmet, but it would keep you alive! Basic food storage requirements for an average adult for one year are as follows.

Grains (wheat, rice, corn, etc.) 400 lbs

Nonfat dry milk 16 lbs

Sugar/honey 60 lbs

Salt 5 lbs

Fat/oil 20 lbs

Dried legumes 60 lbs

Water 2 wks supply

(Taken from Essentials of Home Production & Storage, published by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.)
Expanded Food Storage
In addition to the basic food storage listed in the table above, most of us would like to have some of the things we use everyday -- meats, cheeses, vegetables, seasonings, and so on -- on hand.
Here's a simple way to gradually acquire expanded food storage:
1. Keep a list handy in the kitchen. As you cook day to day, note what you use that you'd like to keep on hand.
2. Watch the sale flyers that come with the newspaper on Sundays and Tuesdays. Note the prices for things you use all the time. When there's a good sale on an item, buy in bulk -- enough for 3 months, 6 months, or 1 year, depending on how perishable the item is and what you can afford.
Buying on sale this way, you can get almost everything at ½ to 1/3 off the usual retail price. The savings allow you to build up expanded food storage at very little extra cost.
Cookbook Review: Too Busy to Cook
Emergencies that might force us to live on wheat and beans for an extended period of time are rare. But "everyday emergencies," when life gets super busy, are common. Wouldn't we all like to have lots of pre-cooked meals on hand as everyday-emergency food storage? (How about a month of meals on hand before a wedding, new baby, or missionary homecoming? Or at the beginning of December -- no cooking during the Christmas rush!)
Too Busy to Cook explains a basic method for cooking about a month's worth of meals at a time, which you then freeze so they're at your fingertips. These are the basic steps:
1. Choose 10 entrees you'd like to serve in the next month or so.
2. Make a grocery list of all the ingredients, then shop for what you need.
2. Prepare individual ingredients all at once (cook meat, grate cheese, chop vegetables).
4. Assemble the meals and freeze.
There's a set of 10 recipes with a shopping list and detailed instructions to get you started. The book also includes another set of 10 recipes with less-detailed instructions; reference tables; ideas for cutting back on fat and eating healthier; and a recipe section with about 40 recipes.
Too Busy to Cook (9.63 at Seagull books)
Lori L. Rogers & Chriscilla M. Thornock
Published 1994, 100 pages, softback
Everyday-Emergency Meal: Super Easy Fried Chicken

1 pkg croutons

4-6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

2-3 T butter

Rinse chicken breasts. Grind croutons to fine crumbs in blender. Put in large plastic bag with 2 chicken breasts; shake to coat. Repeat til all are done. Spray large fry pan with non-stick cooking spray & melt the butter. Put the chicken in & cook for 15 minutes each side. This recipe is also good with chicken tenders, for finger food.
Food Storage Recipes: Cool Summer Salads
3-Bean Salad (Georgianne Dalzen)
Dressing:
1. In blender, mix:

• ½ - 1 C sugar 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp paprika 1 T worchestershire
• ½ tsp dry mustard 1 T onion, chopped fine

2. Then gradually add

• 1 C salad oil
• 1 C cider vinegar

3. Last, add

• ½ C toasted sesame seeds (Toast in oven 10-15 min at 300)

Serve over rice or beans. May add your choice of green beans, raisins, peanuts, bell pepper, jicima, shredded carrots, onions, garbanzo beans, kidney beans.
Aztec Salad (Georgianne Dalzen)
Dressing

• 2 T seasoned rice vinegar
• juice of one lime
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp coriander
• ½ tsp crushed red pepper (optional)
• ½ tsp salt

Salad

• 2 cans black beans
• 2 C frozen corn
• 2 large tomatoes
• 1 large green pepper
• 1 red or yellow pepper
• 1 red onion, chopped
• 3/4 C chopped cilantro

Chicken Salad (Serves 20+)
1. Mix 2 T oil, 2 T orange juice concentrate, 2 T vinegar, and 1 tsp salt.
2. Pour above mixture over 5 C cooked, cubed chicken (6-8 breasts). Marinate overnight.
3. Next day, add 3 C cold cooked rice, 1 13-oz can pinepple tidbits, drained, 1 can mandarin oranges, 1½ C chopped celery.
4. Mix together 1 C mayonaise & 1 C Miracle Whip, then add to chicken mixture.

Oatmeal

 http://www.hashworks.com/foodstorage.htm
Oatmeal
Oatmeal is one of the healthiest foods around. It's rich in soluble fiber, and has been proven to help lower cholesterol. It's also inexpensive and keeps well, making it a good choice for long-term food storage.
Instant vs. Regular. Instant oatmeal is just regular oatmeal that's been broken up so it will cook faster. All grains store better and longer if they're kept intact, so regular oatmeal is best for food storage. If you want instant oatmeal, just put regular oatmeal in the blender and pulse it a few times.
Where to buy. You can buy oatmeal in small quantities at the grocery store, but it's much less expensive to buy in bulk. 
What do you do with it? What do you do with 50 pounds of oatmeal besides eat mush every morning? All kinds of things.

• Oatmeal itself is a very versatile baking ingredient. Use it in
• * Granola
• * Cookies
• * Muffins
• * Crisps and cobblers
• * Meatballs and meatloaf

You can also make oat flour by grinding regular oatmeal in the blender (just pulse until it's very fine). Oat flour can be substituted for part of the regular flour in almost any recipe. Oat flour has all the health benefits of regular oatmeal. Plus, it's an ideal ingredient for low-sugar, low-fat treats. Because it's slightly sweet, you can cut back on sugar in a recipe. And because oat flour holds moisture, you can cut back on the fat in a recipe.

Oatmeal Recipes

Classic Oatmeal Cookies (Abt 60 2-inch cookies) oven 375 bake for 10-12 minutes
1 C butter/margerine ½ C sugar ½ C brown sugar 1 egg 1 teaspoon vanilla	Cream til fluffy.
1 ½ C flour 1 tsp baking soda ½ tsp salt 1 tsp cinnamon	Stir together, then add to creamed mixture.
3 C oatmeal 6 oz (1/2 bag) choc chips 1 C chopped walnuts	Fold in. Drop by rounded tablespoons on ungreased cookie sheet, bake 10-12 minutes.
* To reduce the fat, cut butter to ½ C butter and add ½ C applesauce.

Non-fat, Low-sugar Banana Muffins oven 350 15 minutes
1½ C whole wheat flour 1/3 C brown sugar 1 T baking powder ½ C oatmeal flour 1/4 C oatmeal	Sift together.
1 C mashed, very ripe bananas (abt 2 large) 1/3 C milk/ buttermilk 1 tsp vanilla 2 egg whites	Combine, then stir into dry ingredients just until moistened. Bake in muffin cups coated with non-stick spray.

Berry Cobbler Topping (This recipe is taken from Fat-free Holiday Recipes, by Sandra Woodruff) oven 375 45 minutes
A sweet biscuit-type topping for any kind of berry cobbler (blueberry, raspberry, etc.)
1/3 C oat flour 2/3 C flour 1/4 C sugar 1 ½ tsp baking powder	Stir together.
½ C buttermilk	Add and stir just till moistened. Spoon on top of berry mixture and cook for 45 minutes, or til browned.
* To make a simple, low-sugar berry cobbler: combine 6 C berries, 3 T cornstarch, and 1/3 C sugar.

Oatmeal for One
In large serving bowl, combine 1/3 C oatmeal & 1 C water. Microwave for 3-4 minutes.
Muffins for One or Two (Fast, easy breakfasts)
Bake any muffin recipe as usual, then freeze. Individual muffins microwave in about 45 seconds, for great snacks or very fast breakfasts.

Easy Meatballs (Abt 60 1" meatballs) oven 350 25 minutes
1½ lbs lean hamburger 3/4 C oatmeal (*Can pulse into oat flour) 1 egg or 2 egg whites ½ C onion, fine dice 1½ C beef bouillon ½ tsp pepper	Mix thoroughly. Shape into 1" balls. Coat cookie sheet with nonstick spray, and bake meatballs for 25 minutes.
Fast, easy meals: Bake recipe in bulk, then freeze meatballs in meal-sized portions. Microwave & serve with frozen/canned veggies for a fast, easy meal. Eat all different ways: * Spaghetti sauce, meatballs, spaghetti * Sweet and sour, meatballs, rice * Cream of mushroom soup, meatballs, noodles Families on the go: * Combine meatballs and sauce in crockpot at beginning of the day. Dinner's ready when you are; plus, family members can serve themselves as they come and go. For one or two: * Make individual mini-meatloafs in muffin tins. Freeze in meal-sized portions. * Cook meatballs in bulk, but freeze small portions in ziploc bags. * Use the crockpot idea above, but use a "crockette" (very small crockpot, about the size of potpourri steamers).

Are You READY?

Are You Ready? provides a step-by-step approach to disaster preparedness by walking the reader through how to get informed about local emergency plans, how to identify hazards that affect their local area and how to develop and maintain an emergency communications plan and disaster supplies kit. Other topics covered include evacuation, emergency public shelters, animals in disaster and information specific to people with access and functional needs.
Are You Ready? also provides in-depth information on specific hazards including what to do before, during and after each hazard type. The following hazards are covered: Floods, Tornadoes, Hurricanes, Thunderstorms and Lightning, Winter Storms and Extreme Cold, Extreme Heat, Earthquakes, Volcanoes, Landslide and Debris Flows (Mudslide), Tsunamis, Fires, Wildfires, Hazardous Materials Incidents, Household Chemical Emergencies, Nuclear Power Plant and Terrorism (including Explosion, Biological, Chemical, Nuclear and Radiological hazards).
Are You Ready? is also available in Spanish, and can be used in a variety of ways including as a read-through or reference guide. The guide can also be used as a study manual guide with credit awarded for successful completion and a 75 percent score on a final exam. Questions about the exam should be directed to the FEMA Independent Study Program by calling 1-800-238-3358 or by going to training.fema.gov/is.
Also available is the Are You Ready? Facilitator Guide (IS-22FG). The Facilitator Guide is a tool for those interested in delivering Are You Ready? content in a small group or classroom setting. The Facilitator Guide is an easy to use manual that has instruction modules for adults, older children and younger children. A resource CD is packaged with the Facilitator Guide that contains customizable presentation materials, sample training plans and other disaster preparedness education resources.
Copies of Are You Ready? and the Facilitator Guide are available through the FEMA publications warehouse (1.800.480.2520). For large quantities, your organization may reprint the publication. Please visit our reprint page for more information.
For more publications on disaster preparedness, visit the Community and Family Preparedness webpage.
Are You Ready? An In-depth Guide to Citizen Preparedness Full Document (PDF - 21Mb)

http://www.ready.gov/are-you-ready-guide