Food Preservation & Storage

I hesitate to talk a lot about food preservation and storage on here for several reasons.  Because I’m getting lots of questions, I’m going to do this post but please realize that what’s right for me isn’t necessarily right for you.  My mom has a pretty well stocked pantry, though she seems to go to the grocery store every day.  My niece with four kids probably never cooks a meal that she doesn’t have to go to the store at least once before she starts cooking.  Who cares?  The way I do it would make some people crazy.  Having to go to the store more than once every 2 or 3 weeks would make me crazy!  (no comments please!)  There’s no right for everyone way to prepare and store food for your family.  As I’ve said before, in the fairly recent past, either myself or my immediate family have lived through weeks without power due to ice storms, tornadoes or hurricanes.  For us, no matter how prepared I think we are, there are things I wish we had when the lights go out.  I just try to do the best I can with no guarantees!  :)

We are very lucky to have the storage areas in this house that we have.  If you’re living in a small place or don’t have storage room, obviously my method isn’t going to work for you.  If you’re living on a tight budget and barely have $$ to buy this week’s groceries, it may be hard to build up a supply of food.  We all have to make it work in a way that fits our lifestyle so please don’t think that what I’m doing is what I’m telling you to do.  Just because I mention food prep so much on the blog, I understand the interest in knowing what I do.

This method of keeping food actually saves $$ on my grocery bill because once I have a stockpile, I hardly buy anything that isn’t on sale.  And, its very rare that I find a recipe I want to make that I don’t have everything I need to make the recipe.  That saves not only on gas but I seem to be one of those people who can’t go to the store for just one thing.  I always come out with several bags, if not more.

This blog post provided more pictures and info on my pantry.

This photo may give you a better idea of the room.  It’s all concrete except for the ceiling and it is about 6′ wide and 40′ long, then there’s about a 12′ x 12′ room at the end (see where there are some batting rolls), and then the room comes back towards the opening and that part is about 6′ x 30′ but it’s a dead-end.  You have to walk back out past the food shelves, stacked packages of batting and filing cabinet that you see above.  The “out” door is right past that filing cabinet.

Around the corner and what you can’t see because I don’t like going back there, are 5 gallon sealed buckets of flour, sugar, wheat, and beans.

I try to keep at least 20 jars of homemade, home canned chili, beef stew, Cincinnati Chili, spaghetti sauce, cooked pinto beans and baked beans on hand.  That supply is very low now because I’ve used every available jar for tomatoes, green beans and such.  Each week, I empty 12 – 15 jars and within the next month or so, I’ll start restocking these items.  If the power goes out, it’s so easy to heat up something that’s ready to serve!

I don’t necessarily think there’s going to be a time when groceries are in short supply, though I’m not saying I feel 100% confident with our food supply either!  But . . if we ever need our own supply of food, I’m ready.  If we don’t . . no problem.  We use it all anyway.

Also, we have solar panels set up so we can charge cell phones, laptops, batteries for flashlights, and small fans.  I’m working on getting Vince to build me a solar oven and a brick wood fired oven, both outside of course.  I would love to bake bread and pizza in a wood fired oven every day but it would be very useful if we didn’t have power for a while.

In my opinion, there’s nothing like being prepared.  We all have to decide what level of preparedness we’re comfortable with and then work to get to that point.

When He’s Gone . .

It probably doesn’t really happen like this . . it just seems like it does.  When Vince is away, that’s when all the things seem to happen that I cannot fix.  When we were in KY, he traveled a lot with his job and he was gone way too much.  Here, he hardly ever travels but he does have a trip coming up soon.

I must be really hard on garage doors.  All I do is . . push the button!  How can I destroy so many garage doors simply doing what I think I’m supposed to do!  I know what happened to the first garage door.  Someone had set a 5 gallon bucket behind my car and I didn’t know it.  When I went to put the garage door down, it stopped because the little eye told it there was danger ahead.  But, I didn’t know that and I kept pressing the button and finally . . BAM! It went down, hit that bucket, crumpled like a house of cards, fell off the rails and . . we got a new garage door and a new garage door opener.

Then, at the house in town in KY, it had an old wooden, double garage door with 6 or 8 glass windows.  One day I pushed the button and . . BAM! The spring broke, which made a very loud noise, and the garage door fell, which also made a very loud noise!  The glass shattered, the door cracked . . and we got a new garage door and a new garage door opener.

When Vince told me Sunday that he was going to be gone for a few days, a little thought ran through my head . . check the garage door!

I went out and looked at the garage door . . like I would know what I was looking at but . . I did see that the spring was broken!  The door still worked but when I called the garage door man, he said “Do not use it!” so I opened it once and got my car out and then I turned the opener off.

The garage door repairman asked for my address and when I told him, he said “Oh, I’ve been there before.  You have a smoker!”  Yes, I forgot why he had to work on our garage door but he had been here before and I was smoking a pork butt when he was here.  I’m known in this town for my food!

Anyway, while he was here, he looked at the Highlander and said “Do you need to get that car out?”  Huh?  That car?  We never use it. Don’t worry about it! OK! He ordered the spring and we’ll have a working garage door again tomorrow.  Since Chad is gone, I moved my car over to his side of the garage, which has just one single door so I can get my car in and out til the big door is fixed.  Not like I’m going anywhere though . .

Chicken Field Trip

The garden is history.

There’s one jalapeno pepper plant left and it’s loaded.  On the average, I use one pepper a day when cooking so I doubt I use all the peppers on this one plant before a frost gets it.  That’s my optimistic view of hoping winter gets here soon!  :)   Seriously, that little plant probably has close to 100 peppers on it.

In the evenings, we let the chickens in the old garden spot and they have a ball.  They find tomatoes and weeds.  The ground is soft and they can scratch and dig.

Here’s Ruby asking me if they can camp out in the garden spot tonight!  No way girl!  Do you know how many critters would love a fresh chicken dinner?  All chickens get safely locked inside the coop at night!

They do love going in the garden but they’re always happy to go back to their run.  That’s home to them and as we all know, it’s fun to visit exciting places but there’s no place like home!

Cardmaking

No, I don’t know how but I want to learn . . and I want to learn NOW!  I clicked on Terry’s blog this morning and saw this!

I don’t know where to start.  So, help me out.  Remember that I probably have to mail order everything since I live in a tiny little town.

  • Where do I start? A  book?  An online class?  A kit?
  • Do you color the colored area with pencil colors?
  • Where do you get all those neat shapes, like the scallop behind the apple or the white behind the corn?
  • Where do I get the card stock or whatever kind of paper I need.

I’m guessing a trip to Hobby Lobby or Michael’s would be a good place to start but that’s not going to happen for a while.  If I order it, I could probably have it by next week.

Thanks for your help!