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How to Can Applesauce

Tattler Reusable Canning Lids

In the video I mentioned using reusable canning lids. I gave a more in depth review of the lids a few weeks ago in my post about canning peaches. They are awesome and I can’t wait to get more. Yay!

What We Learned

We spent a large part of our summer practicing our powerless cooking skills, so on this day we were excited to put them to use. We did use the quickstove (use referral code jodi&julie and get 50% off per can) for the first time on this day of the challenge and we were pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to use. Julie also cooked pizza from scratch this day – like ground the wheat for the dough, used freeze dried cheese, and cooked it on the Volcano kind of “scratch”. This process will get its OWN video in another post.

Julie shows you how she cooked her breakfast:

What YOU Learned

A few of our favorite comments from our Facebook discussions and comments:

I personally think this one will be the easiest We have a sun oven and have been using it for most of our cooking this entire summer. It saves on the utility bill, and doesn’t heat up the house like the oven does! as long as there’s a bit of sun we can cook with it. And because we’ve been doing it all summer, we’re used to it, I personally think all my food tastes better using it, stays moister.

We have many choices for powerless cooking – small folding hiking stoves & fuel (we need to add more cans of fuel), charcoal grill (could use a few more bags), a butane stove that we bought at the self reliance fair (only 3 cans of fuel & having trouble finding more), propane grill w/ 2 tanks (only a tank and a half on hand), several of those disposable charcoal emergency grills (caught them on sale for a dollar a piece), and Teff’s cat food stove.

Well, this was my 51st wedding anniversary! Thank goodness last year I canned swiss steak so that is what we had today. We heated it up on the grill, along with some peas and corn, made some instant mashed potatoes with water and canned milk and some home canned butter. We don’t eat cake in this family but we do like the hobo pies made with a pie iron held over the hot coals.

Trying to cook on the grill with pots that have wooden handles is NOT a good idea Need to replace one of the wifes pots now and get at least one that can be used on the grill or over open fire. Wish we hadn’t given away all our camping gear when we moved.

Read more about how people “survived” this day’s challenge

Follow-Up Questions

How do I learn to cook without power?
We spent a large part of our summer practicing our powerless cooking skills. Visit our powerless cooking class page and learn more.

Where can I buy the Quickstove Julie used?
You can purchase the Quickstove at this link. As Food Storage Readers you get 50% off per can if you use referral code JODI&JULIE.

Our To-Do’s For This Year

To Do: Research generators (if we lose power, we may want to extend the life of our fridge/freezer foods)
To Learn: Learn more about canning without power (Jodi also wants to look into some more options for cooking inside)
To Buy: Generator – maybe – if we’re lucky (Jodi also wants to buy a butane stove to use for indoor powerless cooking)

There was a time where neither of us thought that we had the time, energy, knowledge, or desire to learn how to can. I finally broke down and begged my mom to give me instructions on how to make her strawberry jam when she moved out of state from me for two years and I couldn’t steal from her supply. When I stocked up my own year supply, with strawberries I got on sale for $0.88, and it was all absolutely delicious … I was hooked. I wanted to can more.

While it IS a lot of work, and I always complain while I’m doing it … I love the end result. Home canned foods are so much yummier than store-bought. You can also control how much sugar you put in (ok I admit I don’t home can to make things lower in sugar, but other people do!) There are no weird preservatives that you can’t pronounce. And if you have your own garden, you can get a year supply of fruits and vegetables at very low cost (especially if you already have your jars).

I was curious what other home-canned foods people can’t live without so I asked on our Facebook page (love Facebook for informal polls, lol) and we got a great response. Here are a few of the responses:

Click here to see the full list of responses.
 

I’ve done a few tutorials on different items I’ve canned over the past few years, and I am hoping to add to the collection this summer/fall. If you are just getting started with canning these might help you overcome any fears or worries you may have.

Canning Peaches … Delish!
Learn how to can peaches, Jodi has a little different technique than most books recommend.

How to Make Strawberry Jam
Homemade strawberry jam is such a treat, it is so much yummier than store-bought, which is truly the reason to make it.

How to Can Homemade Applesauce
Applesauce is one of the easiest and most delicious foods to can. Step by step tutorial on how we do it.

How to Pressure Can Ground Beef
Jodi gives a step-by-step overview of her experiences with this process that intimidated her for a LONG time.

How to Pressure Can Chicken
See how easy it is to can your own chicken so that you can have shelf stable chicken ready for recipes, and in case of emergencies.

One thing I’m really excited about trying out this year is reusable canning lids. I heard about them and got so excited because I really hate having to buy the disposable lids every year (totally ups the cost of home canning). And also I kept worrying about a long term emergency situation where I would want to preserve my own foods, but what if lids weren’t available. I can’t wait to find out if these will be a workable solution. They are more expensive than traditional lids but … REUSABLE! I will be using them for my tutorials and letting you all know what I think of them. Now I just need something to can! Hurry up tomatoes!

Well another thing I NEVER would have thought I would be doing is raising BACKYARD CHICKENS! Yes Julie thought I was crazy when I cooked up this scheme, but somehow once I got into growing and preserving my own foods, it seemed like a natural progression to want to gradually work towards being even more self reliant.

I have shared snippets of this adventure on our Facebook page and quite a few people asked for me to share some details so here goes nothing.

Where I Got My Information

Free class at my local library: Keep your eyes open for these types of events. I always grab all the flyers for free classes and this one about raising chickens caught my attention. She went over the basic rules for having chickens in our area, and helped us know what costs and what amount of work to expect. To be honest she scared me a little into thinking it was going to be a much larger undertaking then I was expecting. My husband actually was the one who encouraged me to keep pursuing it.

Story’s Guide to Raising Chickens: This book is sort of like an encyclopedia for chickens. I started reading through the whole thing but it also made me feel a bit overwhelmed thinking about all of the potential problems that could arise. I decided to only look up certain things as they came up, instead of panicking myself about every topic. It has really great in depth information that I have used a lot already.

Minnie Rose Lovgreen’s Recipe for Raising Chickens: This book I DID read cover to cover. I got it after I already had my chickies and I think it is great. It makes me feel like I am listening to a cute old lady telling me about how much she loves her chicks and how to take care of your own chickens. I would definitely recommend it for beginner chicken owners

BackyardChickens.com: This website is full of information and an active forum and it definitely filled in all the cracks as I was doing my research and getting started. We got lots of ideas for building our coop from here.

Getting Started

We started out by going to IFA and checking out all the baby chicks. My kids loved them (me too!). We picked breeds that are good for laying and have nice dispositions. We followed a chart found in our chicken book. We bought a heat lamp, some pine shavings, a little feeder tray, a 5 lb bag of chick food, and a water tower. The chicks themselves were only about $3 each and we bought 6. Total cost for everything was less than $50. We kept them in a cardboard box in our kitchen and I thought they would work well there until the weather warmed up and our coop was finished being built. Little did I know …

Growing Up

Well I soon discovered that the chicks like to perch on the top of the cardboard box (who knew they could fly that high so young?) This resulted in them hanging their bums over the edge and pooping on my kitchen floor. NOT FUN. Eventually they got brave enough to jump OFF the box and run around in the kitchen too. I finally started putting my baby gate over the top as often as possible to keep them contained. It was too much for me when they started escaping and sneaking into the family room. NO GOOD!

I moved up to a rubbermaid bin thinking that would be better than the cardboard box but it wasn’t much of a solution either. Finally I found a HUGE cardboard box and that is where they lived for the next few months. It was such a late cold spring here that I could not put them outside in that weather. I also had to upgrade to larger food dishes because they would knock over or empty the food and water or kick wood chips in the water and make it undrinkable. I was annoyed by the constant refilling. Getting bigger containers and putting them up on bricks helped with that quite a bit.

Moving Out

The process of building a coop and moving the chickens outside was a lot longer than I wanted. We had fights about just buying one versus building one. In the end, my husband’s stubbornness won out. He insisted he could make one bigger and better and cheaper than a store-bought one … and he was right. But in my defense, it DID take him a lot longer than if we would have just bought one. All kidding aside, he did a great job and he just pieced together the plans based on a few coops we have seen and on what I wanted. He got all the materials at Home Depot and the whole thing was about $200. Didn’t he do a great job? Oh and we also upgraded to heavy duty big food and water units that we hang from the ceiling underneath the nesting area. My son is peeking into the nesting box through the door we will use to collect eggs, yay!

Laying EGGS?

My girls are about 4 months old now. I have heard that they start laying anywhere between 4 and 6 months. I am so excited I can’t wait! They eat about a 25 lb bag of food a month right now which I also supplement with a little bit grains out of my food storage for treats and they also go out in the yard every day and run around and eat bugs and weeds and try to get into my gardens. My kids have had a lot of fun with the chickens and I’ve enjoyed them too. They are fun to take care of and I only have to check their food and water about every 2-3 days now. It will be interested to see how the upkeep changes in winter time, and it will be FUN when we get fresh eggs!

  

Hopefully that helps you get a little look into what it’s like to have (and get started with) Backyard Chickens. Thanks for sharing my adventure with me

You may have noticed that the videos we embed on our website are hosted by YouTube. This is a way that is easy for us to get videos online for our blog, but it’s also a whole little community over there. If you are already have a YouTube account, we would love it if you would subscribe to our channel, check out more of our videos, and become our “friend”.

Visit our channel http://youtube.com/user/FoodStorageMadeEasy1

If you don’t have a YouTube account, here are the benefits of getting an account and subscribing to our channel:

• Get instant notification when we upload new videos
• View ALL videos we create, even if we never post them on the blog
• Leave comments on our channel and/or individual videos
• Become “friends” on YouTube in order to better interact with each other
• Upload your own videos and share them with us and our other subscribers
• Leave feedback (thumbs up or down) to let us know if you like a video or not
• “Share” your favorite videos via email, Facebook, Twitter
• Keep track of all your favorite YouTube videos and channels all in one place

I made a quick little tutorial video to show you some of the features of our YouTube channel (to make sure you don’t miss out on any of our great stuff). Then after that I walk you through the process of how to register for a YouTube account and give a little but of guidance on how to start taking advantage of the benefits mentioned above.

Want to check out some of our videos?

We have organized our videos into categories or “playlists” to make it easier to find the content you are looking for. Check out some of these great topics that we cover over on YouTube. You don’t have to subscribe to view and enjoy the videos

• Online Powerless Cooking Class
• Summer Powerless Cooking Adventures
• How-To Video Tutorials
• Food Storage Calculators
• Cooking With Your Food Storage
• Extreme Makeover – Food Storage Edition

Hopefully this is helpful to you and we hope to see many of you around on YouTube and see what you are up to with your food storage, summer cooking adventures, gardening, and more!

#10 CAN STOVE GIFT – CONTENTS

• #10 can
• 4 mini bags of charcoal in ziploc bags
• 4 bags of single use Insta-fire
• 4 packs of matches
• cooking pot (any can, if it has a plastic lid, remove it to cook)
• cut iron rods (coat hanger) to insert into can, and place pot on

Jodi did a tutorial in our powerless cooking class on how to make a #10 can stove, make sure you check it out here.

#10 CAN STOVE GIFT – INSTRUCTIONS

Packing all that stuff into the can is a little tricky. This video will show you how to pack the can and fit all that stuff IN it. It will also show you how to do all the cute decorations.

Excuse #1: NO IDEA

3 years ago from today we had this exact conversation:

Julie: Jodi, I am feeling urgent about building my food storage
Jodi: Oh no, is something going to happen? Now I think I need to build MINE
Julie: It’s so confusing I don’t know where to start
Jodi: Don’t ask me, it’s way too overwhelming
Julie: I think we need to just research one tiny thing at a time
Jodi: Ya, like do it in BABYSTEPS … we should blog about what we learn
Julie: I hate blogs … but maybe it could help my sisters get started too …….

And the rest is history. lol.

After we developed the ten babysteps we later went on to create our Babystep Checklists which will walk you step by step through the entire babystep program. Over a one year period you will learn everything you need to know to build your food storage, be given specific purchasing assignments every two weeks, and recipes to try so you are always learning how to USE the foods you are storing.

If you have no idea how to get started, sign up for the checklists today!

Excuse #2: NO SPACE

One of our biggest email requests when we first started our blog was “What do I do if I don’t have a basement storage room to store my food? I can’t build my food storage!”

We had no good answers because we were failures at food storage when we both lived in our little newlywed starter homes. Luckily we have some awesome blog readers who helped us come up with TONS of ideas for storing your food and supplies in SMALL SPACES.

   

If you have small storage space, look through this handout and find some space today!

Excuse #3: NO TIME

No Time? No problem. Use food storage as a time-saver and cook things ahead of time like pizza pockets and pre-made smoothie mixes. You can also save time if you store canned meats. It takes a little time one night and then you have easy, ready-to-use chicken or beef on hand for a quick dinner any time.

Don’t forget, you don’t have to cook homemade bread every week and dehydrate your own foods to actually build and use your food storage. Pick a weekend and try making bread. Once you have the skill learned, you can use it should the need arise. But *confession* I still buy store-bought bread on weeks that things are crazy and I don’t get any made. It’s OK! And there are tons of great options to purchase dehydrated and freeze dried foods that you can use to save time in your everyday cooking and/or keep for emergencies only.

Food storage doesn’t have to take lots of time, and it can actually SAVE time if used correctly. No excuses!

Excuse #4: NO MONEY

This one is a very legitimate concern. If you have no extra money in your budget, it is hard to start stockpiling food above and beyond your regular grocery budget. However, if you are that tight on a budget and ANY kind of emergency happens, you are one of the people who NEED food storage even more!

Jodi’s husband lost his job about 6 months after she had started to build her 3 month supply. She had been on a very tight “Dave Ramsey” style budget and had only been allocating $50 a month to food storage. But luckily with using some great couponing strategies she had built up enough food to be able to buy only a minimum amount of groceries for 3 months until her husband found a new job. It really gave her a testimony of the importance of food storage.

To see some other ways food storage can actually HELP you financially, check out our post about Food Storage and Money Savings

Ingredients:
1 can great northern beans
1 can kidney beans
1 can black beans
1 1/4 c. chicken or vegetable broth
1 c. favorite salsa or a can of Mexican stewed tomatoes
3 TBSP chocolate syrup
1 TBSP southwest seasoning
1 TBSP chili powder

Directions:
Rinse and drain beans. Combine all ingredients in a slow-cooker. Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours.

Special Notes:
The great thing about this chili is it has enough flavor to skip all the refrigerated toppings like cheese and sour cream.

Jan’s Fabulous Food Storage Recipes Converting Stored Foods Into Useable Meals by Jan LeBaron

Background: This book is written by Jan LeBaron, a woman who has life experience I personally can learn from. She was raised in a family of 9, and had 4 kids of her own. She’s always loved learning from her mom how to cook, and she knows so much about the basics and beyond. You can tell just by flipping through her book, she loves cooking REAL food for REAL people. Sometimes recipe books can get a little too fancy for my real life situation – but this one feels normal. On the cover of the book, it says “Converting Stored Foods Into Useable Meals”. I feel that is just what this book does, tells you how to use your stored foods in recipes you will come to love. She also has some great information about beans, grains, and other common food storage items.

What I Liked:

• Lots of sections including- Beverages, Bread, Beans and Bean Flours, Breakfasts, Casseroles, Cheese, Condiments, Cookies, Deserts, Meat, Cooking with TVP, Main Dishes, Mexican Dishes, Whole Grains, Perfect Pasta, Storing, Soups and Stews, Vegetables and Potatoes, Emergency Tips
• Brief education before each section about the types of foods you will be using
• Really gives you ideas for common food storage items
• Recipes for many basics- yogurt, sauces, cheeses, cream soups, condiments
• Helpful tips to make cooking your meals faster (prepare ahead type ideas)
• A TON of recipes – really so many

Favorite Part: I think my favorite part of this book is how many recipes there are for basic necessities you may not ever think of making from scratch. Things like tortillas, pasta noodles, yogurt, cheeses, pasta sauces, condensed soups, mayonnaise and more. In a situation where these items may not be available, I’d definitely pull out this book for a handy guide and resource. In fact, since making them from your own ingredients can be so much healthier (and cheaper), I can see myself learning to use these recipes in everyday life. I also like how regular a lot of the recipes are. I’m not ALL that fancy of a cooker – I get overwhelmed when I see recipes that call for things I have never heard of!

Feedback: Just in case you’re a picture kind of person, I do have to let you know the recipes don’t have pictures- although I really don’t feel like it’s that much of a drawback. The information is so valuable and practical I would recommend this book for sure for those who don’t know what to do with the Food they have stored.

Summary: Jan’s Fabulous Food Storage Recipes is a great book full or recipes and helpful cooking tools. If you already have your food storage, and just don’t know what to do with it – this is a great book for you!