 Welcome back to the channel. So today has been a crazy day already and we're just getting the day started So this morning I had told you all in my last video that I was getting ready I'm sorry. This shadow is just going all over the place But I told you guys in my last video at the end that I was gonna be getting up this morning and going and picking up our grapes to do grape juice and So we went to do that. It's the first time I've ever done that We have somebody local that organizes having these grapes shipped in and it's so neat They had tons and tons and tons of grapes huge skids of them people were coming to pick up their orders I had ordered mine like three months ago. So we're going to be doing grape juice this week However, we're not doing it today and the other thing that they had there. They had cider They also had like baked goods. I got homemade trombolis for us to have for dinner tonight that somebody made and It was just a really neat experience. I definitely will be ordering my grapes that way again So today we got up early went and got the grapes because it is not extremely close To where we live where I got the grapes So I had to go drive to do that brought them back unloaded them and now we're all loaded up to go for a Good Costco run with my mom my grandmother and my sisters So are my sister-in-laws that we say my sisters, but I mean my sister-in-laws So we everly will be the oldest which is my daughter sitting back here And there's going to be eight children under the age of seven along with all of us ladies so we always look like quite a party going to Costco and People are always like how many kids how many people wow and I just realized I have a sticker stuck on my sleeve Anyway, we have a lot of fun and I need there's a good amount of stuff that I need at Costco as well So we're meeting my sister-in-law Sarah and me and my children will go in her vehicle because her vehicles bigger than mine and Then everybody else is going to go in a big van that my parents own and that way We have lots of room to stash all of our holes for like five to six different families in the back of one huge van So it's always fun. We always have a blast. We're always exhausted till the day is over But that is what we're going to do. So let's get going So you can throw it right in the freezer I Want to say a big thank you to Bright Cellars for sponsoring this week's video Bright Cellars matches you with wines from small Vineyards all over the world curated specifically to your palette with hundreds of exclusive wine brands You'll be able to try new wines. You've never tasted before I really loved the whole process of going through the little quiz that they have to really feel out to what type of wines I enjoy. I am a more white or rosé type of a wine person But I often use wine in cooking versus drinking it So this covers all the things that I want to use this wine for the part That's probably the most fascinating and fun to me are the wine education cards on each card It tells you about the bottle It tells you the tasting notes the suggested pairings and the temperature that you want to serve it at it Also tells you where the wine originates from which I really love and I feel like it gives a whole new Experience to trying out new wine the great thing is you can have a box of wine sent to you every month Or you can pause the subscription and skip a month It's all up to you on when and how you want your wine delivered with the holidays approaching I really love this idea of being able to gift wines as well along with their education card It makes for a fantastic holiday gift idea And it's a really fun thing to bring along to a friends or family gathering Bright Cellars is giving my subscribers this fantastic offer of 50% off your first six bottle box You can check out the link in the description box to start your quiz to see what wines Bright Cellars matches you up with Okay, it is the next day and my intentions of filming a lot in Costco went down the drain whenever you've got Eight children under the age of seven and you're all trying to get your things at Costco So I'm gonna go through this haul Pretty quickly because my sister-in-law is gonna be here soon and we're gonna start processing grapes And I need to get all of this put away. We ended up going to a fair last night So I just really dumped everything off after we were done at Costco and we went and enjoyed the fair So I'm gonna start on this end first of all you see this big pile of spaghetti squash over here That is my portion of the spaghetti squash we had from our garden and of course my mom and my sister-in-law They got their portions out of it. This is so much spaghetti squash. My plan is to dehydrate a bunch of it I've seen some really successful Dehydration projects with spaghetti squash and then rehydrating it for later use So I think I'm going to turn some of those in to dehydrated spaghetti squash So I'm not really gonna go in any special order some of this stuff I'm just kind of gonna fly through so they had a really good deal on batteries And I like to keep them stocked up so that we never run out for Whatever reason we need it for and then I always like to grab a pack of these because they're a very good price at Costco this I got and actually my sister-in-law got one as well They are vanilla beans and you can make yourself some very inexpensive vanilla extract with Just some different things. There's a couple different ways to do it so I'm going to use these for that and be able to make a big bottle of it and Probably have some leftover to be able to use later on Everly had a quick question for me with a little sign that she's making So I grabbed some big jugs of avocado oil This is a very good price at Costco just some medicines I got some more over here just to have backups of that I like to have that in my storage closet. I got maple syrup This will be enough to get us through along with what we already have Until maple syrup season is locally for us and I plan to really stock up this year So I don't have to buy from Costco But that is not until March I grabbed some peanut butter This is something that I don't really stock up on like a lot at a time because it does go bad And it does get rancid so I kind of buy that in smaller portions like this And then we have it for a while plus we're not huge peanut butter eaters in our house So it's not something that we need all the time And then I grabbed some lemon juice in big jugs like this I'm gonna look into what it would take to put this into smaller Jars I'm going to see if I could water bath can some smaller jars with this in it Just so that I can seal them off and use smaller portions at a time So I don't have to have this big jug sitting in my refrigerator I only have one refrigerator in my kitchen and I don't have one like in a garage or anything At least not yet at some point. I would love that but I so my refrigerator space is really important to me I got some garlic powder. They had these on Sampling and the girls had tried them and really liked them So I thought that would be a nice snack to have in the pantry. I did get this ranch powder Even though I really want to make my own Becky over at Acre Homestead I know she has a great recipe for ranch powder I just haven't tried it yet and I decided to grab this until I can figure out a good ranch powder or find Her recipe my sister-in-law buys this every single time and the other week I was at her house and I tried it and she it is so delicious and we do a lot of grilling and smoking my husband has a smoker outside and So we smoke meat almost every weekend and I know he's going to enjoy trying this out She said it's also really good on fried rice so next time maybe I'll have to get more than one bottle of that we will see and Then just some extra spices. I needed that I was getting low on chili powder. I grabbed two of those. I got Parsley I got three of those just because I did not dehydrate some of my own this year and Next year my goal is to really get into Preserving a lot of my own herbs and things but since they don't have the Costco is a great place to stock up This is just some chopped onion and again. I may actually do some more of this in my own dehydrator Soon but for now that's a little bit and then speaking of dehydration. This is something that I grabbed to try out I want to do Dried mushrooms. However, I just don't know if I will like them or use them so I thought you know what I'm gonna go ahead and Grab this and then we'll see if I use this and see if I like it I'm gonna test it out on some recipes and then I'll decide if I want to do some Dehydrated mushrooms because you can also can mushrooms as well Which I think I would like a little better than dehydrating them But this will be a good tester for me My mom got a huge pack of Capri Sun and gave the girls a box So this isn't something that I would normally buy but she was giving that to them as a treat and then this year I'm really excited to use it is some artichoke hearts And I recently was somewhere and had some grilled chicken with like an artichoke and spinach dip Sauce type stuff that was dumped over the grilled chicken And I think that this will be delicious for that And then this is something that's a little hard to make homemade and that is crackers So that's something that I like to stock up on especially with soup season coming And we are going to be eating a lot of soup having crackers around is very convenient So I got a box of Ritz crackers I got a box of club crackers a box of saltines and then these here are very delicious My husband likes to eat them with hummus in his lunch He really likes hummus a lot and so these are a good like dip cracker and of course some Graham crackers I may even try to make some of my own this winter whenever there's more time and then I have a few Children in the house that like to eat this and it is so good for them It has a lot of just healthy benefits to eating seaweed I personally don't like it But they like it as a nice a little salty snack and then I keep this on my shelves Usually the shelf life of this is very good. And so I'd like to keep a good stock of this I have more downstairs, but I just grabbed another box. It's awesome for in smoothies And just a good way to get a good healthy fat in and there's other benefits to using that and back there Of course is some of my Home can chicken broth that I talked about in my last video and then this is my prep cart I love this thing because I can move it around the kitchen depending on what I have going on out here So this is one of the biggest reasons I actually went to Costco was to stock up on I guess you would call these paper goods So obviously toilet paper and paper towels. So we're stocked up on that for a while I also got tissues some ebs and salts because we do a lot of ebs and salt baths around here and Some baby wipes we just use them for a lot of convenient wiping up of things and whatnot If you guys didn't know baby wipes are actually a really great grease cutter So if you have something that's really greasy it's a good way to clean it up and then we were on our last section of a roll of the trash bags that I get from Costco and then I use oxy clean a lot in our laundry just to help kill smells and Make things fresh and then up here was a couple refrigerated items I didn't get a whole lot because like I said I don't have a big refrigerator and I don't have an extra refrigerator. So I can't Stock up too far on things like this But I did get some kombucha and I'm actually getting ready to make my own kombucha So I wanted the bottles from these and we like to drink kombucha. I have a Kombucha mother getting delivered today actually that I ordered from a small shop I got a nice big tub of sour cream the girls love these things and I love them too and they're just good They're a real cheese that is in a small wax Casing and you just peel the wax casing off and eat them and then I got this big bag of broccoli And this might be a project will work on today But I want to blanch it and try dehydrating it I've never done broccoli in the dehydrator and I just watched a video this morning of somebody and all the instructions on How to do it so we're gonna go ahead and give that a try since this is a pretty good price at Costco alright you guys, so it's actually a few days later and We accomplished the grape juice and I'm actually on to new projects But the grape juice was really simple to do and I wanted to tell you all how we did it Especially because a lot of people may recommend using a juicer like a steam juicer to make grape juice And you don't need any fancy equipment at all Also, I need to say this because absolutely crazy. I've never done grape juice before and I ended up with over 60 quarts of grape juice With giving grapes away. I ordered way too many grapes till my sister-in-all and I were done We were so sick of doing grapes. It wasn't even funny and I'm curious to see next year if I even need to do grape juice or if I will have done enough grape juice for two years because Grape juice is something that if it is canned correctly you can actually keep it for two years So all you need to do is fill the jar about halfway to about three fourth of the way full with your grapes This applies to white grapes or purple grapes and then you go ahead and put some sugar in We put about a fourth cup of sugar You can do it without sugar if you really want to But I wanted some sweetener and some people actually put more sugar than that in and some people Put sugar in after they take the grape juice out, which I'll get to in a second So you're gonna go ahead and put your sugar in there And then you're gonna fill the jar up to the top leaving about an inch head space with water And preferably you want to use like filtered water or something like that Then you're gonna go ahead and follow the instructions as far as putting the lids and the rings on That is on the box of jars or rings, then you're gonna water bath can them for 15 minutes It's that easy if you don't know what water bath canning is just like look it up on YouTube There's a lot of tutorials on how to water bath can correctly And then you just take the jars out and let them sit for 24 hours and let them seal And that is it now when you go to drink the grape juice You'll just dump the grapes through a strainer And I like to actually take the grapes that are in the strainer and just kind of mash them a little bit with A whisk and then I like to add a jar of water So I do a quart of the grape juice to a quart of water and I just do it without any sugar added Some people will add sugar than at that point as well We just don't care for ours to be that sweet and it's really that easy to do so So happy that I did that much grape juice even though it was really exhausting the day that we did it I'm really happy that I have a lot. We've been enjoying it. It's extremely high in vitamin C So it's a version of kind of orange juice like it would be when you live in Florida You've got the fresh orange juice well here in the northern states. We've got the fresh grapes So we're really happy with that and now today. I've just been kind of doing some things around the house I've been working on some video stuff to get a video live for you guys today not this one but another video and Just some little projects around the house I actually am getting ready to freeze some garden tea so that we have that to kind of extend into the cooler months just a few quarts of that into the freezer and Then I'm also hoping to get some peppers and onions canned But before we get on to anything else it is getting later in the day And we're gonna go do a little bit of a meal prep for dinner and just kind of get our meal put together So I'm gonna take you guys along with me into the kitchen. I've been doing some odds and end projects Like making some extracts. I'm excited to show you that I've been making vanilla extract lemon extract cinnamon extract and also Peppermint extract I had to think for a second there So let's go ahead and head into the kitchen and I'll show you what I've been up to Just as I was starting some dinner prep Cory gave me a call and told me he was going to be home from work a little bit Early, so we decided to just have an early dinner. So I dove right in to making dinner I was going to make some baked potatoes and Some barbecue meatballs along with some home canned green beans and a few other things So this was a really simple. I recently got a 50 pound bag of Potatoes the thin skin potatoes. I do can red potatoes But I just wanted some regular thin skin potatoes to make baked potatoes with so I thought why not to go ahead and Use our first potatoes out of this big bag of local potatoes So I just stabbed them and rolled them up in some tin foil and baked them for about an hour at 400 degrees Fahrenheit Next I got started in to making the meatballs and I just threw together a really simple recipe I had two pounds of beef ground beef and then I added an egg I used some of this gluten-free breadcrumbs I had picked up at one point in time and I need to get it used up and then I also put in some Worcestershire sauce and some of this seasoning that we found at Walmart, it's like a Cherry kind of flavor and it's awesome with anything with a barbecue sauce Once I had the meat mixture mixed together I put a little bit of avocado oil in the bottom of the pan and then I just put the meatballs right into the pan A lot of times I bake my meatballs in the oven But because I have the potatoes in there and it was a little bit of a higher temperature Then what I would have preferred to make the meatballs. I decided to just go ahead and make them in the frying pan so like I said to go along with the meatballs and Potatoes I pulled out some home can green beans which of course just needed to be heated up and then also some pickled Beats and some of my homemade sourdough bread with some Strawberry jam and that makes for a delicious Nice supper after supper. I decided to dive into a little project I'm really excited to share this with you because this was one of my favorite Canning projects for this entire year. It might be in competition with the homemade tomato soup I made but this is such a versatile thing to have on your pantry shelf So I'm going to be canning some peppers and onions a local discount store that I go to often had these bell peppers like around three for a dollar and It was a little bit different depending on the color, but Still very very inexpensive. So I decided to take advantage of it and get a whole bunch of them This is actually the second batch that I've done Along with some sweet pepper relish So I really took advantage of having this amazing price for these wonderful looking peppers So the first thing that you do is wash them up obviously and then you're gonna slice them You can slice them with your knife if you want to I decided to go ahead and use my mandolin slicer Just so that everything was pretty uniform and I liked how the first batch came out at this Width of slice for the peppers So I just did them all up this way and it just was nice and quick and easy and that way as you're putting them on Something they all kind of look around the same size and then I also chopped up some onions However, I did chop those with my knife just because they cook a little bit Softer than the peppers do so having a bigger piece is a little nicer And I just want to give you guys a couple ideas of how you can use these So you can use these on homemade pizza. You can use them for fajitas You can use them in a omelet for scrambled eggs or whatever you want to use them for My absolute favorite part about this is you get to use the whole product So the water that's left behind is my absolute favorite thing well new favorite thing since I just learned how to do this To make rice with and I know that sounds a little bit funny But whenever you go to use the peppers once you've used all the peppers up Use what's left over to cook your rice with if there's not enough water You know just add a little more water into the I'm gonna call it pepper and onion broth and it makes the best rice in The whole wide world. I promise So I used my big bus boy bin. I've got these in packs of two from sam's club They're so convenient for food processing and canning and things like that So I use that to mix up all of the peppers and onions just to get a good ratio of both of them going on I kind of just guessed on how much to put in for how many onions per peppers and that kind of thing And then once you have it all mixed up You're also going to want to start a nice big pot of water Because you're going to need to blanch your peppers and onions before you put them in the jars So you just want to get the water to a rolling boil you can put in small amounts at a time It doesn't need to be all the peppers and onions at once And as soon as you drop them into the boiling water I set the timer for three minutes and then I pull them out So you're just kind of shocking them a little bit just to help hold in flavor Texture and color once they go in to the jars and are canned So after you've taken them out of the water, you can go ahead and start filling your jars I just stuff them as full as I can And then once all of the jars are full I add a fourth teaspoon to each jar Um of salt a fourth teaspoon of salt and you can really Just kind of do that Whatever your preference is you can put in as much salt as you want to or as little salt as you want to Salt is not what preserves canned food. However, it does help to preserve flavor So once I have them all filled with the salt Then I like to take the broth from blanching the peppers and onions and fill up the jars You can put a butter knife or something like that In there to debubble them if you want to then after that I take a piece of paper towel with a little bit of white vinegar on it Just wiping the rims off so that I know that the seals will seal well So once I know that all the rims are clean Then I go ahead and put my lids and my rings on and then I pressure canned these For 35 minutes at 11 pounds pressure and that's for where I live Along with what the manual of my pressure canner tells me to do And I feel like it keeps a great flavor and a great texture in the next video I want to share with you all how I'm making my own extracts. It's really exciting. I have one more extract I haven't made yet. So I want to make that along with you. So definitely stick around subscribe if you're new Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. I had fun with you I hope this video inspired you and don't forget to Leave me a like and a comment below. I love reading your comments and I'll see you all in next week's video