I’m never 100% comfortable having freezers full of food. Yes, I do it but there’s always the thought in the back of my head — what happens if . .? The power could go out. We have generators but what if we can’t get fuel? We have propane powered generators which are our first choice but what if the propane guys can’t get here to fill the tank? We have gasoline powered generators but don’t like storing gasoline. For those who have not lived through tornadoes and/or hurricanes, you may not realize the trouble with trying to get gas or propane. What if one of the freezers went out? There are no freezers to buy and parts can take forever to get. Things aren’t like they used to be when one could run to Home Depot or the appliance store, buy a freezer had have it delivered within a day or so.
Yes, I do keep plenty in my freezers. If I had 10 freezers (I don’t), they would all be full.
For almost everything, canning is my preference for storing food, for several reasons:
- Power could go out forever and the canned food is going to be good.
- I think the food lasts much longer in jars than in the freezer. If you’re only keeping food for six months to a year, the freezer is perfectly fine if the food is properly packaged. Most will recommend 1 to 2 years for canned food. I opened a jar of taco soup the other day that had been canned in 2014. It was fine.
- If the power was off and needing to cook, it would be so much easier to open a jar of pressure canned beef, cook a package of noodles and have everything ready to serve in 20 minutes vs. having to cook the meat til it was tender.
- If someone shows up unexpectedly for dinner, I can grab a jar or two, heat it up and we have a good meal! Who wouldn’t be happy to show up at my house and get homemade enchiladas without any notice? 🙂
This morning I took some roasts out of the freezer. I doubt they’ll be defrosted enough today to cut them up and get them into the jars but I would love to get them all done today. If not . . there’s always tomorrow.
I am going to can it in quarts. Pints never seems like quite enough and quarts will give us enough to have those yummy breakfast burritos I made the other day.
The way I look at it, if I have 12 quarts, that’s enough to pop open a jar of burrito meat once a month. If I have 24 jars, that’s enough to have it twice a month. Today I’ll be canning the shredded Enchilada meat. When it’s time to serve this meal, I’ll open the jars, pour the contents into a pot, simmer it at a very low boil for 10 – 15 minutes, add the cornstarch to thicken it and proceed to make the enchiladas.
This means I’m planning to get a whole lot done today but very little cross stitching will happen!
Cindy F says
Yep…buying appliances you just never know. I ordered the fridge and it was supposed to be delivered yesterday. New delivery date of 2 Feb but who knows if that will hold? Good thing we weren’t replacing a fridge that doesn’t work. The icemaker isn’t functional but we can make ice the old fashioned way and it doesn’t affect me because I don’t use ice very often…lol
judy.blog@gmail.com says
That’s what I kept thinking when we couldn’t decide if we wanted to spend the money now or wait. With 18+ year old appliances, any one of them could go out any day. We have fridges in the garage. We have the regular stove/oven and the wall oven so if the oven or the fridge went out, we’d be fine. If the stovetop went out, we had the Camp Chef stove and a hot plate. We would have survived and a week or so wouldn’t have been bad but it took 9 months to get the fridge. I would not want to work in a makeshift kitchen for 9 months.
Hope yours gets delivered soon. When we first got dates, they all changed. In April, they said July; in July they said August. Then, by August they said September for the stove and dishwasher and that’s actually when they arrived. The fridge was the same. In about September, they said January and that’s when it happened so maybe they’re getting better at predicting when things will arrive.