Jam Jam Jam

We were able to get some strawberries pretty cheap from the BDO, so I made jam. Nothing fancy, just followed the instructions from the sure jell packet. But it is yummy!

 I am the messiest cook.  Whenever I make anything my kitchen ends up in a disaster! One of the many reasons I hate cooking. Canning is the worst tho.

I just had to document how messy I am. :)

Be Prepared

We decided to do bag meals again.  I have missed having them.  It is so nice to go into the pantry and know I have something I can make for dinner, and that it will be done in about 20 minutes! The church cannery doesn't sell canned beef anymore, and to tell you the truth, I hated their canned beef! I looked around and couldn't find anywhere around here that sells canned beef. I found a place in Ohio that sell ground beef, but it was going to cost about $90 to ship it here. Yikes!

I have been wanting to can beef since I canned chicken. I loved having canned chicken, and it tasted pretty good. It was a pretty big job, but Mike did most of the dirty work. Canning beef was much easier. We bought about 30 lbs from Winegers for about $3.50 a pound. Mike found THIS tutorial online that I followed.

I just lightly browned and salted the beef, and added water. Mike helped me put everything into the jars. He is the best!

We did pint jars. 

We had enough to do two batches.

33 cans in all and the best part is that every single one of them sealed!

So we were able to finish up with our bagged meals.  This time around we did White Chicken chili, Carmae's Chili, Enchilada Soup, TexMex Goulash (my kids favorite), Taco Soup, Baked Ziti, Chocolate Chip Muffins, and Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Pancakes. These were my favorite.  There were several last time that I didn't like, and wouldn't eat.

It's so nice to have a stocked pantry again.

Wesley took Bensen to the beach while we worked.  They are sitting on the beach next to the water.  He even made the sky, which was taped to the light.  He is so creative.

Later that night me and Jaycee went to The General Women's Conference. Wesley and Mike made food people.

Here are a couple of pictures of Wesley on his birthday.

He got two parties this year one at the Borgstroms.

And one at the Baileys.

Unfortunately he was sick for both of them.  But I had already made the cakes, so the party must go on.  He ended up with croup! 

He still had fun. We sure love this boy.

It's in the Bag!

We had a few people tell us about the "It's in the Bag" food storage system.  It sounded like a good idea, so we decided to give it a try. I bought the book at Seagull. Mike went to work building shelves in the cold storage. He also did most if not all the shopping, he's better at that then I am.

We've liked almost everything so far.  There were couple that we tried before we decided it would be one of our meals.  We picked about 16 recipes and made 6 bags of each recipe. 

This is what happened to our house, while we worked the kids destroyed.  We were pretty focused and it took us all day!

This is our finished product.  It is so nice to be able to go down and just grab a meal, have everything I need, and be done in 15-20 minutes. I love it.  Your supposed to restock your bag as soon as you use it, we've decided to wait for case lot sales to restock...just to save a little money.

Anyway, I highly recommend "It's in the bag".  We love it.