Mason Jars: Great Invention or Greatest Invention?

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I'm seriously falling in love with mason jars.  They're just so useful!

It seems like every week I think of new ways to use them.  I'd even use them to drink out of but my wife would kill me.

One thing that's been bothering me for a while are the amount of ziploc-type bags we go through.  I mean, it seems kinda wasteful doesn't it?  I know some people who wash these bags and re-use them but my wife again isn't too keen on that either.

 Plus the thought of plastics degrading overtime in contact with food...I know, I'm probably just paranoid.

So a few weeks back I'm at the grocery store and I decided to buy some of those mini-hamburger patties (sometimes called "sliders") that my girls love.  I did them on the BBQ and after we ate there were a bunch of them leftover.

Since all our containers weren't cleaned yet I was about to use a ziploc bag when I thought, "I bet those mini-burgers will fit well in mason jars...".  And they did!

Then I decided that since they were in the jars, I might as well vacuum seal those suckers, freeze them, and then they'll last a long time (the vacuum sealer instructions says up to a year if you trust that).

So that's what I did.  I also froze the little buns too so now I can pull out a few burgers for them for a quick meal for my girls.

I also rehydrate a little bit of dehydrated onions for them which they love.  The dehydrated onions turn out like those little onion pieces that McDonalds puts on their burgers; the dehydration increases the sweetness.

This got me thinking of what else I could put in mason jars and freeze but so far the only other thing I've done is ground beef.

I try to buy the bulk packs of ground beef and split it up into smaller portions in ziploc bags.  Sometimes I'll cook it up before freezing it for quick meals later but thawing the beef in the microwave while in the ziploc was always kinda gross.

So what I'm doing now is cooking the beef when I get home (throw in some dehydrated onions for flavour) and portion it out into mason jars that are then vacuum sealed.

This makes it super-easy to make pate chinois (French-Canadian style sheppard's pie).

All I do is microwave the ground beef in the mason jar, boil some dehydrated corn, and make some mashed potatoes, which is the hardest part.  I could use dehydrated potato flakes but it's not as good.  Maybe someday I'll have discovered the secret to making your own dehydrated mashed potatoes.

We've also started going to a Bulk Barn that opened up in my home town and instead of leaving everything lying around in the plastic baggies the store supplies, I've been putting the stuff in mason jars and vacuum sealing them if we're not going to use them right away.

With all these uses I'm finding for mason jars I think I'm going to buy one of the dedicated mason jar vacuum sealer attachments.  The canister work-around is great but the largest mason jars, which I didn't think I'd use often, wont fit inside.









I think I'm also going to pick up some of those plastic lids for the jars instead of just using the metal ring and lid.  Once the vacuum seal is broke, what's the point of fooling around with the ring and lid right?  Might as well keep them in good condition to be re-used.  I need to conserve my supplies 'cause once you get started with mason jars you can't stop! At least that seems to be the my case.

This Topic Sucks

I finally got around to using the Foodsaver vacuum seal system that I got for Christmas and I love it!

I've been trying to dehydrated a lot of food and so far I've been storing it in mason jars with oxygen absorber packs. These O2 absorbers do the trick but they lose their efficiency the longer they have contact with air. This makes it tricky to store them. If you don't seal them up airtight, when you go to use them again they won't work anymore.

A vacuum sealer though can take the place of these O2 absorbers and you'll never have to worry about them going stale or running out. The O2 packs aren't expensive to buy, I paid about 30 bucks for 100, but its nice to never have to buy them again.

I'm sure most people are familiar with these type of vacuum sealers. Typically they seal food in plastic bags by sucking the air out and melting the end of the bags so air can't get back in. The company claims frozen vacuum sealed steak will last up to two years without freezer burn!

The model I have comes with an accessory hose which is where things really get fancy. There's all kinds of accessories; wine bottle toppers, meat marinaders, leftover containers, even a mason jar sealer.

What I have however are the vacuum canisters that come in 3 sizes.

The canisters are meant to actually hold food but somebody on The Survival Podcast forum had recommended these over the mason jar attachment because you can vacuum seal almost any jar inside them.

Basically you just loosely place the lid on the mason jar, put it in the canister, hook it up to the tube and turn the machine on.

The machine is rather loud but as air in the canister decreases it gets quieter for about 10 second, when it shuts off. This means the air is gone.

The vacuum in the canister removes the air from the mason jar and seals the lid tight. You can double check the seals by pressing the lids to see if they "pop". No pop means no air.

I've also read people claiming that this method will seal foods like pickles and jam in the original factory jar but I haven't tried this yet.

I really like it so far and recommend a Foodsaver to anybody who's looking to store food. The only problem I have now is that I've run out of mason jars!

Food Dehydrating Fun!

A few weeks ago I received my Excalibur dehydrator in the mail. I bought a refurbished model with a 10 year warranty for $160 at the companies website (they're regularly over $200) but shipping was another $56 and duty was $27. I'd recommend looking into the Canadian supplier, Basic Life Essentials, to lower shipping and avoid duty taxes. You can also order them from Amazon.

There are less expensive dehydrator brands out there but if you want to seriously get into dehydrating as a way of preserving and storing food I'd go for an Excalibur. I used to have one of the smaller less expensive models. They're good for trying out dehydrating and making a few snacks but f you want to dehydrate a bushel of apples that you pick up on sale at a farmers market or do a whole 10 pound bag of potatoes you'll need the Excalibur. The other models aren't large enough and it would literally take a week to dry all those apples or potatoes. For this reason I'd also recommend getting the 9 tray Excalibur instead I'd the 4 tray model if you can afford it.

I've been trying out tons of different foods in the dehydrator and so far I'm pretty impressed. You can eat the foods dry themselves or rehydrate them to use in meals. When you dehydrate the food the texture is never the same as fresh but that's okay if your using them in stews, soups etc.. To rehydrated them I boil the dried food for a few minutes. You can also steam your veggies to rehydrate them.

(Above: dried tomato, red /green peppers, celery, mushrooms, broccoli, potatoes and my assistant)

The dried peppers in my homemade salsa are pretty good. The potatoes are excellent pan fried or in a stew but they're too thick and slimy mashed. Rehydrated apples in an apple crisp are also really good.  Tomatoes come out soft but are good for soups.  As for broccoli, the stems get too tough so just dehydrate the tops. I haven't done onions or garlic yet because supposedly they really stink up the house and it's too cold to open the windows to ventilate.

My general idea is to buy veggies on sale and dehydrate them so they'll last a long time. I got a bunch of mason jars for my birthday and bought oxygen absorbers from that Canadian supplier I mentioned above. If I put the dried food in the jars with the O2 absorber it should last at least a year though various sources claim they'll last up to 5 even 30 years! Personally 5 years seems the limit to me and after 2 years I'd be wary.

The website Dehydrate 2 Store is a great resource with tons of recipies, tips and how-too videos.  The book "The Dehydrator Bible" also has a lot of great tips and recipes which is where I found my recipe for apple crisp.

I'm learning that there are a lot of different methods and recommendations out there so if you want to get into dehydrating try different things and have fun experimenting!

Pioneer Solar: PV System For Free?

I received a flyer from Pioneer Solar in the mail the other day which claims to help people get a solar system installed on their house, farm, or business for free. Sounds too good to be true, right?

Well, like most things there's good and bad points about it and what might be a good deal for one person might not for another.

Here's how it works:

The Ontario government recently started a program where homes and businesses / farms that install solar or wind power will be paid a guaranteed rate per kilowatt for a 20 year contract.

What Pioneer Solar does is install the PV system for "free" but for the first 10 years, the money you're paid by the government for the electricity goes to Pioneer Solar.  You get to keep the revenue from the 10 years left in your contract with the government though.

The example in the flyer states:

Solar System Earnings / Month = $840
Solar Finance Payment               = $780
---------------------------------------------------
Initial Monthly Earnings            = $60
Eventual Monthly Earnings       = $800 (after 10 years)


They're promoting it as an investment that's better than stocks.  One way of looking at this is that you'll eventually be earning a monthly income with no initial investment.

However, using the figures from the flyer this means that you'll have paid over $93 000 for the PV system.

From all the research I've done I estimate that a PV system large enough to power a modern but energy efficient home, would cost between $25 000 and $35 000 to professionally install.  If you do it yourself it's could be half of that and you don't need Pioneer Solar to apply for a 20 year government energy contract.

Another downside is that all this energy produced goes to the grid and doesn't isn't actually used for your home. I assume however that once you own the solar system after 10 years, you can turn it into a hybrid system to power your house. It's possible however that the 20 year government contract may disallow this (I've written Pioneer Solar and email to clarify this).

Despite those downsides, you're still getting a PV system for "free" and making an income for at least 10 years from selling the energy.

For those who are looking to go off-grid and be a self-sustainable as possible, the prospect of waiting 10 to 20 years to use the electricity might not be worth it.  Though the income it would provide would go a lot towards becoming independent.

If you're looking to help the environment and make some money however it might be a great idea.

I know if I owned a property right now suitable for such a PV system, I'd be giving them a call.

Global Warming Fail

 This is what my neighbour's yard looked like yesterday:

Luckily the side of my house that has the garden was sheltered from the snow but this has got me wondering about building cold frames for the garden.

Actual cold frames can be pretty expensive so I was thinking of using window well covers like the one on the left.  These are wedged shaped and are meant to go over a basement window so it doesn't have a back.  This would be fine for me since my garden is against my home's foundation, but for others you'd need to close off the back or use two back-to-back. 

Another idea that came to me would be too get a clear plastic storage bin of the "Rubbermaid" type.  These are less expensive than the other options but the plastic isn't very clear; though greenhouses that use 6 mil plastic vapour barrier have the same level of clarity and the plants seem to do fine in those.  Anybody have some experience with coldframes that can chime in?

Welcome to the Waterpik Experience!

A few days back my wife mentioned that the showerhead was getting clogged again and that we'd need to soak it in vinegar again.

Our last waterbill is still on my mind so when she told me this I thought, "What a great excuse to get a new water-saving showerhead!".

The model that had gotten blocked was a water-saving model and I had recently read that older models were prone to blocking in areas with hard water.  Newer ones also have rubber outlets so if they ever scale up you just rub them with your finger and it unblocks them and they're supposedly more efficient.

We picked up the Waterpik Ecoflow from Canadian Tire (on sale this week for only $23.)

What I really like about this one is that it has a shut-off button so you can turn the shower off without closing the faucet and losing your temperature setting.  This allows you to get wet, shut off the water, lather up and then turn the water back on to rinse off.

The package claims you'll save up to 77% water by using the shut-off button.

When my wife brought it home she wanted me to install it right away, but feeling lazy I intended to only read the instruction so I'd at least look productive.

"Welcome to the Waterpik Experience", the instructions exclaimed before assuring me that installation can be done by hand in just a few minutes.

With my aversion to physical labour satisfied and a sudden urge to see first hand the "Waterpik experience (TM)", I decided to give it a try.

The original showerhead came off easy enough, though I did need a wrench to initially loosen it.  The next step was to just screw on the new showerhead and attach it to the hose.  Pretty simple I have to say.

I turned on the shower and there was a small leak in the two connections so I used a wrench to tighten them and scratched up the plastic couplings (Grr...).

After this it was still leaking so I went back to check the instructions and noticed that the rubber washers had fallen out of the hose.

I unscrewed the showerhead and installed the washers (scratching the plastic further).  I decided to just tighten them by hand this time to see if it lived up the claim of "no tools required".

I have to say I'm pretty impressed.  It was pretty easy to install and if you do it right you probably won't need tools.  If you avoid the mistakes I did the whole process can probably be done under 5 minutes.

According to our last water bill we're looking at close to $1000 a year for water charges.  With that expense my wife and I have been talking about getting a new high-efficiency washer which would probably pay for itself in a few years.

With a new shower head, dual-flush toilets and soon a new washer we're curious to see what our next waterbill will be like!

My Dollar Store Emergency Bug Out Bag

I've been meaning to put together an emergency "bug out bag" for a while now but I never seemed to get around to it.  The expense and effort make me keep putting it off.

Then the other day while walking through my local dollar store I realized that they had a lot of things that could go in a bug out bag.  It occurred to me that I could probably create a BOB with one trip to the dollar store and it would be inexpensive to boot!

Well, it would up taking two trips to two different dollar stores but I put together what I think is a pretty decent BOB for under $50!

This first pic shows what I picked up at a "Dollarama" dollar store for under $20

Kleenex (also used for toilet paper)
Dust masks
Sanitary napkins (for the ladies in the family)
Soap
Duct tape
2 pairs work gloves
Utility tool (might go buy more)
Tea candles
Note pad
"Sharpie" style markers
Basic small first aid kit (will replace with a better one later)

There were a few things I couldn't find at that store so I went to another "dollar store" near my place and picked all this up for $30.

Two hand crank LED flashlights
4 plastic rain ponchos
Nylon rope
two tarps
Matches
Garbage bags
Wire Twist ties
Backpack

I think I've got some pretty good basics I'll probably add more stuff and upgrade some things as time goes on.

For example, the bag is only 2/3 full and I'd like to include a hand-crank radio which I've seen go for around $10.

I hear from a lot of people that they don't have the money to do prepping but this shows that it can be done inexpensively.  Admittedly $50 is a lot of money but you don't have to buy it all at once.  Just pick up an extra item or two each time you go shopping and after a couple weeks you'll have a BOB!

Self-Sufficiency as a Retirement Investment

One aspect of preparedness that is very popular among preppers is the concept of "prepping as retirement".

The dream of retirement is really a dream of independence and financial self-sufficiency, which is central to prepping.

Too many people in this country retire with only their Canada Pension Plan.  The good thing about the CPP is that everybody gets one; the bad thing is that it's not enough to live on.  If they're lucky they may have put some money into a Registered Retirement Savings Plan, however, this isn't true self-sufficiency.

You do not want to be dependent on only these sources of retirement income;  RRSPs can lose value and the CPP is only around $800 a month, if you're lucky.  Both are subject to tax that further reduces your income.

If you want to increase your financial independence there are really only two ways to do this:

1) decrease the money going out

or

2) increase the money coming in

Apart from an income, the basics you need to survive in retirement is food, shelter and water.

The less you have of the last 3, the more income you'll need to purchase them.

Fortunately the reverse is also true! The more you have of the survival basics the less income you'll need in retirement.

The prepper lifestyle can help with both these goals and may even allow you reach that "Freedom 55" or earlier!


Debts and mortgage

One of the basic rules of prepping is to avoid debt as much as possible (with the exception of a house mortgage if necessary).

It's pretty simple to realize that living on a fixed income is much easier if you don't have any debts to pay.  All that money saved will give you the FREEDOM to do what you want with your life; isn't that what liberty and independence is all about?

A popular method of paying off debts is the "snowball" method.  Basically you focus on paying off the debt with the smallest balance first and then apply that payment PLUS the regular monthly payment to the next smallest debt.

Rinse and repeat until all debts are gone including the mortgage.

A couple I know both have low incomes.  She's on a government pension and he brings in a little more than minimum wage, yet all the family and neighbors are surprised at the type of lifestyle they have.  Nice house, nice car and not wanting for anything. The secret isn't that they're scamming the system somehow, it's simply that they paid off their house years ago and they spend wisely without going into debt.

This should be your goal.

Think of all the prepping supplies and activities you could do if you had no debts...which brings us to tomorrow's post:

"Home Energy Independence as Retirement Investment"

Canadian Tire Deal for Ottawa Preppers

If you're in the Ottawa area you might want to might want to stop by the Canadian Tire on Coventry Rd. where they've got portable power battery packs on sale for $60 (regular $150).

It appears that these are only at the Coventry Rd store since I haven't seen them anywhere.

These things have 400w, LED lamps, speakers, USB jack, MP3 player jack and both 120v outlets and a 12v DC outlet.

I picked one up for the next time we have a power outage.  At least we'll have light and be able to charge our laptops / cell phones.  The 12v DC outlet will also be handy to warm up the baby's milk using the bottle warmer we have for our car.

The 12v DC outlet could also be hooked up to a solar panel and you can recharge the unit that way.  Such a set up would have been really handy during the massive 2003 blackout we had in North America.

Prepper Book Review: "The Self-Sufficient Home" by Christopher Nyerges

A few weeks ago on The Survival Podcast Jack had a very interesting interview with Christopher Nyerges.

A number of times Jack mentioned how much he liked his book, "The Self-Sufficient Home", so I just had to check it out.

Unfortunately I was a little disappointed; perhaps Jack's comments had my expectations too high.

Not that there wasn't interesting info in this book, I just found it to be a little thin on many details and the examples that it did give weren't practical and tended to..uhm...well,they tended to lean towards the crunchy granola side of things if you know what I mean.

For example, in the section dealing with wind-power, instead of presenting off-the-shelf mainstream options that anybody could do, it went into depth about a custom hand-made vertical wind generator that was built in the early 80's.

In fact, the whole book tended to focus on similar systems that were built in the 70s and 80s and were either custom-made or no longer in production.

On the plus side, there are some interesting examples and the author's writing style makes this a quick and easy read.

To sum it up I'd say this book is an interesting collection of what is possible, but not what would be probable.