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Monday, April 6, 2009

Provident Living

I went to a provident living fair on Saturday. It was a lot of fun to pick up some recipes and ideas from the people sharing. I came away feeling like I could do some of this stuff. It didn't look too hard. But when I came and realized if I wanted to start canning my own fruit, veggies, and meat I would need jars and a pressure cooker. If I wanted to start dehydrating my own food I would need a food dehydrator. Even if I just wanted to organize a food storage I would need shelves. Right now I just have what fits in my cupboards and some water in the freezer and two water barrels in the basement. I realize my food storage is majorly lacking. I looked at some mason jars today while at E & S and saw they were about $8 for nine jars. This could be expensive. I did decide that I could hold off on shelves and fill up the trundle bed in the boys room with jars. I did learn that you can dehydrate some foods on the dashboard in your car on a hot day where the inside of the car gets to about 140 deg. As far as canning goes, I plan on u-picking this summer and buddying up with someone who would let me use their cooker (and show me how to use it) and then I would just have to supply the jars. Wouldn't it be great if there was a stimulus package to prepare food storage? This will be my first summer where I will actually make a good effort to build ours and to learn some skills for the future. Let me know what has worked for you as you prepared yours or if you have any clever ideas that a novice such as myself is totally clueless about. I'm ready to live providently.

4 comments:

EmmaP said...

and if you don't have a pressure cooker just start by canning things that call for the "water bath method". you can use a big pot for that. you can do pickles, pears, peaches, etc. anyway - good luck!

okeydokeyifine said...

I made roll ups in the oven.
And I water bath the other things.
Freezer will hold green beans and peas. Good luck.

Anonymous said...

Check out the shelves at shelfreliance.com!! They also have freeze dried/deydrated food and PAY AS YOU GO food storage! use code: save15 to get 15% off :)

Puphigirl said...

you can make jerky in the oven at low temps. I've done it before, it's good. My neighbor has cherry, apricot and plum trees. These trees produce more than just their family can eat so they always invite us to pick some. So, find some people in the ward or neighborhood that need help eating the fruit off their land.