The big box in the back in the one I got from my sister (they were beautiful, red and ripe) and the two in the front Dadzoo bought.

This summer my sister cleaned out my parents garage (a feat in itself) and I was given all my mom’s old quart bottles. They were a blessing too, I didn’t need to buy any new bottles or rims! This is about half of what I was given, I am going to fill the other half with sliced apples and apple sauce.

My kitchen was a mess and I think I stood there all day peeling and cutting tomatoes. Luckily I have a wonderful husband who took care of pretty much everything for me so I could can like a maniac.

Here we go, 30 quarts of stewed tomatoes, just the way I like them! Next year I would like to do double. Dadzoo and I are working on a plan to increase our tomato yield……

I was exhausted, but strangely there is something very satisfying in bottling your own food. I figure each bottle cost me about a dollar and there is no added sugar, salt or preservatives!

It was also kind of funny to have Dadzoo around. I have bottled before, but usually the bulk of the work is done while he is gone for the day. He kept complimenting me and telling me how “cool” he thought it all was.

I like is when he thinks the things I do are
“cool”

My religion teaches us to store food for emergencies, whether it be personal emergencies (job loss, medical bills) or something bigger and larger (economic disasters, weather related disasters or earth disasters). I have been plugging along the last year creating a food storage, it is going slowly, but surely. It takes a lot of time, space and money to store one years supply of food for 7 people. I try to store what I cook and I have been learning to cook from items that can be stored. It has been a fun year of learning and growing in that area, and in doing that, other aspects of my life have changed too.

Skipping a shopping trip was a great learning experience for me. I learned that we really can eat out of our small garden. I learned that I need to store more veggies in case we need our stored food in the winter. I learned that I need to store cheese and potatoes. I learned that keeping chickens in the backyard really is a good thing. I learned that I need to store more bottled tomatoes.

All in all, I learned where I can tweak my storage. The biggest thing I learned: I can really feed my family with the stash of food I have stockpiled in my basement.

I would like to encourage everybody to try this. Skip your regular shopping trip, see what you can do, see where you can improve and stop relying so much on being able to “run” to the grocery store, there may be a time when that isn’t possible. If you do, please blog it and leave a link my my comment section, I would love to see how you all do.

NOTE: this doesn’t count if you go shopping then start, you have to completely skip a trip. For example, I go grocery shopping twice a month when Dadzoo gets paid. So to do this I would skip my mid-month shopping trip so I really am out of the food I would usually buy.