Let’s do the can-can

I want to give you a bit of background information on our sustainability library before getting to the good stuff which is about canning cheese. Our local store is a wonderful place. The downstairs part is the store proper. In a tiny space they manage to fit in a fabulous herb and spice section, a food preservation section with everything from canning and cheese making supplies to books and specialty items, a really good book selection, a local artisan area, the best deli in the world and even a rack for seeds. This is in addition to local produce and groceries. The upstairs has an apartment on one side and our library on the other. There is a bathroom, a kitchen, the Creamery office and the library, a beautiful space with hand made tables and book cases, comfortable chairs, a table with all of the co-op ordering info, a basket of yarn and knitting supplies that anybody can access, a seed exchage rack, high speed internet service and books on everything from green building to alternative medicine to gardening to nature to peak oil to politicsto home schooling to preparedness. There is also an amazing selection of magazines. A local person just donated a commercial quality magazine stand so the magazines can finally get organized. I was up there yesterday and found a huge pile, several year’s worth, of Backwoods Home. I have seen copies from time to time but this was the first time I sat down with a dozen issues and really looked at them. This is a very good read. I will warn you that it has a heavy Libertarian slant but the articles are among the best I have come across in terms of useful information. 

The best part of the magazine, for me anyway, was the “Ask Jackie” section. This lady is a canning expert. She cans everything I can plus a lot of stuff it would have not occurred to me to try. I bought some canned cheddar cheese from an on-line preparedness site just so I could review it. It was good but really expensive and out of the question for a lot of us trying to store food on a budget. I use powdered cheddar a lot and it’s not bad, but I love the idea of getting cheese on sale and canning it. Killene, over at Preparedness Pro uses  cheese wax and keeps hard cheeses for a long time that way but canning will allow you to keep softer cheeses too. The directions were clear and easy.

Cut cheese into one inch cubes and drop into wide mouth canning jars. Put the jars in a roasting pan that is half filled with boiling water. As the cheese melts, stir it down and add more cheese until the jar is filled, leaving 1/2 inch of head space. Seal and process in a water bath canner for 40 minutes. To use the cheese, heat the jar in hot water just barely melting the outside layer. Use a table knife to gently help slide the cheese on to a plate like you do with a Jello mold. Let the cheese set in a cold place, then slice or grate to use. She says the cheese may get a bit stronger tasting with age so it might be better to start with a mild variety.

Unfortunately, Jackie did not say which cheeses she recommended canning nor did she specifically say that any did not work but as the process is so simple, I am going to give this a try. I will do cheddar first then move on to some softer cheeses. I would love to come up with a healthy and inexpensive alternative to a Cheeze Whiz type of product. When I want to do that I will often write down the ingredients in the product I want to reproduce, omitting the ones that came from a chemistry lab and fiddle around until I like the results. I have had good luck with cream soups although I have not had luck with canning those. The soup always separates and curdles. Now I just store the ingredients and make it fresh every time. As I have so many mushrooms I want to give you my recipe for cream of mushrooms soup. I make a simple roux with 2 Tbsp of melted butter and 2 Tbsp of flour (use white flour for this). Stir in a cup of whole milk and a bullion cube, Heat but do not boil then add a pint jar of pressure canned mushrooms. I usually chop the mushrooms pretty fine first as I don’t care for big chunks in my soup. I love this soup although Bruce likes his with more mushrooms. If you are using fresh mushrooms, saute them first in a bit of butter or, if you want to be decadent, saute in bacon.

 

apples to oranges

I went to the market yesterday and only spent $50.00 which is pretty good. I was hoping to do a yearly chart that would track my spending on food ( I wanted to see where we ranked on the USDA table of food expenditures) but you can’t compare apples to oranges. For instance, if I look at my food budget I would have to include seeds but what about the freezer and the rototiller? How do I charge off a box of donated tomatoes or the gift of a crate of cucumbers? Where do vitamins fall? I don’t generally buy toiletries in the market but I do sometimes. They don’t count for the food tally but I don’t have time to go over each receipt and redo the math. I finally decided to forget the whole idea. We eat like kings some of the time, get by on some pretty pedestrian soups other times and I know I spend less than most people.

Last night we had tiny pork chops with boiled potatoes, applesauce, cucumbers in sour cream, beets and home made bread and butter. The only things we could not get locally were the salt, cinnamon, olive oil and sugar. I store all of the above and next year will use a lot more honey than sugar. It is a lovely thing to eat a meal that came mostly from one’s back yard.

I have been trying to catch up on the comments. I hope I have not neglected to welcome any newcomers. I try to comment when I can but on busy days it is all I can do to get them approved. Please know that I read and appreciate every one. I get really excited when they come into my inbox. Reading them is my reward when I come inside for a break.

My Excalibur is going full tilt. I have a bunch of mushrooms and celery drying nicely. Today I am drying corn. Bruce is working hard on the cold cellar. We need to do some rearranging to make better use of the basement space but it means emptying out this huge pantry cabinet full of home canned food. What a chore that will be! I think Bruce was surprised by how much food I put up.

We visited friends last night who are selling their house. We were checking out the basement and I was a bit taken aback by how much food they have. Moving my one pantry will be a breeze compared to moving that basement full of food. I have been in markets that were not as well stocked. I have gotten a few emails recently asking my about what I think will happen and how long I prepare for. As for the first question-I have no idea. I am no economist. I do look at what is happening on the economic front and I know it can’t be good. Common sense tells me this but as to inflation, deflation, stagflation, I think it’s anybody’s guess. I just don’t see how printing money on a whim is a good idea and I know my home could not run on debt. On the flu front, again, who really knows. This whole flu season could turn out to be a lot of sore throats and fevers and pass into Y2K history. On the other hand, a totally new virus could emerge tomorrow. Terrorism and nuclear accidents, grid collapse or EMP attack, maybe today, maybe never. I don’t spend too much time worrying about any of them. I prefer to take the example of my grandparents. They were too busy working to worry about what could happen and with a full panty and a wood stove, it didn’t really matter anyway. As for how long, it depends. My goal is to be prepared for a year but I know that in March, my selection of food would be pretty limited. We would eat but not the way we do in September.

 

Never put off until tomorrow

I got up early yesterday, planted some seeds for the fall garden, then got busy pulling all my onions and preparing the bed for next year. Bruce and I took a look at the corn and it hit  us at the same time. We need to get the new freezer! Right now as in we should have done this weeks ago.

I don’t care for canning corn. It takes a really long time and the result are only acceptable. Without electricity, I would but I have electricity so I don’t. I dry some and it actually tastes a lot better that way but again, it takes a lot of time and space and the corn all seems to be ready at once. Well, three at onces. We plant three varieties and have it over a long season but we have a lot in each season. The pigs will be ready soon too. I got on line and did the research to find the model I want and made some calls to find out who had one and would deliver within the next day or two.

We settled on the 24 cubic foot Kenmore. It’s huge and expensive but it has some features I wanted. It’s Energy Star and actually uses less power than some of the smaller models, has a quick freeze option so I can freeze large amounts at once and has a pop out lock and lighted interior.

This will give me three freezers. The one on the top of the refrigerator, the small upright in the mud room and now the huge chest in the basement. Bruce and I rearranged the food storage and he built a small freezer room yesterday. He framed in three walls and a floor and painted them up. The walls and flooring are insulated now and they will protect the freezer from some of the basement moisture. Eventually, the whole basement will be sealed from moisture and insulated but we won’t get to that until winter.

This whole project, as tough as it was on back, served the very useful purpose of making me take stock of my inventory. I went through a lot of food last year! I need to do a big shop this week and fill in around the edges. I have very little left in the way of canned juices and nearly no pineapple, the only canned fruit I purchase other than mandarin oranges when the are on sale. I got rid of some canned food that we are not going to eat like outdated green beans. The reason they were outdated is because nobody here can stand canned green beans. The pigs got those.

The other thing I did since I was down there and cleaning anyway was to rearrange my canning supplies. I had way more rings than I will ever need as I remove them as soon as the jars cool. A lot were rusty too. I took a rubber band and a paper clip and made a kind of bungee cord that I slipped through canning rings in groups of seven (a full canner load). I did this for 6 sets of large and small rings. I put these and all of my canning equipment like jar lifters and funnels in one 6 gallon bucket with a gamma seal and twist off lid. Now I have everything I need in one place and none of it is cluttering up my kitchen drawers. It will stay clean in the bucket and I can stop searching for a good lid in a bag with hundreds of  lids. I love getting organized. Systems are our friends.

I will do a whole post on this later this week but Bruce questioned the number of jars I have. I see his point as there are many extra but here is my reasoning. I pick up jars at tag sales and occasionally when I get to the market. They don’t deteriorate, I have the space and they are one thing I would really need if the grid ever collapsed. I could set up an outdoor kitchen and can all of the meat and frozen vegetables. We would have to work round the clock and use both pressure canners and it would take days but we could do it. If I ended up with some of kids at home, we would have to enlarge the gardens and can a lot more produce as a matter of course. Jars are alos a great barter item. I keep a couple of new boxes on hand and donate one to the occasional raffle along with a copy of my book. I am also trying to rid myself of most of the plastic in my house. Now that I have the space, I will be freezing many vegetables and fruit in jars. I will be able to reuse the lids and extract the air with my my food saver. This will save the money I would have spent on plastic bags and keep those bags out of the landfill. Win, win.

 

Tomatoes, potatoes and pumpkins, oh, my!

The Wicked Witch of the West could not have been more evil than the forces that are out to get our gardens this year. I went to get some potatoes yesterday and a good many did not hold up to storage. Then Bruce went to check the Delcata Squash and found that some #%^@#*(%rodent, rabbit or woodchuck probably, had taken one bite of each. One bite! We think they will heal but today I have to go out and get some thigh high panty hose to protect the rest. Here’s the question. Does it make sense to spend more money on the hose than the squash is worth? Of course not. Am I still going to do it anyway? Naturally. I can keep the panty hose about indefinitely and I will learn whether or not an injured squash will recover.  Next year we will protect them as soon as they emerge. I had saved some tomatoes that looked okay and set them to ripen on the window sill. Every one developed blight and hit the garbage pail yesterday.

I stopped in the market yesterday to refill my canned pumpkin supplies. We eat a lot of canned pumpkin and, as we are not going to have any pumpkins this year (the kids are going to have to paint faces on old soccer balls for Halloween I guess) I thought I should have lots of Libbys on hand. Wrong. Seems like I am not the only one with a failed crop. There were six cans on the shelves and the grocery manager said he had heard they might not get any more for a while because of the crop failure. Yikes! I guess I will have to work on a recipe for carrot bread.

I did have some good news about my canner. I called Lehman’s and they are sending out a new one right away, along with a shipping label so I can return the damaged one. Their service is so good. There prices are a bit higher but you can count on the quality.

Have any of you found your state’s prepper network. You can google it. I am anxious to hook up with mine. I would really like to find a group that meets a couple of times a year for a day of skill building and connection. I am supposed to meet up with some folks from the Massachusetts Preppers Network soon. I am looking forward to it as long as I have the time to pull from garden work.

Now that I have a good idea about what to expect to put up from my garden (great, heaving sigh) I am working on my updated inventory and shopping list. I also put together a list for my un-prepped sister about how to begin a food storage program. I am getting the distinct impression that she did not read a certain book that one would have assumed she has sitting on her bookshelf.

 

When in doubt

One of the onerous, loathsome tasks that all of us who store food and supplies must face from time to time is going through our inventory and culling what is post dated or just not going to get eaten in this lifetime. It is hard enough to tackle this job if one has purchased food but when the food got into your pantry by the very sweat of your brow, then throwing it out is a terrible thing, symbolizing wasted energy and  resources. Still, I had to get it done tonight (I am posting on Friday night) as the new food is coming in and I didn’t want to risk mixing old and new. It seemed like as good a time as any to try to revamp my inventory system too as there is little to count right now.

It is clear I went overboard on some things last year. I still have 5 jars of apple butter left and I have been giving it away so this year I am not making any. What I have will see me through just fine and I ran short of apple sauce so I will put my energy into making sure I have enough of that. I have 7  jars of blueberry jam left. I am not making any this year. I did put up a batch of raspberry jam and I will probably make some apple and mint jelly to. My kids are not big PB&J eaters. I go through a limited amount of jam. I am down to my last jar of pears. A good thing because they are getting spicier with age and the kids aren’t scarfing them down as they do in December. I  will need a lot more peaches. We eat a ton of those, probably a quart a week at least and more if I am making cobbler. So what did I dispose of? One jar of rhubarb that looked grey to me.  It smelled fine so the pigs got that. 3 jars of butter landed in the trash. It smelled funny and I didn’t know if I should give it to animals. When in doubt. throw it out is my motto. What killed me to toss was some turkey I canned after Thanksgiving last year. It smelled fine and looked fine but I felt funny about eating it after so long. I know myself well enough to know that I can talk myself into getting sick if I think I have eaten something questionable. It had to go. I found 3 jars of stock with no date. They were flushed. I did find grape juice, 4 quarts of it that tasted like sips of heaven. As usual, I learned something. Many of the jars had some mildew around the lids from being in my damp basement. I am going to be a lot better about washing jars before bringing them downstairs. A small bit of syrup on a jar will grow mold in no time. I am going to use my new cabinet as a kind of in between pantry. I can keep samples of pickles, fruit, jams, juices and sauces in it and replenish it every few weeks. I will be more likely to eat some of the odder stuff if it is right there rather than tucked away downstairs.

All in all. I don’t think I did too badly considering all of the food I put up each year. I tossed perhaps 15 jars of food, most of which I fed to the pigs. A half dozen jars (all jams) turned out to have failed seals and had to go.

There are two final notes. The first is kind of funny. I had my stove installed today but there was a part missing and the gas for the range top can not be hooked up until Monday. The man who told me was so sorry. He acted as though my being without my stove over a weekend was some big problem. I really got a chuckle over how upset he was. If I can’t get through a weekend without a stove then  I better get a new job! I told him I had at least six other options for cooking. I could use my propane camp stove, any one of 5 little single burner Sterno stoves, my solar oven, my outdoor fireplace, my gas grill or, since I had power, a little electric fry pan I have kicking around. I could even fire up my wood stove if I was really desperate. I also have lots of things to eat that need no cooking.

The final thing is about potato blight. Kate over at livingthefrugallife has a terrific post on dealing with blight. She did the right thing when she found some and called her county extension agent and followed his advice. Check out her blog if yu want to read about the process.

Oops. One more thing. Andrea at chicky-bit-run has a picture of her land on her site. it is beautiful! go take a look if you want a smile.

 

What to do first

I have gotten a couple of private emails directing me to an article that is linked at the survivalblog website about a family on unemployment in Elkhart, Indiana. I suppose it could make you angry (it did a lot of people) because this family is losing their rental home while still purchasing beer, soda and cigarettes but it just made me sad. These guys thought they had a contract with America for a specific kind of life and somebody broke the contract. Pointing fingers won’t help.

This got me to thinking about a couple of other emails I have received asking where I thought families should begin in starting a preparedness program. These were people less concerned with big disasters and more concerned with recession depriving them of their livelihood. Yesterday, I spent some time looking over what I have and trying to prioritize  in terms of real usefulness. For instance, I have a bottle capper because I like to make soda but I would not give that a high rating. Making soda is fun but not necessary for survival. What follows is my “gotta have it list” for preparing to live on less.

Water bath canner: I start here because water bath canning allows you to glean and gather fruit and process it with very little effort. You can buy a couple of bushels of tomatoes and put up quarts and quarts of sauce. If you have some land, and by some I mean ripping out the roses if necessary, you can grow tomatoes and your sauce will be nearly free.

Pressure canner: Meat in bulk is a lot less expensive but you need to be able to preserve it. Freezers and electricity cost a lot more than a quality canner and the meat is there, able to be turned into easy, stove top or outdoor cooked meals. I would start by learning to can hamburger, chicken and stew beef.

Dehydrator: Today, I am buying bags of frozen vegetables at the big box store and drying them for long term storage. They are cheap right now and I want to avoid buying another freezer so drying is the way to go. Drying herbs and fruit is easy and requires less electricity than any other method of preservation.

Food Saver: Having a vacuum sealer makes it possible to keep dried food in optimal condition. I dry larger vegetables and grind them up for soup base.

Canning jars: You can never have too many. Check out yard sales and Craig’s List for the best buys but if you must pay cash, consider them an investment.

Weather proofing: check out every program that is available to help you reduce your energy consumption. Sell the big screen TV to buy insulation.

One good, basic cookbook: You need to know how to prepare real food. Every time you are tempted to buy fast food, put those dollars away and make biscuits and gravy and a simple vegetable dish. Follow up with a fruit cobbler.

Community: Got friends? If you have friends, you have people to share expenses with and people to learn with. That canner is less expensive if you buy it with your sister or your best friend. You half the cost and double the fun. Instead of spending money going out to eat or to the movies, pick a couple of bushels of apples and put up apple sauce. You will have so much fun and be eating great food in January when the stuff in stores is expensive and shipped in from Chili

Land: By land, I mean garden space. Maybe your church or synagogue will put in a garden if you get the ball rolling. We have a garden on our school grounds this summer. Families are taking turns caring for it. Go to the library and check out books on self sufficiency on small spaces. There are lots to chose from and they are full of ideas. Check out books on thrifty living. The Tightwad Gazette books are a good place to start. I have all of them and read them often for inspiration.

This recession is far from over. The people in Elkhart would call it a depression. If only they had prepared for this time, there lives would be so much better, so much healthier. We all need to be preparing for a life of less. It is up to us to make decisions now that will keep our families healthy and happy, no matter the economy does.

 

You can’t buy happiness

Well, actually, sometimes you can. I just got my new pressure canner yesterday and I gotta admit-I’m happy. I had a Presto canner that worked just fine but it still had a toggle pressure gauge that is not really accurate. It was also not large enough for my needs. On a busy canning day, I can use both and get  a lot more done in less time. In addition, I got a new stainless steel canning funnel and another stick magnet. I also got some accessories for my Food Saver that will make it possible for me to store dried fruits and vegetables in canning jars with the air sucked out.

This buying stuff is so tricky. I am really trying to think before I hand over cash. Do I need this or do I just want it? Is it a transient pleasure or does it have lasting value? Is there a way to meet this need with something borrowed or do I have an alternative at home that will work as well?

So here are the things I buy. Books. Especially resources on farming, bee keeping, food preservation, animal husbandry and the like. I also buy books that I know will be passed around and finally land in our sustainability lending library. I buy tools. Hand tools for the garden and food preservation tools are high on my buy list. Good quality clothing is a good investment. Boots, shoes, snowsuits, gloves, all outwear in fact as well as woolen sweaters and jeans are things I look for in resale and thrift shops. I will pay full price if the item really matters. Leather work gloves are something I can not have too much of. Sewing supplies are worth the spend as are home schooling supplies.

What I don’t buy are many electronics. I have one cell phone that the family shares. I played with a friends iphone the other day and I must say, it was really fun. But was it $500.00 fun? Probably not but if I could have bought one on the spot I might have done it and regretted it later. That’s probably the biggest danger with credit cards. They don’t give you a time to reflect. The wish is followed by the purchase. Credit card companies count on your impulsivity. They also hope you won’t pay off the balance each month. They further hope you will be 20 seconds late with your payment so you get a late fee on top of interest. If things go according to their plans, you buy an item with a short shelf life, stretch the payments out over several months and pay the bill late. If they are really lucky, you will need a new whatever before you pay off the old one. Toys, meals out and cheap clothing are good examples of the perfect spend if you own a credit card company.

I like to buy things like trees. Talk about a long term investment. And my pigs. I will be eating the results of that spend long after the $50.00 dollars is a memory. One meal out could run that much. My blueberries are going to have a banner year but it has taken  5 years to get to that point. I think I spent $12.00 on my first bush.

Sometimes I think having a mom or dad, used to living on a shoestring, on the Presidential cabinet. We could call it the Department of Common Sense. We would have fewer bridges to nowhere and and more small schools, fewer bombs and more protected wild spaces. A few people would maybe end up in time out (big people time out tends to have bars on the windows). We would hear words like sacrifice and responsibility. Ah well. Not likely.

Back to buying happiness. I was watching my kids play this morning. They never touched an actual toy. They played a made up game of mommy and child that involved chasing each other and they rolled a ball to the kitty. They did color for a few minutes and they looked at books too. I don’t think this is unusual. I think most plastic toys are clutter. My kids do play with their dolls, the blocks and tinker toys and puzzles. Most everything else sits on the toy shelf all day, mocking me.

 

it’s news to me

I watched the news this week and I can only hope you are all up to date on the important stuff going on in the world. In case you missed any of it, here’s the recap.

Madonna can adopt a child from Malawi: What I did not see was any mention of the 600,000 kids sitting in foster care in this country and the huge number of them that need permenant  homes. With the money spent on this fiasco, Madonna could have adopted a US child from the foster care system for free and used the savings to fund a health clinic in Appalachia or a community garden and food preservation center in Detroit.

Chastity Bono is getting a sex change operation: It’s her money but I can’t help but think of the thousands of elderly choosing between food, heat and medication and it seems wrong.

Celebrities were mistreated on the show, “I’m A Celebrity-Get Me Out Of Here”. I am not hearing much about our American journalists being held in a forced labor camp in North Korea. I can only hope that more is going on behind the scenes than we are aware of.

What does all of this have to do with preparedness and sustainability you might ask. Maybe nothing and I am just complaining but maybe a lot. Mental preparedness matters as much as physical preparedness both during a crisis and in long term sustainability. Stored food and supplies will get you only so far down the road, then you have to rely on your wits, work ethic and ingenuity to get by. I so fear that a nation that cares about any of the silly stories that pass for news in this country is in big trouble. I know I am preaching to the choir on this blog; we all have real lives to attend to, but I am thinking about our responsibility to our communities. The reason this is coming up for me at this time is probably because I am doing a September workshop on food preservation. When I called the County Extension Service for more canning information several months ago, I was told they had no one on staff who did that any longer because there was no interest. One of my goals for the coming months is to spread the food preservation word. I have gotten my adult children canning supplies this month. I give canned goods for gifts whenever I can(pun-pun) (alright- a boy graduating from high school might not be impressed with a jar of pickles but a new mother might appreciate a box of home canned food). I will bring preserved food to every pot luck and serve some at every dinner I prepare for friends and family. I will offer free classes to any low income group that will have me. I will do what I can to make canning news. I probably can’t compete with Madonna but I will make headlines in my own little world.

It is a beautiful day. I am going to find the time to sit on my porch swing and listen to the birds, look at my flowers and remember to be grateful for my blessings. It is my way of going to church every day.

 

PS I want to thank chicky-bit-run for the lovely post on her blog. It made my day.

 

A walk on the wild side

Our sustainability group is planning another wild food feast next Wednesday, preceded by a wild food walk on my land. We have several experts in our group and I hope to get a lot of stuff identified as well as find the uses for many things I have located but don’t know how to use.

One of the cool things I have learned from this group is how much real knowledge is out in the world and by real I mean useful. Nearly every time we bring up a subject that one of us wants to know more about, someone in the group steps up with either the knowledge or access to someone with the knowledge. The few times we have hit a wall, there is always someone else who wants to learn with you. A lot like this blog actually.

My next area of interest is soap. I know how to make regular laundry soap but I want to learn how to make bar soap. I am afraid of working with lye but I am hoping it will be like the people afraid of working with a pressure canners. Once I do it a few times with someone who knows what they’re doing it will be fine. I am going to throw out the question at our next meeting and assume the Universe will provide, if not an expert, at least another seeker willing to fumble along with me. I would also like to learn more about using the wax I am harvesting from our hives. I just know I will find someone who can teach me how to make salves and balms and candles.

What this is all leading up to is our responsibility to a younger generation. I do not expect the world to go back to the way it was before this market crash. I believe we will be living smaller and more locally as energy supplies contract. It may not be a world where children have no worries beyond beating their last video game score or acquiring the latest pair of $200.00 dollar sneakers. It may be necessary for kid to contribute to the family economy with labor. I know I expect my girls to help during canning season. On a day to day basis, I expect them to be able to wash a load of clothes, change a diaper and make a simple meal. I expect them to eat what I prepare without grousing about it. We are doing our children no favors if we don’t teach them real skills. Gymnastics is not the kind of skill I am talking about.

I think most homeschoolers do this as a matter of course but the rest of us may need to be more mindful about it. Set aside a few minutes today and think about some important skills you can pass on to your children. I am going to teach my older girls how to make yogurt this week. They have seen me do it but never done the whole process themselves. I also want them to each make a loaf of bread a week. It will take a load off of me and give them a skill they will use for a lifetime.

 

Easy Freezing

There are good things and bad things about all methods of preserving food. Canning takes a bit of time and is energy intensive up front. Water bath in particular take a lot of water which could eventually be an issue in drought stricken areas. Canned food is very heavy and the jars prone to breaking if you live in an area of earthquakes. The good news is that for some foods, the finished product is superior, after the initial investment there is no further cost for storage and the food is edible with only reheating. The jar are reusable but you need a steady supply of lids. I have heard that some inexpensive brands made in China are available but I prefer the Harvest or Ball brands made in Indiana. I have paid between $.99-&1.49 per twelve pack for theese. Still, they need to be purchased every year.

For many people, freezing is the only way to go. There are some foods, epecially tender vegetables, that are a lot better frozen than canned. It is the quickes way to preserve food. Meat can be double wrapped, labled and tossed in the freezer. I can pick asparagus and have it blanched, cooled, packaged and in the freezer in under ten minutes. The down sides however are considerable. There is the up front cast of the freezer to consider as well as the ongoing cost of running it. You either have to use a frost free model that uses more energyy to operate and can dry out food or plan on defrosting, a messy and time consuming procedure, at least twice a year. I have an upright freezer that needs defrosting every three months. I loath that job. Keeping track of the contents of a freezer is a lot harder than knowing what jars are in your pantry and it is really easy to lose food until it is a freezer burned, inedible lump. If you buy a chest freezer, whatever is on the bottom can be a pain to get to. For a lot of people, the risk of losing a freezer full of food during a power outage is just too great to chance. Saving it may require another investment in a generator or buying a freezer insurance policy, one more expense. Still, there are some things that are better frozen than any other way.

We ate peas last night that we froze last spring and they tasted like we had jut picked them. I can do a quick stir fry of frozen string beans that is delicious. Canned string beans are okay in a soup but otherwise not my families favorite food. Frozen blueberries can be plopped in a muffin batter or in pancakes as is and be as good as fresh. Probably the first step in any processing plan is to decide what method you will use for which food.

Some foods, especialy meat and many fruits can be frozen with no treatment beyond proper wrapping and labeling. I like to freeze berries on cookie sheets for about an hour, then transfer to plastic bags. I pull out the air and the bags store nearly flat. The fruit pours out in just the amount you need and the bag resealed.  I do the same with diced onion and pepper. I freeze corn and summer squash without pretreating too. Sucking out the air is important as any moisture pulled from the fruit or vegetables during storage will affect quality. I have a food saver that does a fabulous job at this but for years I stuck a straw in the corner of a zip lock bag to remove air and it worked just fine. I also reused my bags many times as long as they had not held raw meat previously.

Most vegetables need pretreating. Food is blanched in boiling water or steam for a few minutes, quickly cooled in ice water, bagged, labled and frozen. If you used boiling water, save the vitamin laden water for stock or soup. Even a strong tasting water (broccoli for instance) should be composted rather than tossed.

Meat hould be either vacuumed packed or double bagged. If it gets freezer burned it will be dry when you cook it although it will not hurt you to eat it. It should also be packed in meal sized packages. It will freeze more quickly and thaw faster than large packages.

Don’t put too much food in to freeze at one time. Avoid too, putting a lot of food in one spot. Spread the food around until it freezes the store it in the proper spot. It will help in finding food if you keep like foods in separate baskets. I keep fruits on one shelf in my freezer and veges on another. It helps to keep things organized but I still lose things.

Labeling matters in a preservation. You may think you will remebert what you put in the bag but you won’t and lot of things look similar. You are reading a post from a woman who thought she had pulled out apple juice, only to find it was vegetable stock-quite a shock to the taste buds first thing in the morning.

If you have a freezer as part of your refrigerator, it is good for only the shortest term storage. A separate freezer must be kept as close to 0 degrees as possible for long term storage. If the power goes out, don’t open the door if you can avoid it. A hunk of dry ice will keep the interior cold for a while. If food is thawing, eat what you can. The rest will need to be tossed. You can’t refreeze food without a serious loss of quality.