 Hey everyone welcome back to my kitchen I've gotten so many requests to show you some of my long-term food and meal prep Okay, you guys so today the first thing that we are going to be working on for a long-term food prep is we're gonna be canning some peas Our household loves peas. It's probably the thing we eat the most and I want to free up some freezer space Plus they're ready just to heat up and eat. It just makes it a little bit easier for us So we've got some clean sterilized jars over here and you guys may be more used to boiling your lids However ball says that you really don't need to lately. I haven't been and I have gotten seals on everything So that's completely fine. Now some people may boil their water to do this I'm actually going to be putting in just regular room temperature water into these jars and letting it heat up with the canner Something I did forget to mention is that I did let the peas sit out on the canner and completely thaw out overnight Before putting them into these jars and if you were using fresh peas out of the garden I would recommend steaming them or blanching them first, but since these have been already frozen I just went ahead and put them right into the jars Another thing you could add to these jars is a half teaspoon of salt I actually forgot to do that in this batch So I'll just have to remember to make note of it on my labels and then add extra salt whenever we open the jars up All right So these are ready to go into the canners now because I do this in a traditional method With traditional timing and all of that I'm going to leave the true instructions in the description box below along with the disclaimer About this method because I know a lot of you are very concerned Because I do a lot of things in a traditional way that being said I'm gonna put this into my canners I have two of them because they only fit seven and I got nine core out of this So I'll split it between the two canners and I'm going to put them onto my second stove in my basement and get them rolling Okay, next I have a little tip for you on how I save some money on bacon This is already open because we got into it for some bacon for breakfast But if you have a box food store near you or you can even get bacon in large quantities from butchers You can package your own bacon into smaller packages for the freezer and be able to kind of save Money per pound so these are actually five pound packages and buying these makes the bacon a lot less per pound Versus buying one pound at a time So what I basically do is I'm gonna get out my scale I forgot to grab that and I like to weigh out about roughly a pound per pack and then this is a food saver or a vacuum sealer and This is actually my second one I tried to get away with one that was a knockoff brand that was a little bit cheaper But I had to go ahead and get a food saver because the knockoff brand did not work as well So I will link this one below but these are not cut bags so basically they're one huge long bag and I like this style for bacon because you don't always know how long of a piece you're going to need So you can just kind of cut these as you go and you seal one end You shove the bacon in and then you seal the other end in vacuum packets so that it does not get freezer burnt So this has been a really great way for us to save a little bit of money. We go through a lot of bacon in our house We love love love bacon and we can just pull the packs right out of the freezer I throw them in a little bit of warm water right before we throw it into the frying pan And there you've got to bacon made for breakfast or any other recipe I want to thank yeety for sponsoring this week's video I have been using their yeety vac max robot vacuum and mop and I've been loving it Yeety vac max is a multitasker it vacuums and mops at the same time with a 3000 PA strong suction and power and a smart mopping system leaving your floor twice clean with a single use It avoids carpet whenever it's mopping and features an advanced carpet detection sensor yeety vac max Intelligently recognizes your carpet and avoids mopping it. It is compatible with the yeety self-emptying Station and lets you upgrade your yeety vac max to a robot vacuum and mop that self empties It's dustbin for up to 30 days yeety's visual mapping technology works in unison with a floor tracking Sensor to map out your space like a GPS so your yeety will always clean edges corners and the entire floor in neat rows Another great feature is that is also compatible with Amazon Alexa and Google home I have a great discount code that is in the description box below for you guys to check out You will love this vacuum and mop as much as I have been it saves me so much time and it does a great job cleaning All right back to prepping so I've been using this scale It's not digital, but you do need to adjust it back to zero every time you weigh things on it Just to make sure that it's accurate It has a little piece on the bottom of it that you can turn and it will adjust it to zero when there's nothing on The scale and the first thing that I did was just cut my bags to the length that I needed them to be and I sealed One end before I started to put the bacon inside I cannot stress this enough and you're gonna see it here and there as I'm packaging this bacon But cleanliness disinfecting and keeping things wiped up and very clean when you're working with packaging meat is of the utmost Importance you're gonna see me Pausing and washing my hands another great method is to make sure you're grabbing the bag with one hand and grabbing the meat With the other hand so you kind of are keeping your two hands Separate or just washing your hands in between is really important another note I want to make with saving money on bacon is that I feel like you can get a higher quality Bacon or even a thick cut bacon for a much cheaper price by buying it in large quantities All right So the only thing left to do with these is to label them and date them And I cannot stress that enough whether it's canning or freezing So you know when you find it a year from now in the bottom of your freezer You know what year it was from and the chances of it being frostbitten or not So the nice thing about these packages is they have actually a little spot for that And you can go ahead and just write it with a sharpie Right on the packaging and then I throw it in my freezer I'm hoping soon to show you all how my deep freezers are organized So stay tuned for that that will be on my home channel, which is linked below Thing that we are going to prep for long-term storage is some dried kiwi I have a discount store that I like to shop at and they had a really great deal on kiwi And I'm going to use my dehydrator. I love this thing I will say that this is a pretty good size investment as far as food preparation goes They do make one that is I think about half this size in this brand. I just feel like it does great It keeps its temperature the fan is in the back so it blows outward so everything gets dried evenly It just does a really great job this one has nine trays in it And I'm hoping that I can fit all of this in here if not the girls will just eat them fresh tomorrow morning So I'm doing this at night because I want to run this during the night that way in the morning I can get up and they'll be hopefully done or almost done and I can clear this thing off of my counter because it does take up a good amount of space on My countertop some people dry these with the skin on if you're going to dry them with the skin on You want to soak them and wash them like you would with other produce, but since I'm going to be peeling them I prefer to dry them peeled I'm just going to go ahead and peel them and then I will get my mandolin out slice them And we will put them on the tray. The other thing I want to mention is this peeler I like to get peelers that have a serrated edge so that has tiny little teeth on there It just does a better job peeling most things I will leave the link below for peelers that are like this. I have more than one Especially whenever we are working on a large food preservation project like canning or something like that Another tool that's really helpful when it comes to dehydrating is a mandolin slicer And I was actually thinking I was going to use my mandolin to slice these but they were extremely ripe Which really makes a great Sweeter dried fruit when you're done, but they were too soft to use the mandolin So I ended up just slicing them with a knife and putting them on that way You just want to make sure that they're all sliced right around the same size We also did a bunch of apples in the Dehydrator whenever I had done some applesauce and the girls really love those as well So once I had the trays loaded up, which it didn't even fill my full dehydrator I went ahead and sat it at the fruit setting, which is around 135 and I also set the timer for about 15 hours Okay, so it is the next day and I have had these in here for about 12 hours And then I let them cool and they may stick a little bit to the tray But they're pretty much just like this they're flat the girls were already Snacking on a few of them and they love these so another term for these is pucker candy they're just a tart little treat and I'm going to be setting them up so that I can put them on the shelf down in my long-term storage area And we can go grab them for a fun little treat. I don't know how many of these they will fill It's usually a lot less than you think because of how much smaller everything gets when you dehydrate it But I'll be putting them in here and conditioning them which I'll explain what that means But once they are conditioned I will be putting some of these moisture absorbers in now These are different than oxygen absorbers Oxygen absorbers absorb oxygen these actually just absorb moisture and they're a pretty big packet So I'm not going to put them in yet because of conditioning So basically what you need to do is anything that you dry in a dehydrator once you put it in a jar You want to for about three days Every once in a while maybe about twice a day come and roll the jar around and make sure that there is no moisture Left inside of the jar and make sure you hear a Plinking sound if you hear a lower plunk sound I know it's gonna sound funny for me to say this but once you try it You will know exactly what I'm talking about if there is a Deeper sound that means that something inside has more moisture And it's not plunking and making a higher sound because if it has almost no moisture You're going to get a higher sound. So basically I will fill these up I will set them somewhere in my kitchen in the next three days I will be conditioning them making sure there's no moisture if I do see any moisture inside the jar I will put them back into the dehydrator make sure that they're truly dry Which I really think they are I really they are very very dry and then once the three days is up And I'm convinced that they're very dry on the inside I will throw my moisture absorber in and I will use my brake pump to seal the lids and they will go on my shelf Downstairs with all of my canned goods So I pulled out one of the moisture absorbers just to show you all what they look like and you kind of have to Fold them for this size of jar I did decide to package these in smaller jars just because they are a very sour treat and they aren't something that We eat a lot of at one time And then I had a little helper come along that wanted to help Package these up and this is such a great job for them when they want to dive in and help you The next couple of clips is actually some long-term food prep I have shared before but you all have requested that I put a lot of the canning freezing food storage Recipes together into their own videos So here is a few more recipes to inspire you or to re-inspire you doing baby carrots It saves me time on cutting up carrots. You can do regular carrots as long as they're all around the same size It doesn't really matter, but this is just fast and simple. So you're cold pack the jars With the cold carrots or you know just raw carrot Then you're gonna add around a teaspoon of salt to each jar now I think it's a little bit tastier to have a little less than a teaspoon per jar But that's up to you you can do one batch taste them and see what you think these are my magnets for my lids back here I just stuck them to the side of the stove. So after I have all of my carrots in here I'm going to wipe the rims. These are clean sterile jars I just washed them in very very hot water and put them over here I have my lids back here in this pot Boiling so they're getting sterilized and then I have Purified water in here that's getting hot the next step will be to ladle in the really hot water that is in here and Once they are up here and have about an inch of headspace I will add my lids and screw on my rings back there And then I will put them over here in my canner if you hear something hissing. That's what's going on this is getting to a boiling point and So it's all very very hot. I do have some carrots over here that I just pulled out. Oh, that's hot And so I will let them sit for a couple hours to make sure that they seal really really well And obviously test the seals and then I'll take the rings off label them And they will be ready for storage and then right here is my labels I will link them below they are from Amazon and I actually get them in huge packs But they're great because they dissolve right off the jar when you go to wash the jar So you don't have any sticky stuff on your jar plus they're very simple to write on with just a regular pen We had some popcorn last night so it's over here But this is how the carrots look whenever they're done. They are super super simple and they can keep for you know a year Depending you may want to do a little research on how long you want to store yours. This is the finished product I'm gonna go ahead and load up my next batch So one more thing I do process these for three hours in my water bath canner. This is just from Walmart super cheap canner And I will leave the link for it below again You can do your own research and decide how long you want to can them for but three hours is What I do for these I'm actually going to jar up some maple syrup. I got a gallon of maple syrup this week This is two half gallons and really they would be fine to store right in these jugs However, number one, I just don't think I'll work through it fast enough and number two I would rather have them stored in glass. I got this at a really great price So I'm going to actually put all of it into these glass jars. I'm not sure how many jars I'm gonna get out of it I'm hoping at least six and we'll see if I need the other two then I'm gonna do something called dry canning And I want to be very clear on this There is only certain things that you can do this with please do your research This does not replace any other type of canning. This is mainly for dry goods Hence why it is kind of called dry canning and you're not putting in water and all of that But I'm also using this as a method to store maple syrup because maple syrup has a super high sugar content It can store on its own just like honey and one thing that helps it last longer is to take the air out of the jar So I'm gonna pour them in here and then I'm going to show you this is a little kit that comes on Amazon There is a regular mouth, which is what the size is and a large mouth I don't have it out piece for this it also comes with this tiny little hand pump But I use something called a break bleeder This is actually something that mechanics use but it works perfectly It has even a little attachment that works perfect to suck the air out of this and because it has a gauge And I can see how much air is being sucked out of it It kind of helps the whole process Although this works fine, too You can do like 15 to 20 pumps out of this and your lid will seal on top of these I hope that I'm explaining this okay, and I'm no expert. I always put that disclaimer out there I'm just doing things the way I know how to do them or how my grandmothers did them So definitely proceed at your own risk do whatever is best for your family But this is just a way that you can preserve things and take the air out of them So you're gonna be seeing me doing some things with my dehydrator And this is another way to store things that have been dehydrated things like banana chips or Different dried fruits and things like that you can put them in a jar and suck the air out of them So basically what it does is it fits over top of the lid not the ring just the lid and It's pulls on it strong enough that it's pulling air out of the seal until there's no air left And all that's left to do is for the lid to actually seal down onto the jar When you're going to preserve something I really encourage you to do your own research on the different ways that you can preserve Something for a longer period of time and then make the decision on how you want to choose to preserve it It also helps a lot if you can talk to older people a lot of them have been doing food preservation For years and they can give you a lot of tips and tricks on ways to preserve things But this is one really handy inexpensive way the little brake bleeder is very inexpensive So are the attachments for the jar lids? So this is something to keep on hand to even be able to store your pantry items and be able to get a good Seal on things like sugar and flour All right, I got nine jars out of this They're obviously not completely filled now one other note. I want to make about storing maple syrup I'm going to get some labels out here in a second and label these and put the date and all that But you want to store these in the dark my basement I have the windows blacked out where these are stored so it's no problem light will definitely affect The quality and all of that of these but they can store a good long time and you will have Maple syrup so you can buy maple syrup in bulk and save a little bit and then kind of repackage it this way Especially if it's not already stored in a glass bottle and the labels are washable, which I love they I use them for all of my Canned goods Basically when you go to wash the jar the label bit pretty much melts off So it saves you a lot of time and you don't have to write on the lids and you can see from the side when it's on the shelf What is it not some apples from a local farmer who said they were apples from last year? They were kind of on their last leg and he gave them to me at a great discounted price so of course I said I can make those into applesauce and actually this variety of Apples is a sauce apple. These are called summer Rambo apples And so all I did was wash them off really good and I do have a Victorian strainer Which I'll show you here in a minute So all I had to do was put them into some big pots skins and all you don't even have to core them I do try to cut some of the seeds out because I feel like that can clog up my strainer and then you just want to put a little water in the bottom of the pot and Have them completely cook steam You don't have to fill the whole the pot the whole way with water Just seen up in the bottom that they don't scorch to the bottom of the pan and Within a short amount of time on your stove on medium heat. They will cook up. This is my Victorian strainer setup I will leave a link for it below. This also makes tomato sauce. So it's a great investment It has there is other things you can make with it as well But I mainly will be using it for applesauce and tomato sauce and I did this as a kid I cranked that thing when my mom had one and made a lot of applesauce And it's really great because it takes out all of the seeds That's what you'll see coming out of the funnel on the other end is the skins and the seeds and all of the Stuff you don't want in your applesauce It does all the hard part for you and it just makes making applesauce So incredibly simple depending on what variety of apples you're using and you may want to add sugar to it This variety is pretty sweet. Just kind of taste it and decide if you want to add sugar This is also a point you can add other fruit so you can make different flavored applesauces Or you could even add cinnamon to it anything like that Just make it your own and I got rolling with this and completely forgot to film the canning portion of this But if you go back and you watch how I canned carrots a few weeks ago. It's pretty much a very similar Process and I can leave the instructions below But you will want to water bath can these core in quartz This is for quartz for 20 minutes and you will have canned applesauce on your shelf That will last you at least 18 months and I'm making a ton of applesauce this year because my daughter's Last week I showed you all how I make really easy bread and right at the end of it One of my daughters was holding the piece of bread with some of my jelly on it And I got requests. Can we please have your jelly recipe or jam? I always say jelly because I just grew up saying that but this is technically jam because if it was jelly You would strain out all of the pulp from the strawberries, which I leave it in so this is not anything sugar-free It's not anything healthy. This is like your grandmother's recipe for Homemade strawberry jam and I will leave it in the description box below It's got lots of sugar in it But remember you're only using a small amount of it on your bread or your waffles or whatever you're going to spread it on So just keep that in mind plus it doesn't have Corn syrup in it, which a lot of store-bought jams and jellies have that kind of stuff in it so this is just a good alternative to those things and Canning it means that you have it on the shelf for a year or more, which is really awesome So you just want to cook them up with all of the ingredients and I just you can tell just put my hands over the pot To see if it was hot you can get this to a rolling boil But honestly, I was so tired after this day I just wanted to get the project done and I knew I could get away with getting it really hot and Dissolving the sugar and blending it up and probably being good So you could definitely throw this in a blender if you don't have a hand blender It's just a lot less messy to just be able to put your immersion blender in and blend it all up So you'll see me chasing strawberries around because I wanted to get them all blended up And then I did let it simmer a little bit longer until I felt like the sugar was dissolved I took a spoon and just tasted some just to make sure the sugar wasn't like gritty in there But I knew that the pectin everything was dissolved. So after you let it simmer just a little bit It's ready to go into the jars you want to have nice clean jars And you want to leave yourself about like an inch headspace on the top of your jars I did get 24 out of this and I did about double the recipe So you can get 12 to 14 jelly jars out of this recipe and actually the whole reason I'm making this batch is I had a bunch of strawberries in the freezer And I actually already made a ton of strawberry jam this year have it down on the shelf already But I'm trying to clean my freezers out right now because I know that we've got a lot coming with summertime to go into the freezer and So this is actually strawberries that were frozen totally fine to do if you want to get strawberries out of the freezer and do something with them and So we have a lot of strawberry jam which is totally fine because it is a favorite and With me making homemade bread a lot right now We have been going through it after you have it all in the jars you just put your lids on I boil my lids first Put my rings on and put it right into the water bath canner and you can can it for like 10 to 15 minutes I double layer mine so meaning I put one Layer of jars and then put a second layer of jars because my canner is tall enough to do that So since I do that I do like to process them for more like 15 minutes just to make sure that they're all good in there pull them out and Let them set up whenever you see me holding this jar. It's actually like still Not cooled at all. So it does get more jelly than that. It's not quite that runny, but that is how I make mine It's so simple. You've seen how quickly I put this together. Thanks a lot for watching today If you're new here, don't forget to subscribe. I'd love it if you joined my channel I hope this inspired you leave me a comment that always helps me out and I will see you guys in my next video