Repurposing with a vengeance - dry goods storage

Repurposing project #3 - Reclaiming my mason jars

Are you one of those people that gets so much stuff in bulk you just don't know what to do with it all? Or how about one of those people who purchases stuff in #10 tins, opens it and then has no idea how to keep the unused portion from getting eaten by bugs or rodents. Has Waste Management offered to supply an industrial sized recycling bin for all of your soda bottles? Well have I got a new trick for you. 

First and foremost. This method of storage is SHORT TERM (less than 2 years). Additionally, this method is to be used for NON-PERISHABLE goods only. If ever you are in doubt of the quality of the food, do not eat it. 

Stuff that you will probably need.

Empty 1, 2 or 3 liter bottles. Dried beans, peas, rice are best, but you can also store chocolate chips, dehydrated vegetables, pasta, etc. A large bowl, measuring cup or scoop, scissors, marking pen, packing tape. Make sure your working area is clean and dry.

Prepping the plastic bottles. Remove the labels. don't use anything sharp or you may ruin the bottle. Rinse the bottle with the hottest water your tap provides. If your tank is set below 120° you may want to heat some water to no more than 150° and rinse the bottles. 

Do I need to talk about safety here??? Okay, remember, the water is very hot and can burn you. The soda bottle will not insulate you from the hot water. Water that is too hot can melt the bottle increasing your chance of getting burned. Use a funnel to pour the water in to the bottle, trying to hold the bottle while pour scalding water into a narrow neck is...well, stupid. Children should be in another room...at grandma's...napping. Okay, sorry if I offended anyone, but I've seen just about every way a person can blow this and get burned. Oh and the bottle caps should be rinsed in scalding water as well. 
Allow your bottles to dry COMPLETELY. Was that loud enough? Putting dried items into a moist bottle...just throw it away.

Okay, now that your bottles are ready, gather your items and begin. Place your bottle into a large bowl.

Find the method that works best for you to get the items (beans, rice, etc.) into the bottle. A funnel can be helpful, but may sometime clog, a paper funnel may be more useful for larger items (Lima beans, chocolate chips), but the method that works the best for me is the hand funnel, you know wrapping your hand around the neck of the bottle. No matter what method you use, there will be spillage, hence the large bowl. Hopefully anything that misses the bottle will land in the bowl. 

Using a paper funnel with Lima beans.

After you have filled your bottle (this is 1 pound) Cut the label off the front and the cooking directions off the back. You can cut off the nutritional info if you like, but I don't.

 

Use the packing tape to secure the labels to the bottles. Pick a spot and write the month and year you packed this bottle.

Before putting the cap on, add a bay leaf to the bottle if it is beans (everything else, you won't need it). The bay leaf has one function, to season the beans. There are many people who believe that bay leaves are good for keeping insects out, but it is just not true. Read this report from 1984 and see for yourself the best way to keep insects from infesting your food stuffs. The contents of the bottle will not pick up any flavoring until the bay leaf is cooked with it. Now add an oxygen absorber, Cap your bottle.

You know those bags of 15 bean soup or White bean soup with ham flavoring, well you can do a few of those as well. The only problem I came across was the flavoring packet. Sure, I could stuff it into the bottle, but I would have to destroy the bottle to get it back out, so my solution is simple. Cover the flavor packet with a piece of plastic (to keep it from ripping open when the tape is removed) and tape it to the side of the bottle. *Warning* This will not keep your flavor packet from becoming wet or infested or losing it's flavor. It just keeps the packet with the soup. When in doubt, throw it out.

Sooo... to recap so far, clean bottles, insert food, bay leaf, and oxygen absorber, cap bottles, label them with contents and cooking directions. Now what?? Oh yeah...

Get your household wax out and scrape off a bit. Now melt said household wax. I don't happen to have dedicated wax melting pots, but a reused potpie pan works just fine.



Don't forget, the water is hot. I won't go over that one again. Remove melted wax pot (potpie tin) from the pan of water and then dip the tops of the bottles in the wax. Allow to cool. Repeat 3 or 4 times.

This seals the bottle to prevent insects and moisture from getting in. With the addition of the oxygen absorber, the chance of insect growth becomes negligible.

A one liter bottle will hold this much in White Beans. But keep in mind, each bean is different, size means nothing. Check out the picture below. The smaller ones can be more dense. In this example a bottle can hold more of the split peas than the black eyed peas.

Juice bottles work just as well and they even have thicker plastic walls. The openings are also larger so getting an oxygen absorber in with the beans becomes easier. They also tend to be square so can be stacked more easily.

Oh and about that "don't use plastic to store stuff because of leaching". Leaching of chemicals into food from plastic bottles requires liquid, dry items should not pick up any chemicals, but I'd like to remind you that you probably consumed the liquid that was in the bottle in the first place and how long were those sitting on the shelf before you opened it?

The best kinda beans.

Repurposing with a vengeance - the stove

Repurposing project #2: RV stove top outdoor kitchen - this idea also came off Pinterest.

I do as much canning as I am able, however a lot of that comes during the hottest parts of the summer and I don't have an a/c cooled kitchen. The first day its not so bad, but by day three, I just don't want to be that hot anymore. So I looked around for a way to do my canning outdoors.

This would be ideal

I could work with this

Even this would do

I did manage a couple of batches in my pressure canner on the campstove. It worked great, but I did have to keep pumping the pressure back up because it had to be on so long. I also tried it on the side burner of the BBQ (propane) It also worked fine, but the weight of the canner had to be counterbalanced. I wasn't comfortable doing it again. One other problem was wind, keeping a constant temperature was difficult.

In the South, there are homes that have what are termed "Summer"kitchens. These are basically kitchens that are completely separate from the rest of the house. They are used for essentially canning, baking during the summer, and other food preparation that is hot and humid. By using the summer kitchen, the home remains cooler because the additional heat and humidity are some place else. I've seen these kitchens as either add-ons to a house or a screened in porch that has been converted. I don't have money to build an add-on and I don't have a screened in porch to convert. What's a girl to do?

I was looking for outdoor ideas for my hubby to do (I'm good to him like that) and found the picture of a three burner, propane fired cooktop in a wood frame. I had found it, just what I wanted for canning outdoors. Now to find the parts I needed. I did quite a bit of looking, placing ads on different sites, asking neighbors and friends, and watching for rv's in the paper. I figured that was going to be the easiest way to locate a propane fired cook top. Hey, remember that windstorm that wiped out my greenhouse? Well we had another one just 10 days later and one thing I noticed on my morning walks was a bunch of RV's and travel trailers demolished by trees. So I began knocking on doors and pleading on social media asking to salvage the cook top from a damaged RV. A few weeks went by and finally someone called and asked if I was still looking. They had a cooktop they could sell me for $30.00. Egads!!! Not what I was hoping for. We haggled and I finally got it down to $12.00.

Picture from Pinterest

With the picture from Pinterest firmly in my mind, I was extremely disappointed when the people showed up with the cook top. What they brought to my house was a stove/range from a motorhome from the 70's (okay, not that old)  and it certainly didn't fit the sleek cooktop look I was envisioning. 

In addition, they also offered the sink and water reservoir at no extra charge. I've gotta say, my brain caught fire, of course I would take those off their hands. (more on that another day). They were very grateful that I could take this stuff from them and I was grateful I got a stove/range, sink and water reservoir all for $12.00...delivered!

Using an old BBQ which had been designated for building that outdoor kitchen I wanted (two years ago), my handy husband set out to fit the appliance into the frame.

He removed the BBQ barrel and set about measuring, cutting, welding, measuring, grinding, and did I mention measuring?

He inspected the propane lines and decided that he would need to get a new gas line to go to the propane tank and a new regulator as well. This was about $60.00 at the big box store.

I kept sneaking out to see how it was coming, but you see those nifty orange things over his ears? Those are the "Huh?" devise or the "ignore the wife's question about how it is coming" tool

Any way, after he was done ignoring my silly questions, this is what he built. Ugly I know, but I was super excited, I had an outdoor kitchen, sort of. 

Of course I posted this picture right away on that social site we all are starting to deny we are part of, you know which one I'm talking about. The responses were varied, everything from "that's so Redneck" to "I wonder if the insurance company will let me keep the oven from our totaled RV?"

I had to try it out right away (not for canning) and decided to cook dinner and dessert on my new outdoor kitchen. This was the 21st of August and if I remember correctly it was pretty warm outside, so the timing was perfect.

What you see there is spaghetti in progress and chocolate chip cookies baked and ready to eat (which I did as soon as they were cool enough to get off the tray)

In the end I removed the old side burner, cut new wood for the "counter", stained and urethaned the heck out of it. The husband fabricated a windbreak on the back and since I can turn the cooktop, I can place that break where I need it. I've canned to my heart's content on this new stove and it's been fabulous. Redneck? Maybe...but my house is not hot.