This morning I drove the back roads south through Dripping Springs, and beautiful Texas Hill Country, with a blue sky a perfect temperature of 78 degrees outside, and all alone in my Toyota Camry, as I headed to the church cannery to dry pack some basic grains and such for our family's home food storage, as we've been advised over the years to do. There were only three of us from our ward who took advantage of this opportunity, including Monica, Minda, and me.
So I could rest my stress fractured foot off and on, I brought a stool with me to sit on, and operated the can sealing machine to close each of the lids once they were filled with white flour, white wheat, red wheat, sugar, oats, rice, pinto beans, white beans, dried apples, non-fat dry milk. This machine is heavy duty and requires a firm tug of the handle to the right, to seal in the food tightly. A little silver oxygen foil pouch is included inside every can or mylar bag except for those containing sugar, which doesn't need one.
Here we are at the end of our canning. We got a lot done in less than two hours. It was a lot of fun! I'm not sure I would consider it very exciting to do on a regular basis, but it felt really good to be preparing for any unforeseen needs, knock on wood, and to have these basic necessities available at a low price to use on a daily basis too.
There's something unflattering about plastic aprons and hair nets, but it felt good on the inside to be doing this. I loved this experience and look forward to a future trip to the cannery.
Here's the stash of goods I packed inside my car--where they still sit until I clear out a place in my pantry for them. Now I need a wheat grinder.
Brother and Sister Johnson are service missionaries who run the cannery for the next year and a half. They applied for this service mission to be able to stay local and not leave their homes. They work very hard helping everyone on a daily basis, sometimes in the evening too.
So I could rest my stress fractured foot off and on, I brought a stool with me to sit on, and operated the can sealing machine to close each of the lids once they were filled with white flour, white wheat, red wheat, sugar, oats, rice, pinto beans, white beans, dried apples, non-fat dry milk. This machine is heavy duty and requires a firm tug of the handle to the right, to seal in the food tightly. A little silver oxygen foil pouch is included inside every can or mylar bag except for those containing sugar, which doesn't need one.
Here we are at the end of our canning. We got a lot done in less than two hours. It was a lot of fun! I'm not sure I would consider it very exciting to do on a regular basis, but it felt really good to be preparing for any unforeseen needs, knock on wood, and to have these basic necessities available at a low price to use on a daily basis too.
There's something unflattering about plastic aprons and hair nets, but it felt good on the inside to be doing this. I loved this experience and look forward to a future trip to the cannery.
Here's the stash of goods I packed inside my car--where they still sit until I clear out a place in my pantry for them. Now I need a wheat grinder.
Brother and Sister Johnson are service missionaries who run the cannery for the next year and a half. They applied for this service mission to be able to stay local and not leave their homes. They work very hard helping everyone on a daily basis, sometimes in the evening too.Sorry, Sue, they ran out of potato pearls and no longer stock them. I tried.
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