If you are anything like me, food storage is always a problem.  It either takes up a lot of shelf space or room in your freezer.  There is one method that takes up very little room on the shelf and no room in your freezer.  Dehydrating!  It is easy to do and takes up so little space, you will not believe how much food you can store in a cabinet or closet shelf.  Grow your own vegetables or buy them in season and you will be eating them all winter long.
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​With the 4th of July right around the corner, this is a subject that many people will find useful!​  Outside barbecues, pool parties, picnics and outdoor sports all will cause people to be out in the sun longer than they normally are.  Many people will use common sense and make sure to generously apply sunscreen, but even then it can be washed off by sweat, or watered down by swimming, leaving part or all of your skin open to the burning rays of the sun.  Some, of course, will not wear sunscreen at all, so they are doubly susceptible to getting sunburn.  Ouch!  

My sweet banana peppers are very prolific this year.  One garden bed has been coming in heavy for weeks and the other one, which I planted later is just starting to get little peppers on the plants.  Needless to say, I will not be hurting for peppers this winter.  What I may be needing more of is storage.  We only have one chest freezer, so I decided to put up a bunch of peppers by dehydrating them.  It's easy and drastically cuts down on the amount of storage space needed!
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A large majority of the human race has lost a very important skill. Awareness.  Most of us have been raised in an atmosphere of safety.  We believe that we are safe in our surroundings.  There are no leopards in the trees above us.  There are no highwaymen, blocking the streets of our subdivisions, forcing us to stop so they can rob and kill us.  We  can let the cable man into our homes, trusting that he is only there to fix our cable, not to kidnap us for ransom.

You are sitting at home, on the couch, watching TV.  All the sudden, everything snaps off and you are sitting there in the dark.  You know you have what you need, but where is everything?  You are pretty sure there may be a flashlight in the kitchen junk drawer, if the batteries in it are still good, if they aren't, you know you don't have any spares.  Where are the candles?  There are a couple in the master bathroom closet, you are pretty sure.  No lighters in the house, but there has to be some matches somewhere, right?

Off you stumble, in the dark, to try to find what you need.  This is an accident waiting to happen.  You can trip on shoes and fall, run into a door you thought was open, stab yourself on something sharp when feeling around in a drawer.  What if your flashlight batteries are dead, and you don't have any matches?  What will you do?

If you are interested in storing dry food on a budget, I have some great news for you! Two liter soda bottles are the way to go. Actually not just soda bottles, but also any plastic bottle from shelf stable juice or fruit drinks. Basically any bottles that have screw on lids with a rubber lid seals. The bottles must have been originally made to store food or drink.

Back in the old days, people raised their own food. They grew vegetables and raised animals. You wanted chicken and green beans for dinner, you went out and picked the beans and cleaned them and put them in a pot to boil. Then you would walk out to the chicken coop, pick out a chicken, kill it, gut it, pluck it, and voila, you had your chicken to cook for dinner.

Today I want to share a video from a site that I really like The Preparedness Pro.  I saw this video and it occurred to me that canning hamburger was a brilliant idea.  Brilliant because it will save room in my freezer, and cut out the chance that the meat will get freezer burned and ruined.  It will save time, like when I am throwing together some dinner, like spaghetti or tacos, I will have precooked and deliciously marinated meat, ready to use.  Not to mention that I will not lose a large portion of meat, and therefore money, if I lose power and my freezer thaws out.

I ran across this video over the weekend and I was amazed.  I had no idea how easy it was to open a can without a can opener.  You never know when this knowledge might come in handy, so I thought I would share it.