[Redcap]

I liked where Heidi showed the cabinet full of jars and said a goal is to fill the jars. That’s kind of what I did. Figured out how many half gallon jars I’d need of a few really emergency items: potatoes, cabbage, veg, and leafy greens, mushrooms, etc. for a big pot of emergency cooking soup/stew to have for the week if there was nothing else OR we just can’t buy stuff (financial crisis at home) OR we get sick or injured and it’s just an easy thing to make once and eat all week. Plus some other things I want for long term storage in these big jars and I just bought all the jars and lined them up on a couple of Ikea metal shelves I had and started filling them up. I can look at the shelf and know how many more I need to fill up. Or if we’re using anything I’m buying, like nuts, what to replace.

That visual simplicity is what I need. Because we don’t need to right now, I don’t dehydrate for daily use and rotate. This is mainly my long-term storage for the next couple of years. We figure we won’t really feel the need to start using it regularly and rotating it until maybe next year when I think it might have been on the shelf awhile – and that’s mostly the cabbage because it’s getting more light brown as it sits in the jars even though it’s a dark room with no windows and it’s all vacuum-sealed.

It was a good talk about the milk, too, because we haven’t had the funds to put by powdered milk. But I did the math and it would cost about $10-$12 per gallon once reconstituted. I get organic whole milk for about $7, but the trays would have to hold such a small amount of milk, that by the time I dehydrated a gallon, it would take forever and cost a fortune in electricity.