Food Storage Savior or or Expensive Failure? : A Review of the FoodSaver Vacuum Sealing System

You might have seen the cheesy infomercials on late night TV. The FoodSaver is a device will keep you from "throwing your cash in the trash". Simply place your food in one of their handy-dandy plastic baggies, push a button, and the FoodSaver will suck all the air out, thereby extending the shelf-life of your fresh or frozen foodstuffs. Can you tell I've been up with fussy babies in the wee hours and watched that infomercial a few times?

That's all fine and dandy, but it was only when I read about using a vacuum sealer to seal canning jars full of dry food storage items that it really got my attention. Beans, rice, dehydrated vegetables, chocolate, candy, etc. - you can store them in canning jars for greatly extended shelf lives. Sounds great, right? (I should point out that this isn't a replacement for canning; you're not going to be able to vacuum seal soup, for example, unless it is dehydrated soup mix.)

The only problem was that I was a little worried about the mixed reviews the newest incarnation of the FoodSaver had on Amazon.com, but I decided to take the plunge anyway. A smarter, more thrifty woman would have found a used FoodSaver at a thrift store or garage sale. I am not that woman. I channel Veruca Salt in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" because I want everything RIGHT NOW!!


Anyway, my FoodSaver arrived and I got straight to work.

FoodSaver and Wide Mouth Jar Sealer

If you're going to use your FoodSaver for vacuum sealing jars, you need to buy a jar sealer, which is a plastic gizmo that looks like this:

There are two sizes of jar sealers - wide-mouth and regular. I only bought the one for wide-mouth canning jars, since that is what I mainly have on hand. Some might say that was appropriate for me! ;)

You place your food inside a clean canning jar and then put on a clean canning lid. You do not have to use new canning lids, which is awesome. Finally, something to do with used lids! Place the jar sealer attachment on the top and then plug in the accessory hose.

If you are looking at a used FoodSaver, make sure it has an accessory hose. Otherwise, you won't be able to seal jars.

Press the button and then the FoodSaver lurches into action. Vacuuming out all the air takes somewhere between 30 sec- 1 minute and it is a fairly noisy process. The machine shuts off when it is done.

Label with the contents and date. Can you tell I love my label machine? ;)

Most of my jars sealed with no problem. A few I had to fiddle with to get them to seal properly. I experimented with the amount of food in the jar, using a different lid, using two lids, etc. until I got everything sealed up. I used this awesome tutorial on Granny Miller's blog to troubleshoot. (I keep trying to type "Granny Smith" instead of Granny Miller. I must be hungry today.)

I should mention that my FoodSaver manual said to maintain 1" headspace to get jars to seal. I did not find that made any difference to the sealing. If you look at Granny Miller's blog, you'll see she doesn't worry about headspace too much, either. If it's good enough for Granny Smith Miller, it's good enough for me!

I sealed up my entire supply of chocolate chips.

I cracked pecans harvested from my uncle's tree and then sealed them, too.

I even sealed the rest of the can of shortening that I opened last weekend. This will really extend the shelf-life of shortening, which is great because it usually goes rancid before I use it all.

All in all, here's what I sealed up yesterday. I am going to check my supplies regularly to make sure the lids stay sealed, and I might screw on the rings for a little extra insurance.

The verdict:

So far, so good! It was easy to use and only required a little bit of fiddling. Time will tell how durable my FoodSaver is and how long the contents stay fresh once they've been sealed. I'll keep you posted on that. If I should ever come across a used FoodSaver for a good price, I'd snatch it up in a heart beat. Apparently the older FoodSavers did a better job sealing the plastic bags for fresh and frozen food. I'll test out using FoodSaver bags for freezing bulk supplies of meat, but I see myself mainly using this for sealing jars.

If this sounds like something you'd like to try, you can buy FoodSavers lots of places, including Amazon.com.Don't forget to buy the jar sealer attachment, which is sold separately.

Fall back, not behind

This Sunday is the end of Daylight Saving Time and most of us get to enjoy an extra hour of sleep on Sunday morning. Unless you live in Hawaii, Arizona, or have young children, that is. Baby Dear doesn't know anything about "Fall Back" and will wake up at his usual 5:45 AM, except that it will really be 4:45 AM without Daylight Saving Time. Can you say afternoon nap for Momma?

Firefighters and other safety personnel have long advocated checking your smoke and carbon monoxide detectors every six months. It's easy to remember when you combine it with changing your clocks for Daylight Savings time. Test your detectors and change the batteries every six months. It's a quick, easy thing to do that could have big benefits. Did you know there has been a 50% decrease in deaths in fires since the 1970s? This is in large part to the prevalence of smoke detectors in our homes.

Those of us with a preparedness mindset should also take this opportunity to check the status of our BOBs and other preps. Switch out summer clothing for winter gear. Check and make sure your little weeds children still fit the clothing you have packed in case you need to get out of dodge. Have any of your stored items expired? Is it time to rotate your water supply? Check your inventory - have you used anything up and not replaced it?

Make it a habit. Daylight Savings Time = smoke detector testing and prep rotation.

Expired

Check those expiration dates!

The last week and a half saw a flurry of activity at the Harried Homemaker Acres. I barely had time to breathe and yet I needed to plan and shop for a party I was throwing in the midst of my chaos.

I figured out what I was going to cook and raced to my  local grocery store in the hopes that I could be in and out in a hurry. Those of you who live in, shall we say, less rustic locales, would be amazed by our little country store. It has a fairly decent selection of food, although I have on more than one occasion found that the only chicken for sale was frozen and in nugget form. The elderly gentlemen who wheel your groceries to your car (You have NO choice in the matter, by the way. They are going to take your groceries for you regardless of any protests.) are charming. What our store is most notable for, though, is high prices. So when I whipped through the store last week and found 16 oz. containers of sour cream on sale for $1 each, I was elated. I bought three.

When I got home, I noticed the expiration dates. Two of the sour cream containers had expiration dates in November. The third one had expired on August 16th.

All of this is to say that you need to check your expiration dates before you buy your food! This is especially important when it comes to food you intend to store. Check your cans, bottles, and jars and make sure the food you bring home is as fresh as possible. Generally speaking, most canned food has at least two to three years of shelf life before it starts to degrade in quality. It could very well be edible past that point. Check out this handy website for more information on the shelf lives of various foods.

Remember, sometimes a sale is merely a method for a store to get rid of a bunch of food that is nearing its expiration date. Et tu, Mom-and-Pop grocery store?

The best thing you can do is to buy your storage foods from a store that has high turnover. As we all know, dry beans have an amazing shelf life. My little grocery store in Podunkville, USA doesn't turn items over very fast and even the dry beans are worse for the wear. I'm going to have to go somewhere else to buy my 15 bean soup in the future.

Learn from my mistakes and get the most for your food storage dollar.

My Preparedness Binder, Parts Two and Three

In case you missed it, the first section of my Preparedness Binder is devoted to Food Storage and Preparedness Stocking Plans. I've collected bits and pieces of the collective wisdom of preppers on the Internet to come up with my own plan to buy food and supplies.

The second section in the binder is entitled "Food Storage Information". In this section I have general information about long term food storage.

• Print offs from the LDS Preparedness Manual including :

-The Seven Major Mistakes in Food Storage

-Recommended Food Storage Shelf Lifes

-Growing and Using Sprouts

-Water Treatment

• Print offs of information from Food Storage Made Easy - water storage, grains, baking supplies, etc. This includes types of items to store, ideas on how to use them and shelf lifes.
• A handout from Everyday Food Storage about wheat

I intend to collect more information on how to use the items in our future long term food storage and put them in this section.

The last section of my binder is devoted to emergency and disaster information. The LDS Preparedness Manual was very helpful for this section as well. I included:

• A Preparedness Test (We failed!)
• Supply Table/Master Preparedness List
• Generator Info
• What to do in the case of biological or chemical agent dispersion
• Nuclear/Chemical decontamination kit and how-to
• A Shelter-in-Place diagram (I got this from Ready.gov)
• Nuclear Disaster and Warfare Info

I have also collected quite a few recipes that use food storage items. I plan to put together a binder for food storage recipes soon.

Speaking of food storage recipes, I have finally completed our three month food supply. Well, not the food itself, but the shopping list of what we need to have three months worth of shelf-stable food. I'll have to post our menu sometime. The Excel file from Food Storage Made Easy was essential and really made things so much easier.

It is a bit intimidating to realize just how much food and other items we need to store. 45 cans of Chicken Noodle Soup, 75 large cans of fruit and eight cases of toilet paper are among the highlights of the list. (Yes, we use a lot of toilet paper. It's pretty ridiculous.) I'll just keep chipping away at it and get there eventually.