Sunday, March 15, 2009

Valentines Day

Happy Valentines Day
My Valentines day started out by Jon and I getting up and out the door by 7:30 am to go to the LDS cannery. Our ward had a canning session that started at 9 am but Jon and I wanted to get there an hour early because we had a lot of canning we wanted to do and wanted to get a head start before everyone else arrived because I think we were canning way more than anyone else. There was a great turn out from our ward. This is what we ended up canning.
50 lbs dry milk
100 lbs white rice
100 lbs sugar
100 lbs red wheat
50 lbs white wheat
60 lbs Macaroni
75 lbs Quick oats
25 lbs Potato Flakes
100 lbs White Flour
These can I wont be opening up anytime soon. They are for our long term storage, and most of these items can be stored for 30+ years.
We also bought
25 lb bag of white rice
75 lbs of red wheat
25 lbs of hot cocoa mix
25 lbs of white flour
I will be putting these in 4, 5 , 0r 6 gallon buckets with a gamma lid so I can use them right now.

Even though to me this sounds like a lot of food storage in all actuality it only puts a small dent on what my family of 8 needs for a year supply. But with this trip we almost doubled our long term supply of food so that is good progress.
It is a good thing we have a large vehicle because that thing was full. We canned and bought the right amount of bags. It worked out perfect, and I didn't even plan it that way. I just hoped it would all fit. This canning trip is one of the reasons I filed our taxes early. We got our federal taxes deposited into our checking account the day before our canning trip. Talk about good timing.

After spending all that money on our canning session, Jon and I decided we would do a family Valentine's dinner at home. And I volunteered Jon to do the cooking. We had some steaks in the freezer so Jon grilled them and made baked potatoes, green salad, french bread, and we had some non alcoholic sparkling cider. I was going to make a chocolate cake but was too sugared out from the previous pre valentine goodies (my sister brought over personalized sugar cookies and Jon made some sugar cookies for his home teaching families and I attended 2 of the kids valentine school parties) that I gave us a break and made it the next day on Sunday.

2 comments:

Leanne said...

Wow...what a big job! That's a lotta canning! Good for you. I wish we had a cannery close by. I have hardly anything for our family. Plus, our basement flooded and ruined our carpet. I had some can goods down there and luckily they are ok.

So where did you put your canned goods? I mean, do you have a section of the basement for them? Just being nosy. lol

Gretta said...

Our long term food storage is in the garage. We are using all of our basement as living space so all we have left for storage is the attic (which Jon hates going in so we don't use it) and our garage. Luckily we have a bigger than normal 2 car garage so I can park my car in there and the other part of the garage is storage (food, tools, clothes, holiday stuff, and a bunch of other junk I need to either give away or throw away that is my next big project that I am not looking forward to doing but will love the results). Jon built shelves on that side of the garage so it works well.