Supermarket Shrinkage?

[micknsnicks2mom]

 
I started buying 25-pound bags of sugar last year when I started making my own pickles. I store the sugar, in its bag, in my grandmother's large tin can. Same with flour; I store that in the freezer.

I've been making things from scratch forever and a day....I try to stay away from all mixes and packages of stuff. It's very expensive and, in the long run, it's not good for you. A while back, we talked here about Jell-O puddings going from a 6-pack to a 4-pack. I haven't bought it since. I make my own chocolate pudding and I make homemade tapioca pudding or rice pudding for Rick for his lunch. We have some 4-ounce plastic containers that are perfect for him to take in his lunch box and on Sunday nights, I'll make pudding for him for the week. Rick is a big applesauce fan, too, and he will often take applesauce in his lunch. I make applesauce every fall and stick it into the freezer for him throughout the year. 

Do you have a sourdough starter?

We have a thread here somewhere about pressure cookers. And we also have a thread in the Recipe Exchange for recipes for pressure cookers, but I'm not sure what all is in there. If you'd like, please add your favorite recipes for your pressure cooker. I'm always interested in recipes...love using my pc.

Also my crock pots...nothing like having dinner all ready when I get home from work.

My kids bought me a food dehydrator several years ago and I'm having a ball experimenting with dehydrating food. If you've ever eaten a fresh raisin, you'll never go back to the boxes, trust me. Same with dried pineapple. Mushrooms. Onions. Just delicious. I can eat dehydrated onions as a snack! 

 But boy, the onions can really stink the house up while they're drying. Whew! One batch I made almost brought tears to Rick's eyes.

I always make my own salad dressings, too. They're better than what you can buy and often, they're lower in fat or calories, too. 

But even making things from scratch will bite you because when the prices of staples increase, you pay more anyway. You can't win. Still I make as much from scratch as I can.

may i ask if you would mind sharing your applesauce recipe, and how you freeze it? i buy bushels of apples each fall -- i live in an area that has many apple orchards. i freeze my apples, peeled and chunked. i use some of the apple peels to make apple peel jelly -- very tasty and a lovely clear pinkish color to it.

i'm hoping to buy a food dehydrator this fall.

 

[furmonster mom]

With the cost of groceries inching up, do you guys find more of your friends looking into making/preserving their own foods?  i.e., canning, freezing, dehydrating, smoking (meats), etc.,. 

I suppose locale has quite a bit to do with it as well, one is less likely to have the space to do such things in a big metro-city.  But in the 'burbs... maybe?

 

[Winchester]

 
may i ask if you would mind sharing your applesauce recipe, and how you freeze it? i buy bushels of apples each fall -- i live in an area that has many apple orchards. i freeze my apples, peeled and chunked. i use some of the apple peels to make apple peel jelly -- very tasty and a lovely clear pinkish color to it.

i'm hoping to buy a food dehydrator this fall.

I bet apple peel jelly would be delicious! 

I don't really have a recipe because we buy about 100 pounds of apples every fall. I make apple dumplings and several kinds of apple pies for the freezer. I keep about 30 or so apples for me to munch on. Last year I tried some apple butter and then some apple butter BBQ sauce and it's decadently good. The rest goes into applesauce. It depends on what kind of sauce you want, chunky or smooth. I make both kinds.

For smooth applesauce, I wash the apples, then slice them in fourths; do not peel and do not core. I have a large stockpot, maybe half filled with water. I let the water get warm and then start filling the pot with the sliced apples. When the pot gets full, I put the lid on the pot and bring the water and apples to boiling. Then I turn the heat down and cook until they're nice and soft.....poke a knife or fork into the apples; you'll know when they're soft enough.

I drain the apples well, turning the apples into a large colander in the sink. Let the apples drain for a while, then start running them through a food mill. The food mill will catch peelings and seeds; that's why I said you don't need to bother peeling or coring. As you run the apples through the food mill into a large bowl, that's your applesauce. Let the sauce sit for a while, then season with sugar to taste. Some years I need a lot of sugar; some years, I hardly have to add any. I always add cinnamon to the applesauce, again to your own taste. Let the sauce cool a bit, place into freezer containers (leaving about an inch of headspace in each container. Label with "Applesauce 2014" and put into the freezer.

Link to a food mill (because not everybody knows what a food mill is):    I have two food mills, simply because of the volume of applesauce we do. A lot of times, Rick and I will work together making sauce, so we have both of them running full-tilt. Since the food mill collects the apple peels and the seeds, you'll need to dump it out every so often. We'll take the peelings and stuff outside up in the back of the yard.....the deer just love them.

Rick also likes chunky applesauce and that's a little more time-consuming. You have to peel, core, and chunk the apples, then throw them into the stock pot with the water. (Don't use as much water as you would when making a smooth sauce.) Let them cook down and get as soft as you want. The softer the apples, the smoother the sauce will be; Rick likes chunky sauce, so I don't let them cook down too much, but they do need to be soft. It's hard to explain. I can see it, I can do it, but it's difficult to tell you. You don't put it through the food mill, so you need to cook it down to your liking. However you want the apple chunks to be, larger or smaller. You don't really want to drain this (that's why I said to be careful about the amount of water). Again, plop the sauce into a large bowl and let it cool a bit. Season with sugar and cinnamon the way you want it. After it's cooled down, place into freezer containers, leaving about an inch of headspace in each container. Label with "Chunky Applesauce 2014" and put into the freezer.

I have a ton of quart freezer containers that I keep strictly for applesauce. I've also used quart freezer bags in a pinch. They're kind of nice because you can layer the bags in the freezer, if you're short on freezer space. I try to do enough applesauce in the fall to see Rick through for the year until it's time to make sauce again. And then there's applesauce cookies and applesauce cake and applesauce pie and applesauce brownies and.......

 

I have a Nesco food dehydrator; it came with four trays and then I bought quite a few more. My kids gave me money for Christmas one year; they wanted to give me a dehydrator, but they weren't sure what kind to get. I bought it from Amazon. 

I also have some canning things that my MIL gave to me (she offered them to me years ago, but I said I'd never can anything. A few years ago, I asked her if she still had her canning stuff. She just smiled and said, "Took you long enough!" and gave everything to me). Then I bought a pressure canner to use for some vegetables and for the Honey Glazed Red Onions that I make in the fall, too. Yum. I've been making Old Farmhouse Chutney now for about 3 years, I think. I do bread-and-butter pickles, lime pickles, and cinnamon pickles (that recipe was given to me by a lady who is a board member.....and it's a great recipe. I also do zucchini salsa, also given to me by the same lady. I make Chow Chow, too, because it's something my mom always enjoyed. I like the Ball Blue Book of Canning for ideas.

I have to use the pressure canner on the gas grill; I can't seem to bring it to pressure and keep it at pressure on our glass cooktop.  I read where a lot of people have trouble with it. The gas grill works well and Rick will stand guard outside at the grill for me to make sure that it's all working properly. The pressure canner still scares me a little bit....I'm always expecting it to go BOOM! 

 As an aside, you can NOT use a regular pressure cooker for a pressure canner; the cooker does not have the required pressure. A pressure canner is not the same thing as a pressure cooker.

Furmonster Mom, sometimes I think I'm the only one around here who cooks and cans. We try to have a fairly large garden and my GF constantly makes fun of me because I don't go out and buy a bushel of tomatoes....we grow them.  I like gardening and there are some days when I actually like to weed. I enjoy canning and learning more about doing things.

This year's project is going to be making my own ketchup. I did it years and years ago and I think it was pretty good. I'd like to try it again. Why? Because I can.

 

[denice]

I remember when I was a kid growing up on a farm my mom always made corn cob jelly.  It wasn't anything unusual, most people made it.  It doesn't taste like corn at all.

 

[furmonster mom]

Originally Posted by Winchester  
As an aside, you can NOT use a regular pressure cooker for a pressure canner; the cooker does not have the required pressure. A pressure canner is not the same thing as a pressure cooker.

Oh!  good point!  I had to double check my post... I did indeed put "cooker" when I meant "canner". 

I got the 25 qt All American Pressure Canner...  https://www.allamericancanner.com/allamerican925pressurecanner.htm

Getting the right point of heat is tricky, but once you know where that is, it sorta becomes second nature.  It's better to start low and work the heat up, rather than the opposite.  And yes, glass/electric cook tops are not the best option as they can  break under the weight... gas is my preference (for everything, really).

On the supermarket front...

Went to the Asian and Mexican markets for my organ meats today... seems like their prices have gone up as well.  *sad panda*

 

[Winchester]

Nice canner, Furmonster Mom! 

 I had seen those and,when I'm ready to upgrade to a larger canner, that's what I'll be getting, too.  They're really nice. So you'll be able to tell me all the tips and hints you know when I upgrade!

Years ago, when my parents camped regularly, my dad took the top of an old gas stove and converted it to propane. It fit beautifully on one end of a picnic table and he even made shields for when the wind was gusty....the shields went around the stove. Very nice. My sister and I looked all over the place for that stove because it would have been the perfect stove for canning and we could have shared it (I do vegetables; she makes chili sauce and cans peaches and pears). We never found it so we assume they sold it. 

My cousin makes pepper jelly and you serve it with crackers and chips.It's something different and it's not bad stuff.

 

[angelinacat]

Hi Winchester and Furmonster Mom!  My DH and I are canning on a regular basis--usually a project every other week.  We are trying to do something like full meals.  We have made spaghetti sauce, stews, soups, chili, and the like.  Do any of you have other suggestions?

We have canned tomatoes, and I made green tomato relish.  We have a water bath canner--which had to be replaced because the first one developed a hole.  Which reminds me of the fact that when I went and bought the new one, I remarked about how much THINNER the metal was compared to the older one.

We also have the All-American pressure canner, model 921.  DH bought that as a Christmas present a couple of years ago.  We love it, and DH wishes he had bought the larger model that handles a double-decker of quarts.  But I am fine with model we have.  It will handle  a double decker of pints, but we usually don't make enough of anything to warrant more than one layer of anything.  Also, this canner is adequate enough for me to handle when he is out of town, and I am canning on my own.

 

[duckdodgers]

I noticed this with toilet paper a few months ago.  I always buy the big packages with a bunch of rolls, so when I noticed we were running low I bought another giant box.  Went to stack them all up next to the couple of older rolls we had and they were at least a full inch shorter!  Same brand (charmin)  and everything.

But, the last time I bought paper towels my dad was nice enough to buy me a bunch of stuff from Sams on his dime.  I got the ginormous king sized package of paper towels, and the darn things are too thick to fit in the holder properly!  Not too long, but there are too many layers of paper towel   Guess that's what you get for buying a year's supply of paper towels at a time!

 

[Winchester]

Somebody else told me that she thought the metal was thinner on the newer canners. 

I recommend this book for canning as it includes tables for how long to can items. It also includes information on canning meats and I think it has info on chicken, too. It's the Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving:   I bought my first copy at Lowes. I loaned it out, never got it back and had to hit Amazon for my second copy as Lowes was sold out. It has some good information. I have not canned meat yet....to be honest, it scares me a little bit. (I have made jerky in the dehydrator, though.)

I agree about toilet paper. The width of the paper is a lot shorter than it used to be....you can really see it when you put the roll on the holder. We always buy the largest packages of toilet paper and paper towels that we can with a coupon, hopefully when it's on sale at the same time.

 

[angelinacat]

I have the Ball canning book, along with several others.  There are also several Youtube videos available that show canning meat.  We have canned chicken, bacon, meatloaf--all from Youtube tutorials.  I have also done Shepherd's Pie (add potatoes when opening and heating thoroughly), Beef Tips (serve with rice), and those such things.

 

[mycatwasthebest]

 
I noticed this with toilet paper a few months ago.  I always buy the big packages with a bunch of rolls, so when I noticed we were running low I bought another giant box.  Went to stack them all up next to the couple of older rolls we had and they were at least a full inch shorter!  Same brand (charmin)  and everything.

Several years ago (like seven) I began telling people about my soon-to-be new political party. The Toilet Paper Party(TM)

It is so named for the reasons outlined above and it is for consumers of any and all previous affiliations

 

[micknsnicks2mom]

 
Nice canner, Furmonster Mom! 

 I had seen those and,when I'm ready to upgrade to a larger canner, that's what I'll be getting, too.  They're really nice. So you'll be able to tell me all the tips and hints you know when I upgrade!

Years ago, when my parents camped regularly, my dad took the top of an old gas stove and converted it to propane. It fit beautifully on one end of a picnic table and he even made shields for when the wind was gusty....the shields went around the stove. Very nice. My sister and I looked all over the place for that stove because it would have been the perfect stove for canning and we could have shared it (I do vegetables; she makes chili sauce and cans peaches and pears). We never found it so we assume they sold it. 

My cousin makes pepper jelly and you serve it with crackers and chips.It's something different and it's not bad stuff.

pepper jelly -- made from sweet green peppers? i made a batch of that last year. i've been eating mine on toast for breakfasts.

 

[mycatwasthebest]

if u have a pic of it I'd love 2 see it!

 

[micknsnicks2mom]

 
I bet apple peel jelly would be delicious! 

I don't really have a recipe because we buy about 100 pounds of apples every fall. I make apple dumplings and several kinds of apple pies for the freezer. I keep about 30 or so apples for me to munch on. Last year I tried some apple butter and then some apple butter BBQ sauce and it's decadently good. The rest goes into applesauce. It depends on what kind of sauce you want, chunky or smooth. I make both kinds.

For smooth applesauce, I wash the apples, then slice them in fourths; do not peel and do not core. I have a large stockpot, maybe half filled with water. I let the water get warm and then start filling the pot with the sliced apples. When the pot gets full, I put the lid on the pot and bring the water and apples to boiling. Then I turn the heat down and cook until they're nice and soft.....poke a knife or fork into the apples; you'll know when they're soft enough.

I drain the apples well, turning the apples into a large colander in the sink. Let the apples drain for a while, then start running them through a food mill. The food mill will catch peelings and seeds; that's why I said you don't need to bother peeling or coring. As you run the apples through the food mill into a large bowl, that's your applesauce. Let the sauce sit for a while, then season with sugar to taste. Some years I need a lot of sugar; some years, I hardly have to add any. I always add cinnamon to the applesauce, again to your own taste. Let the sauce cool a bit, place into freezer containers (leaving about an inch of headspace in each container. Label with "Applesauce 2014" and put into the freezer.

Link to a food mill (because not everybody knows what a food mill is):    I have two food mills, simply because of the volume of applesauce we do. A lot of times, Rick and I will work together making sauce, so we have both of them running full-tilt. Since the food mill collects the apple peels and the seeds, you'll need to dump it out every so often. We'll take the peelings and stuff outside up in the back of the yard.....the deer just love them.

Rick also likes chunky applesauce and that's a little more time-consuming. You have to peel, core, and chunk the apples, then throw them into the stock pot with the water. (Don't use as much water as you would when making a smooth sauce.) Let them cook down and get as soft as you want. The softer the apples, the smoother the sauce will be; Rick likes chunky sauce, so I don't let them cook down too much, but they do need to be soft. It's hard to explain. I can see it, I can do it, but it's difficult to tell you. You don't put it through the food mill, so you need to cook it down to your liking. However you want the apple chunks to be, larger or smaller. You don't really want to drain this (that's why I said to be careful about the amount of water). Again, plop the sauce into a large bowl and let it cool a bit. Season with sugar and cinnamon the way you want it. After it's cooled down, place into freezer containers, leaving about an inch of headspace in each container. Label with "Chunky Applesauce 2014" and put into the freezer.

I have a ton of quart freezer containers that I keep strictly for applesauce. I've also used quart freezer bags in a pinch. They're kind of nice because you can layer the bags in the freezer, if you're short on freezer space. I try to do enough applesauce in the fall to see Rick through for the year until it's time to make sauce again. And then there's applesauce cookies and applesauce cake and applesauce pie and applesauce brownies and.......

 

I have a Nesco food dehydrator; it came with four trays and then I bought quite a few more. My kids gave me money for Christmas one year; they wanted to give me a dehydrator, but they weren't sure what kind to get. I bought it from Amazon. 

I also have some canning things that my MIL gave to me (she offered them to me years ago, but I said I'd never can anything. A few years ago, I asked her if she still had her canning stuff. She just smiled and said, "Took you long enough!" and gave everything to me). Then I bought a pressure canner to use for some vegetables and for the Honey Glazed Red Onions that I make in the fall, too. Yum. I've been making Old Farmhouse Chutney now for about 3 years, I think. I do bread-and-butter pickles, lime pickles, and cinnamon pickles (that recipe was given to me by a lady who is a board member.....and it's a great recipe. I also do zucchini salsa, also given to me by the same lady. I make Chow Chow, too, because it's something my mom always enjoyed. I like the Ball Blue Book of Canning for ideas.

I have to use the pressure canner on the gas grill; I can't seem to bring it to pressure and keep it at pressure on our glass cooktop.  I read where a lot of people have trouble with it. The gas grill works well and Rick will stand guard outside at the grill for me to make sure that it's all working properly. The pressure canner still scares me a little bit....I'm always expecting it to go BOOM! 

 As an aside, you can NOT use a regular pressure cooker for a pressure canner; the cooker does not have the required pressure. A pressure canner is not the same thing as a pressure cooker.

Furmonster Mom, sometimes I think I'm the only one around here who cooks and cans. We try to have a fairly large garden and my GF constantly makes fun of me because I don't go out and buy a bushel of tomatoes....we grow them.  I like gardening and there are some days when I actually like to weed. I enjoy canning and learning more about doing things.

This year's project is going to be making my own ketchup. I did it years and years ago and I think it was pretty good. I'd like to try it again. Why? Because I can.

thank you! i'll make some homemade applesauce this fall then. i have quite a bit of freezer space, but i may very well use the quart freezer bags to freeze the applesauce in. i'll definitely invest in a food mill. thanks!

the apple peel jelly was a recipe i found online when i thought there must be some use i can get from all the peels. it's really a very easy recipe, not a lot of time spent watching/stirring it.

i'll keep nesco brand dehydrators on my possibles list, based on your good experience with one.

i have a glass cooktop stove too. it was here when i bought the house. i plan on having a gas stove put in when i have the kitchen remodeled, in 7-9 years from now. the glass cooktop is so limiting for canning.

 

[micknsnicks2mom]

 
if u have a pic of it I'd love 2 see it!

a pic of my sweet pepper jelly?

 

[kathyfromcanada]

 
I found this interesting....you will, too:

Yes! A lot of companies are shrinking the sizes of the bottles etc. Charge the same price!

 

[mycatwasthebest]

 

 
if u have a pic of it I'd love 2 see it!

a pic of my sweet pepper jelly?

lol...it was very, very late. I thought I hit "quote." I was trying to refer to Winchester's dad's propane concoction.

but i'll take some jelly

 

[micknsnicks2mom]

 
lol...it was very, very late. I thought I hit "quote." I was trying to refer to Winchester's dad's propane concoction.

but i'll take some jelly

no problem. )

 

[asherdash]

well what's happening here is that the main grocery store chain tries to bully you into buying the stores "house brands" and doesn't offer a variety of brands. I mean they do but its not as wide a selection as it used to be. Drives me mad and I rant about it every few weeks.

 

[Winchester]

I don't have the stove and neither does my sister.....I can't take any pictures. We looked all over the place for that stove because it would have come in handy during canning season. All I know is that it was just the top of the stove. The burner knobs were on the front of the stove (not on top). He converted the stove from gas to propane and he could just switch propane tanks when the tank ran empty. It was just big enough to fit on an end of a picnic table. Mom would use matches to light the burners she needed to cook meals. And then while we were eating, she heated the water to wash and rinse dishes. We used the stovetop for years when we camped....my parents were avid campers. (I remember when we were kids, my mom and grandmother would can peaches, pears, and all kinds of vegetables. They did a huge amount of stewed tomatoes...it was an unbelievable amount of stewed tomatoes. But we always seemed to use all the jars throughout the winter. They did jams and jellies, too. Mom would be making dinner and pretty soon, I hear, "Hey Pam, go down to the cupboard and bring up two jars of tomatoes!" My Dad built a large cupboard in the basement and Mom used it for all her canning stuff.)

We think Dad probably sold the stove when they stopped camping. I know that he did offer it to us at one time because my sister and I thought about sharing it. But neither of us did any canning back then and we didn't take it. Now, of course, we wish we would have.

Asherdash, we have taken notice to more store brands in our stores as well. Most of the time it doesn't bother us because the store brands are cheaper and sometimes store brands are just as good (sometimes better) than the national brands. But it is frustrating as well.

One of the items I'm starting to have a difficult time finding is green split peas. My recipe for split pea soup calls for both green split peas and whole peas as well. I can find whole peas all over the place. Can't find green split peas. Our Giant used to carry them, then stopped. I used to find them at Weis, then they stopped carrying them. Then I saw them at WalMart, but they stopped. Rick's mom found them in a little Asian store, of all places, and she bought me three 1-pound bags. That will see me through for a while, but I may have to start getting them from Amazon or something. How hard should it be to find something like green split peas?