Abundance II

This is the second step in the Great Food Storage Overhaul. We bought a small cabinet with doors to keep in our kitchen where I'll keep my large containers of things like oil and honey, as well as some 1-gallon Rubbermaid containers where I keep the contents of the #10 cans after they've been opened. I like these containers a lot:

1. They're clear so I can see what's in them,
2. and they're small enough to fit in my new cabinet, which is small enough to fit in my kitchen.

I hope that these two things will help me incorporate our food storage into our daily meals more often.

When I first found out about them I bought some special metal "gripper" lids for the Rubbermaid containers to replace the plastic lids that came with them. The gripper lids make the containers air-tight and will keep out moisture, air (especially oxygen because of the oxygen-absorbing packets that I put inside them) and insects. The combination of the PETE containers with the gripper lids will also keep odors locked inside the container - no more freeze-dried strawberries absorbing the smell of dehydrated onions!

Speaking of insects - bugs are a pain in the neck. I had to throw out a bunch of mylar packets of quick oats this week because I hadn't sealed them properly and they were infested with tiny red bugs. This just about broke my heart. (I'm going back to cans 100%, and I've reserved the portable can sealer for the first week in September so that I can repackage what I've got in mylar pouches into cans.) The rubbermaid canisters with the gripper lids will not only keep bugs out, they will keep any bugs already in the food inside the container so that the infestation will not spread.

I cannot live with infestation!