 Hello everyone, I am Katie Henry with NDSU Extension out of Cavalier County and today I thought it would be fun to show you how to put together our food mixes in a jar. Publication FN1494 is the publication I'm referring to and gifts in a jar are something that's fun and it can be unique and I thought maybe it would be a good idea to show you a little bit of how easy it is in order to put these together. There are four recipes on this publication and the one we are going to do is the country chili mix but we also have the homemade cornbread mix, cranberry oatmeal cookie mix and friendship soup mix so you get a little bit of everything, a little bit of a variety in order to choose from on this publication. The first thing that we need to make sure that we have when we're putting our food mixes in the jar are all of the ingredients and the correct size jar and so this recipe calls for a quart sized jar and I tend to use the regular mouth jars just because that's what I have around house because I found if it's universal for me it makes it my canning season easier but you could also use wide mouth jars because sometimes the ingredients are easier to get into the jars. Once you have your jar ready then I also like to do since it is a regular mouth jar I like to use my funnel that I use with my canning ingredients it helps me get the ingredients in there a little bit easier but the first ingredient for the country chili mix that we're putting together today is one pound of kidney beans. I buy kidney beans in bulk and so it is easier for me to have a kitchen scale and these are easy to find if you don't have one I highly suggest you get one for your kitchen because they do come in handy but I just set it to zero pour the beans in until it reaches one pound and then I'm ready to go so I've pre-measured that so the first thing that we need to do is pour these beans into the jar using the funnel because otherwise I would have beans all over but I do want to say that with this remember food safety is always of utmost importance and so I've already pre-washed my hands and ready to go everything is clean and sanitized and so everything we put in the jar is going to be safe food safe so the first thing you do is pour the kidney beans into the jar once we do that it already looks so nice in the jar and so once we do that this is something that's very simple um all we have to do is mix the spices together and then we put that in top on top in here so the first spice is three tablespoons of chili powder so I have that here and I just pour that into a larger bowl the next ingredient is two tablespoons of dehydrated onion so I have that here I'll pour those in then the next ingredient is one tablespoon of garlic salt now in the recipe it does say to reduce your sodium content you can use garlic powder in place of some of the garlic salt so that's what I chose to do and so I'm adding the garlic salt and then the next thing is one teaspoon of oregano and three-quarter of a teaspoon salt and so that's been measured in here and I'll add that to my mix in the recipe it also says that you can add one fourth teaspoon cayenne pepper the person I'm going to give this to I think might not like the added extra spice so I chose to leave it out this time but once all your ingredients are in your bowl you just take a spoon and you just stir it together and it just takes just takes a minute and then what you do is you pour this into a clear sandwich bag I just grabbed a clear sandwich bag pour it in and I try to get the air out as much of the air out as I can just so that it fits in the jar a little bit better and then you just place this on the top of your kidney beans so these are all of the non-perishable items that you are giving in the jar the perishable items will have to be supplied by the person who is using the mitts but this is just like a dry bean soup mix kind of chili mix that you could get at the grocery store except it's homemade and you can decorate it up a little bit so the next step that I do is I put the recipe for what to do next on to the jar and I just take a few pieces of tape and just tape it down another thing that I like to do as well is on this recipe card which is look at this it looks so nice and it's already to go for you it does say one container of the country chili mix now you may want to also make a copy or cut out a copy of the ingredients that are within the jar just because people do have food allergies food sensitivities or maybe even just curiosity and they want to know what's in the mix itself and so you could also add that and you could just tape that to the other side the jar is plenty large enough to be able to do that it's also sometimes a nice touch to hand write the ingredients on a card or or that type of thing as well once you have all the ingredients in here and it's all ready to go you've got your recipe on the outside you just put your lid on top just like that then I just take a square piece of fabric that I have cut with a pinking chair so it has the zigzag on the outside edge and I just twist on the rim and it should go on with the fabric you might have to try to straighten it out a little bit but it's already decorated once you get the fabric on there it already looks cute if you want to add more to that you could also take a ribbon which I have pre-measured and tied and just slip that onto the jar rim for a little added extra something a little added extra bow and sometimes I even go the little extra distance with that and I cut a couple or take a couple of sprigs of evergreen off of a tree in my yard or sometimes I go and get um I get artificial flowers at a store if they're on sale that kind of thing and cut little pieces and I just stick those in here to add that little extra bit of decoration and you wouldn't want to use you know fresh greens in something that you're going to stick in a stocking if you're going to use this as a stocking stuffer or something but definitely if you're just going to hand deliver it to someone that's a little added addition so I hope you find that our food mixes in a jar are something that you can use I hope it's something that you enjoy and that you have fun with and I hope that it's something that you would be able to share with others to spread some spread some joy thank you