JeepHammer
SHOOTER
I don't put away food in storage.
I store what we eat.
Enlarge your pantry, rotate stocks, and store more of what your family eats.
AMEN!
The well stocked pantry!
Wouldn't work for everyone, but we do sugar (nitrate), keep it dry and it will last virtually forever.
Salt. Much easier to do home canning with salt.
We actually have several kinds of salt, different tastes and different applications.
Pepper corns. Dry them out & seal them up, last virtually forever. Grind them when you need them. We usually do pint jars in the oven to seal up the canning jars.
We dry several kinds of peppers out of the garden, but I can't grow a pepper corn tree in Indiana (I tried several times)
Dry peppers, then stick them in a can and oven seal them, again, virtually forever.
Canned & dried apples, along with whole root cellar apples.
Canning regular potatoes is a waste of time for me, takes a full on pressure canning and they always get mushy, more like mashed potatoes when they come out and you heat them up.
Baby new potatoes are another story, I put them in green beans with onions,
And I throw up a few cans of new/baby potatoes. I can't tell you why, but they keep their shape & texture better.
When you put potatoes in the root cellar, sit a saucer on top and set an apple on it.
The gasses from a decomposing apple will keep potatoes crisp MUCH longer.
(One of those grandpa things)
I home can tomatoes until I can't stand to see a tomato for a couple months.
Salsa, ketchup, tomato chunks & juice for soup, pasta sauce with the works, even meat when you pressure can.
I'm always amazed how many jars of tomato products we go through.
Pasta is stupid easy to make, dry and oven can.
Shells, noodles, spaghetti, get the moisture down to 3%-5% and seal jars in the oven.
There are so many beans & legumes I can't keep track, some make good flour, a real change of pace from plain old bleached wheat.
My old standby for stupid cold days is ham & bean soup with WAY too much butter, just cook it in the can while I'm pressure canning.
Out of the jar, into a pan for 5 minutes and off to the races! Good stuff!
You *Can* can corn bread, again, just cook it in the jar when canning it.
It comes out in chunks, but it's still corn bread!
My wife does cookies, cake & brownies in jars, and again, it cooks while it's canning/sealing.
The trick is to learn how much batter to put in the jar so it doesn't push the lids off and contaminate the seal.
The brownies don't last long, I know where she hides them!
I'm all for the well stocked pantry, but we also grow a lot of what's in the pantry, so I stock up on canning jar lids.
I want to eat next winter and the winter after that too!