Family Food Preservation

Food Preservation for Families



When we go to the grocery store we are hit at the checkout counter with a huge bill for what used to be a manageable amount of monies for good healthy food for our families. Many people would like to do something about this. One thing that most people can do is their own food preservation.

Food preservation starts with basic knowledge of the equipment to do the particular job needed. Some pieces of equipment are: a dehydrator, 12 quart pressure cooker, 5 gallon water pot, seed strainers, jars, lids, pectin and other little things of minor importance. However, with some of these you would be able to substitute things from home. For the dehydrator you could use your oven with a fan blowing into it; for the 5 gallon water pot you could use your largest pot and do multiple loads of jars; for the 12 quart canner you could use a regular pressure cooker but would have to stick to the small jars and multiple loads. As you can see there are substitutions available.

After seeing what kinds of equipment you would need to start with, the next question is where do I put it all when I have preserved it? Some places that would help out are cool and dark such as pantries, garages, freezers, and even an empty back cupboard. These are very important places for food storage and they will help you figure out what types of foods to start preserving. Remember that if you don’t have a lot of area, canning may not be the first thing you try since the jars will take up lots of space.

Now that you have an idea of your available storage space, what will you preserve? Consider what your family enjoys eating most and stick those types of foods. Trying something that your family won’t eat will be a waste of time and money. Take for instance, does your family like apples so much that during a sale you buy so many that they go bad? They don’t have to go bad anymore if you preserve them. Try dehydrating them or even canning them into applesauce or apple pie filling. Can you imagine the smell of fresh baked pie at the drop of a hat in the middle of winter? How great would that be?

What about the active family? Have you seen the price of jerky or trail mix lately? You would be able to not only eat great food while doing activities but cut quite a bit of your budget if you only dehydrated some of it. Think about jerky and the price cut you could get if you were to buy some hamburger, mix it with some seasoning and dry it yourself. Since jerky can be found anywhere from $15 a pound on up anymore you can compare that to making your own for only about $5 a pound. Make your own trail mix with the same type of savings with some freshly dried fruit: apples, raisins, pears, peaches, bananas, pineapple, and any other tastes you could think of. Remembering that buying these foods at the peak of freshness as well as on sale will provide your family not only with healthiest foods but the best savings for your budget. Think of the backpacking possibilities that are available if you dehydrate your own food. Instead of buying expensive already made freeze dried food (filled with preservatives), you could make your own. You could dry chicken and ham bits, tomatoes, potatoes, celery, onions, and garlic to make your own soup while on the trail or camping with the family.

Now that you have some food preserved you will want to use some in recipes. Most of the time, for dehydrated food, I find that it is mostly just eaten as munchies. However, if you are going to use it for recipes you will want to either rehydrate before use or add more liquid to the recipe itself, below you will find a web site that will help out with this more. A good way to add extra flavor to the dehydrated food is by soaking it, such as putting your apples in hot apple juice or cider before using them. For canned foods it is much simpler, the food is all ready for recipes. Tomatoes for spaghetti, lasagna, pizza and other casseroles; beans like pintos can be used in soups and breads; stew meat is ready to add to vegetables, broth and water. As you can see, there are many different ways you can cook with canned or dried foods.

Many of us have tried to figure ways to trim our food budget and I believe that food preservation is a great place to start. If a family looks into the types of foods that they enjoy, day after day, they would be able to use some of the above mentioned ideas to help their budget function better. I have also located a web site that would help the average family with information for food preservation and I recommend that they check it out, http://www.budget101.com/dehydrated_foods.htm. Even though some of the ways that help out are time consuming, in the long run it benefits your family in a lot of ways, from your budget, to family time and to the knowledge of knowing that your entire family will be eating better.