Week 44 Food Storage Challenge

50 pounds of wheat or flour/ tang or  juice

50 pounds of wheat or flour If you use some of the other types of flour you might want to get a little of them.

Tang or Juice. Tang is a great source of vitamin c and since it is powdered it is easy to store. I have juice that I have canned that keeps very well. I haven't tried to store store bought juice so I am not sure how well the containers would hold up. If some of you have stored store bought juice I would like to know how well it has held up. 

Add some more to your money stash.

Put back a little more water.

With Christmas coming when buying gifts you might want to give gifts of preparedness such as camping equipment and things that they could use in an emergency situation.

Week 43 Food Storage Challenge

5 pounds of honey/ powder eggs

Even if you have a lot of sugar stored it would be nice to have some honey put back honey will last almost forever. If it sugars up just put the jar in a pan of boiling water to liquefy it.

Powder eggs make sure to get the eggs that you can cook with, not the scrambled eggs. Even if you have chickens it would be a good idea to have some powdered eggs on hand.

Do you have a coffee pot that is not electric? It would be a good idea to get a few kitchen appliances that do not require electricity such as an egg beater, coffee pot, mandolin, maybe even a hand crank blender. Look around your kitchen and ask yourself how would I cook if there was no electricity.

Put back more water.
If you are able you might think about rain gutters and a storage tank for the rain water. We do not have this but it is something that I am wanting to do.

Add some more to your money stash.

Recanning Store bought Tomato Sauce

 

I didn't grow enough tomatoes to can tomato sauce this year so I have had to buy some. I like buying the larger # 10 cans they are a lot cheaper this way. The only problem with this is when you open them you need to be able to use all of it with in a few days. So I can mine into smaller quart and pint jars. It is very easy and doesn't take to long.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pour however many cans you want to do in to a large pan. ( there is about 12 1/4 cups in a can which is a little more then 3 quarts).

Warm over a medium heat until hot be careful it will splatter when it bubbles up.

 

 

 

 

I don't know if you really need to do this but I went ahead and added two tablespoons per quart ( 1 tablespoon per pint) of lemon juice to make sure it had enough acid, since I was going to use the  water bath. I put the lemon juice in the bottom of the sterilized jars and then poured the tomato sauce in. Put the hot lids and rings on then water bath  40 minutes for quarts and 35 for pints (be sure to adjust for your altitude I have to do my quarts for 55 minutes and my pints for 50 minutes) You can also pressure can them for 20 minutes.

 

Now you have doable sized jars of tomato sauce, and they are a lot easier to handle and store then the big cans.

Easy Applesauce for Canning

This is a easy way to do Applesauce. I like to use it in cooking ( bread, cookies, cake cheesecake ect.) but if you don't mind the little bits of skin in you applesauce it is good to just eat also.

I found some apples on sale for 50 cents a pound and since I didn't get many apples this year I bought a bunch.

 

Wash the apples then

using this handy dandy apple corer core all the apples, you do not need to peel them.

 

 

 

 

 Put then in the blender (The food processor will not work it won't chop them small enough).

 Add a little apple juice or water then blend until smooth.

 

Put in a large pan. Add lemon juice I put in about a cup which would be a tablespoon per pint.You can add some sugar these apples were a little sour so I added about 2 cups of sugar.

Cook over  a medium to low heat ( I put mine in my roaster pan you could also use a crock pot) until you have the desired constancy.

Put in sterilized jars and water bath for 20 minutes (Adjust for your altitude I have to water bathe for 45 minutes)

 

This is so easy and quick.

Hope Everyone had a Wonderful Thanksgiving and this Weeks Goals

We have had heavy fog here for the last three days which is so unusual for our area.

I didn't get to post last week have been extra busy. I did get all my fall deep cleaning done.
Moved some cabinets around and got a new larger cabinet for the mud room.
Got the pantry all cleaned out and rearranged.
My oven finally came in so we went and got it last Saturday.
We got Andy's buck cut up I canned some of It and put the rest in the freezer.
Got the rest of Novembers lessons for daycare planned.
Canned 4 # 10 sized cans of tomato sauce got 7 quarts.
16 pints of applesauce for baking canned.

We had Andy's family over for Thanksgiving which was real nice I haven't done Thanksgiving dinner in several years. While I was finishing up the food Andy, the kids and the guys all went out to shoot clay pigeons. I was hoping to get to go out and shoot but I didn't have time so Andy said we will go out and shoot another day soon.

Friday after Thanksgiving we went to get onions. Got there Friday after noon and was going to go do a little shopping. But we pulled into a convenience store and when we came out the pick-up wouldn't start. My brother the diesel mechanic  who lives up there was down here. We called him and he had one of his hand come over and look at it he couldn't find anything then about an hour and a half of looking he tried to start it it started right up.We decided we had better go straight  to the motel.We got a room and ordered a pizza and watched a couple movies. Another one of my brothers friends came over about 9:00 and put a sensor on the truck to see if he could tell what was wrong all we could figure was maybe the fuel filters. It also started when he tried it. The next morning we got it started we needed to go to a farm store and get some shear pins for the baler, we keep the truck running all day.

 After that we went to get onions, picked up 600 pounds 400 for me and 200 for a friend.They were 9 dollars for 50 pounds (18 cents a pound). Got those loaded then went to pick up Andy's mom.

We ate lunch with his Mom's friends. then we got her loaded up, plus the dog she decided she needed to take home with her. ( She already has two house dogs and several outside dogs). Anyways got all that loaded and headed home.

 Got about half way home and hit heavy fog we hardly ever have fog. It was dark by the time we got her home and unloaded so we were hurrying to get home and get the onions unloaded before they froze.

Got home unloaded onions then decided to go to the fireman's dance. Every year on the Saturday after Thanksgiving the Fire dept has a dance to help raise money. It was kind of sad this year not many people showed up. We left about 10:00 the girls stayed to the bitter end. They had some other girls spend the night after the dance so we had 6 teenage girls  do you know how much noise 6 girls can make?

I had to run to town the next morning and Andy changed out the two fuel filters on the truck. And he got a load of cows gathered to take out to his moms.  It was his Mom's 86th Birthday so we all met out there to do a dinner.

So hopefully this week I can get some onions done.
Potato's worked on.
Lessons for the month of December.
I need to change the sensory box to the December theme.
I still have a few apples I need to finish up.
I would like to get Christmas decorations up we still need to go get a tree but if I can have everything else done it won't take to long to do the tree.
I need to get some soap made for Christmas presents.
I am trying to use my household notebook a little more and stay on some sort of schedule.

Hope everyone has a great week.