 Hey friends and welcome back today We're gonna do an updated seller tour and I'm sorry if there's little noises in this video We are in the middle of wintertime right now And so we've got the heater that might kick on and other things that go on down here But all of that to say the seller is actually a pretty cool temperature right now I just looked at the thermostat down here and it said 48 degrees Fahrenheit So that keeps everything nice and chill We do try to keep our basement door closed and kind of this whole area Separated if you're completely new here, and you've never seen my seller before I did do a video when we first kind of set it up But I thought I would do an update video and I also need to do a little bit of organizing Which I thought it would take you guys with me Just some stuff that needs to be taken care of especially with these shelves They look all nice and stocked up But the reality is is we've actually been eating a lot of this food So the rows are a lot more narrow than what they were before They went back a lot deeper and I've just kind of spent sliding things up as we've been working through stuff through the winter Now I do do a lot of every other year canning some people don't prefer to do that and that's okay But I do come from a Mennonite background and that's something that a lot of people practice And that just basically means certain things you only do every other year So for example this summer I did enough tomato Products to last me until next year. So this coming summer, I probably won't do quite as many There are a few things I'm running low on like salsa So that might be something that I will do this coming summer But there's a lot of things like applesauce other things like that that I will do two years worth of Whenever I do it. I also I'm gonna give you all some step-by-step Instructions on how to can something a lot of people have never even tried to home can anything here on my channel And I get so many questions of the simple process of it. So I thought today in this video I will include some step-by-step instructions and There is of course little tweaks and things that you do for individual recipes But just to give you the general idea of how you home can something a few little tidbits of some things I've gotten comments on about my food storage So one of them and I get this comment all the time is about putting up a railing for the jars So like if we had an earthquake or something like that and we do not have earthquakes in central, Pennsylvania Everybody that I know that home cans and that's a lot of people their shelves all look like this So if you lived in California, however, you might want to Create some sort of a barrier to if there were an earthquake that your jars don't go smashing to the ground But believe me my grandmother's and my mom for many many years have had their shelves like this I also get questions about why I don't leave the rings on the jars We can talk about that a bit more later But for the moment I want to talk about what I'm about to do obviously through the winter We have been eating a lot of these foods that are canned on the shelf and with that comes a lot Of empty jars and I have not been very diligent in putting them in a way or putting them into boxes a Bunch of them. There's like a big C of them on the floor on the other side of the cellar And I need to put them into boxes and I need to kind of condense what I have here So what I'm going to do is there's a lot of space behind the rows of jars and I'm going to just slide the rows Over if that makes sense I think you'll you'll kind of catch it as I go and whenever I'm done kind of doing this condensing project here I'll walk you through the cellar and just show you everything that's here And maybe a few of the things that have changed since you last saw it I started out by moving the peaches and the pears over and I did do some peaches this year I didn't do pears. So this is what's left from the pears a last year I did a ton of pears. I had found an amazing deal from a local vendor at a farmers market on pears and Snagged them up. We also love to get these dark cherries from Aldi So I'll get a flat of those every once in a while And this is just a lot of canned fruits and mainly what we use these for like the canned strawberries and blueberries is For on oatmeal and on yogurt and it's just basically an easy way to have a sweetener I do can them with a little bit of sugar same with the jams and jellies I have strawberry jam blueberry jam, and then you'll see some grape jelly here in a little bit and We like to mix those into things. They just make a great tasty way to add to simple ingredients like Oatmeal so moving down from there. I went ahead and moved over my applesauce I did not do any applesauce this year I had done so much last year and this is what is left of it And then I also have apple pie filling next to that this next year I'm definitely gonna be doing some apple pie filling We just have found that it's so good even warming it up with some vanilla ice cream That sort of thing next to that I have some Apple butter and apple juice and then I started moving all of the grape juice over last year I did purple grape juice this year. I did white grape juice So all of those green grapes you see they create that white grape juice And you just strain the grapes off and you're able to enjoy the juice so the Last project I think I did in my canning was cranberry juice So that is what you saw next to the grapes then Moving back up to the top. I'm moving over all of my tomato sauce And if you ever made tomato sauce, you know, if you want a nice thick sauce, it takes so much time and effort But the reward was so great And now I will not be doing tomato sauce this next year because as you can see I have so much of it And I also did other tomato products, which you'll see here in a second So here next to my jam and jellies. I have a little bit of homemade chocolate syrup I really want to show you all how to make that I haven't shown that on my channel and such a easy way to make a good clean Chocolate syrup without corn syrup in it We make chocolate milk and things like that with it then next to that I have tomato paste and some small jars of marinara sauce Underneath that I am moving here my grape jelly over. That's a favorite in our house And I tend to do it whenever I do the purple grape juice except for I had some frozen ones And so last fall I did do some purple grape jelly with frozen grapes from the year before and then I have lemon juice and Some mushroom broth that I strain off of my mushrooms And that's what's next to those when I'm canning them and I use that mushroom broth As a base to make homemade mushroom cream or cream of mushroom soup underneath that on the bottom I've got relishes. So we've got jalapenos. We've got sweet pepper relish. We got mustard relish. We have dill relish sweet pickle relish dill spears and then bread and butter Sliced pickles now pickles are something I do try to do every year. They do not hold up very well to Doing the every other year thing simply because they lose their crunch and in our house I love a good crunchy pickle and everyone else does too So that's something I try to do every year just to make sure our pickles stay nice and crisp Back up to the top again here I am moving over our diced tomatoes and again This is something I will not be doing this next summer because I did so much and I'm all good to go Until the next year underneath of that. I've got my pint-sized jars of Marinara sauce now we use this as spaghetti sauce and pizza sauce. I don't do separate recipes for that some people do But if you make a good Yummy marinara sauce, I think it covers all the bases then after that I have my canned onions and peppers These are so convenient and can be used in so many areas and I love the broth for making rice And then on the end I kind of started sliding things from the other shelf next to this one There's two large shelves and I started sliding over the baked beans also some asparagus and Then next to the asparagus I have what's left of my canned pumpkin from this past year and then after the canned pumpkin I put a little bit of canned shredded Cabbage just for like cabbage soup and those sorts of things next. I'm moving over our canned potatoes I have been very consistently buying a 50 pound bag of potatoes every month and We just haven't been going through the canned potatoes quite as quickly so this winter I didn't do a 50 pound bag of potatoes canning it up So I don't think I'll need to until next winter alright I think we were down here at the corn whenever I decided to have my daughters come help me because this was taking way too long So they came and helped me move the jars over and it went really really fast So down here is what we have left of the corn We had over double this whenever we started the year and then this is honey here is potatoes I Think up here some of this stuff. I may have shown you all baked beans green beans Those are some sweet potatoes. This is all chicken broth and then shredded chicken and a few Black beans there on the end and then here is some home canned soup some tomato soups These separated because they are canned without sugar. These are canned with sugar They just separate more so when they don't have that extra sugar in there And then I have some pulled pork and some chicken breast and then down here the potatoes kind of wrap around that side Because they do connect in the middle So I've got carrots. This is all like beef bone broth and a little bit of canned roast beef and then down here. I've got canned butter and some chickpeas so now That we condensed everything. We've got all this space here to put boxes of Jars and that's what I need to do now and this little fun science experiment over here That is the last of my potatoes from the previous 50 pound bag I got they all sprouted. I need to get them out of here But just funny and it's a great little thing to show my kids of how the how the potatoes sprout So anyways, I am so glad that I have the space to now put more jars That are empty so that we can load these up and redo it again all this coming year Alright, so I've gotten so many questions on just the simple kind of step-by-step way that you home can foods and every recipe is a little bit different, but I'm gonna give you the basic steps of What you need to do to can foods at home So number one you want to clean and sterilize your jars. You want to make sure that they're very clean Some people run them through the dishwasher. Some people wash them with soap and water. I've done both next you're gonna follow your recipe instructions, so if you're making a marinara sauce for example you are going to follow the recipe of what all it calls for in that recipe and It might be a little bit of sugar your spices your tomato sauce So forth and so on however if it's something like canned peaches You are going to cut up your fruit and you're going to make a syrup Which sometimes it can be a light syrup it can be a heavy syrup But it generally consists of sugar and water cooked on the stove and then you just pour that over your fruit So this applies to things like peaches like I said pears Some people would do apple slices like this now it wouldn't make a pie filling But it would just be canned fruit another example of a recipe to follow would be how to make your apple sauce up Then you're gonna fill your jar to the amount of headspace Which that means the amount between the liquid and where the jar will sit That your recipe says so here. I'm just doing it with some syrup now. I make really really light syrup I generally don't put a whole ton of sugar into the water for these But just enough to help preserve the flavor because sugar does help preserve Flavor now the next step is going to be to wipe the rims almost always I wipe the rims particularly if you have something sticky like a syrup and Sometimes or most of the time sometimes I use hot water but most of the time I like to soak my cloth or paper towel in some vinegar White vinegar works just fine and I wipe the rims with that just to make sure there's nothing between the seal and the rim of The jar next you're gonna put on your lids and then you're going to make your rings Finger tight and basically what that means is you don't want them too tight Sometimes you can actually get a lot of failed seals just from your rings being too tight So a lot of times you just want to turn that just to finger tight meaning like just when it starts to get tight And then you just let it go you don't want to over tighten them And you obviously don't want them too loose as well or you're gonna have a lot of siphoning So either way you just want it kind of at a nice medium tightness if that makes sense Then you're gonna follow your canner instructions So water bath canning generally means that you are filling a big kettle up with water Putting the lid on and getting it to a rolling boil and then you start your time So for example if the recipe says that you need to water bath for 15 minutes You're gonna start your timer at 15 minutes when it's at a rolling boil And that means that it's really really bubbling you set your timer And then when the timer goes off your processing time is done Some people let it rest a little bit and some people will pull it out pretty well right away Pressure canning on the other hand you're gonna follow the instructions in your pressure canner manual And it will tell you how to run your pressure canner different pressure canners work different ways So that is why I say refer to your manual Okay, so here is an overview of this side of the cellar Obviously you've seen all of this in close detail and then around the corner here we've got a lot more storage and I took care of those potatoes. I had shown you so one thing that I did add To this area of the cellar since you all have last seen it is these baskets I have had a lot of just different baskets I've been finding and they're so convenient during harvest season Even if I'm picking up from local farmers just to have the things I need For strawberries for blueberries for anything like that and I just have them hanging with s hooks here And then over on this side if you've never seen our cellar before I have Some of our oils and vinegars over here This shelf kind of holds a lot of odds and ends larger jars freezer containers things like that and then up here I've got our mylar bags with a few pastas That's what I tend to do with my pastas is put them into mylar bags And then I just use these bungee cords to help keep everything on the shelf and not falling off down here is kind of just a random selection of Kind of condiments a few other store canned items. I've got ziploc bags And over here I have been using the willing a lot. I know I have shared about them in the past I love love love their vacuum packing system and we use it on a regular basis So this is a ton of their vacuum storage bags and up here I've got some gluten-free pasta that we use a lot. I had been getting it on subscription from Amazon I did stop it for a little bit because we're nice and stocked up. This mostly holds a lot of baking items here So things that I get from Azure like I like to get their organic cocoa up here We've got flaked coconut just other odds and ends of Things that are generally for baking. I don't really have any of that labeled because it just fluctuates And I kind of have an idea of what's all in there up here I have some freeze-dried items and then a few things from Azure that I kept nice and high That was a question I did get was what about mice? Have you had any issues with mice in your cellar and we have it? I have seen a few signs of them, but I haven't had any issues with them getting into any of our food I don't know if it's because This these racks would be a little hard for them to climb Could potentially be most of our food though is stored in glass or Harder containers that are harder for mice to get into one other thing I wanted to answer was the question of why I don't store things with rings on them So when you go to home can you have a lid and then there's also a ring that screws on there And if you store it with the ring on it could very well give you a false seal Making you think that it's sealed on the inside and it's actually not so whenever I test out my seal I just pick up the jar like this by the lid and if it can pick up the jar then it's definitely sealed So it's really kind of dangerous in some sense to store your canned goods with the rings on Because you could be eating food that was not sealed correctly and you could miss it very easily with the rings on So back over here to this side before we go to the other side of the seller Sorry if my light is a little bit bright. I just wanted to be sure you all could see it is very dark down here We do have there's one little window that is Connected to this and we do have that covered up. So here I've got pumpkins and these will store for quite some time and then some spaghetti squash this stuff I did not have in my last tour because these are obviously things from fall So this past fall we were able to store these things away And I kind of want to bake one of these up whole and maybe do a soup in one I just have so many ideas that we could use this for finishing up this shelf here. I've got spices And then down here, there's salt baking soda just a few random odds and ends All right moving around to this side of the seller Which I kind of feel like this is the least organized area right now. So this is our freeze dryer I've been working with harvest right we've had a few defects with it And they have been awesome in helping me out and getting that sorted out And so we've just have some parts and things here that we are exchanging with that This here is vacuum sealing stuff just a few odds and ends down here are my canners and I think that it's all just mainly freeze dryer related things Then over here is my what I consider my home apothecary It has all of my herbs and the things that I would use for home Remedies and things like that. I have a few things up here You can see these are tinctures that I have made in the past And this was actually some local lavender that I picked up this fall and dried And so we can use that if somebody wants a good lavender bath. We've got that on hand. I love that up there Is my citrus juicer. I don't know if you can see it. The light is really bright. This here looks a little bit disheveled So this is my husband's hunting stuff and we do have to keep that in here during the winter months Just because it's like one of the few places that we can keep something like that. So that's why that's over here This is just utility things and then on this side. I've got a bunch of my dry goods So this holds things like flour oatmeal cane sugar Anything I would get in like a 50 pound bag that sort of a thing And then this is our freezers our current freezer situation we might be getting a really large freezer to put out in our shop and Because these do really well, but we are getting a whole cow for the first time We've gotten halves and other portions of cows Before and that's coming up here in the next month or so and so these freezers are already pretty full I'll show you give you a little peek. So we did just get half of a pig And so we have lots of sausage and things like that. I tried to write what's in here on the tape I don't always keep track of every single thing But this one is set up how I prefer them to be set up These two have had to be a little bit dismantled because of how much meat we've gotten in the last couple of months But basically underneath of here. All right, I lifted this out But underneath of here, we've got two of these crates stacked on top of each other So there's this one and then the one below and then on the side I keep other things. There's like butter and stuff like that. So these bins here are from Amazon the crates I think are from Walmart and It works out perfectly because those two crates stacked together And then these guys sitting on top comes up pretty much flush with the top of the freezer And it keeps it all organized and easy to dig through But it does take up extra space as I you'll see in the other freezers They are very full and they have to be because of how much meat we have right now So this is Scrapple from the pork we just got we are in central, Pennsylvania And that's a really big thing here. We both grew up eating it and love it moving on to the next freezer These ones are not very organized. I will admit so we just have a lot of Pork and beef in here right now. We did get some beef from his parents They just got a cow done and we were out of steaks So we got some of that put in here this here is one of the large large pork roasts that we have and I Actually love the willing for this reason because their bags are big enough to fit something like this This thing is huge. I mean like I don't know you can see how big it is compared to my hand, but it's massive So this freezer is very full It doesn't have any crates in it and it just has to be like this right now and I do prefer to have things more organized That's why this crate is sitting up here because it is normally in these freezers So here we have a bunch of stuff in the bottom of here I have some lard that I need to render and So these were sitting on top of crates in here But now it's just piled up with pork and these guys are just kind of chilling in here I have got some bell peppers and things like that and Some blueberries from last summer all that good stuff. Okay. I'm trying to move my light around as we go So this is the window We just put some brown paper Tacked it up there and you can see here that this is obviously an old farmhouse And this is just a way a lot of the old cellars are so looping back Around here is our little refrigerator. We have and then back over here to the home can goods over here I have my roaster with some smaller buckets and they have a rice in them and I think it's just all rice in them right now. So this just gives us a bonus refrigerator space and a place to put more things in the small freezer And then there I have my drying rack that I like to use in the summertime and we do pull that out For snow pants whenever they've been sledding and we're able to dry them on that And then this here is a bunch of wide-mouth jars that I've just stacked along the end there But other than that, that's pretty much everything. I hope that this was a helpful and inspirational video I am glad I was able to get this really cleaned up There was some things on the floors too that I was able to clean up off camera and got it all swept So that's always a good feeling as well. And this is what we're working with I'm so curious to see until canning season comes around again this summer how much more of this is gone and What I will be inspired to can this next year if you're new here. Don't forget to subscribe Give this video a like and thank you so much for spending time with me today. I'll see you all in the next one