It Does Work!

 

I have been working to reduce food waste in my house. First, to reduce our carbon footprint, and secondly, to save money. I don't know about you, but groceries are a huge part of our budget and getting more expensive by the day. 

I have had the ad pop up several times showing a vacuum sealer for mason jars. The ad asserts food stored in mason jars will last longer, meaning you throw away less food.

I have such a vacuum sealer. Granted, it is one of the less expensive models. If I recall, it was about $30 a year ago. When I got it, I was having difficulty getting a good seal, so it has been sitting on the shelf. I decided to pull it out and try again.

I tested it on cherries and spinach. I had both for a week before vacuum sealing. The spinach was already showing some signs of spoiling, so I pulled out all of the bad leaves and rinsed/dried what remained. The cherries were fine in the crisper drawer. In the photo to the left you see the food 2 weeks later. By now, the spinach should be a pile of goo and the cherries moldy. Both are perfectly fine. I have opened the spinach a couple of times to pull out some leaves for mixing into my omelets and sandwiches, and then resealed (be careful breaking the seal or you may need to use a new lid).

My vacuum sealer does a great job on the wide-mouthed mason jars. I still have problems with the small-mouthed jars with getting a good seal. I just do it over until I get a seal, which usually takes 3 or 4 attempts. A different model might do better.

Overall, I see this as a good way to preserve fresh food longer. I was using mason jars to store rice, beans, lentils, and pasta already, but I wasn't vacuum sealing. I will be doing that next to see if it improves the storage life. I noticed this week my brown rice was clumping, so perhaps this will help keep the moisture out.

It wouldn't take long to recoup an investment in a sealer. Cherries are running almost $9/lb and spinach, almost $2/bunch. More if you are buying organic. Give it a try.

Product Review: Gorilla Silicone Storage Bags

You all know I have been on the reduce waste, especially plastic waste, kick for a while.

A while back I bought a set of glass storage containers, which had silicone seals. I thought to myself, is silicone really any better than "regular" plastic? The answer is "Yes." Plastic is made from oil; silicone is made of silicon (a naturally occurring element), oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen. However, it does take a lot of heat to extract silicon from quartz, so there is still some fossil fuel used there.

Silicone is less toxic than plastic, a great thing when storing food. And you can wash and reuse the silicone many times.

I have been debating for a while buying some silicone storage bags. They are pretty pricy. But I finally worked up the nerve to order a set of Gorilla Sandwich Storage Bags from Amazon to try out. As you can see, they are not cheap. With the coupon applied and Amazon Prime, they come to about $4 each, so they had better last a long time.

Aside from the cost, they are great. I have been using them for leftovers. A small bag holds 4 blueberry muffins, 4-5 oatmeal pancakes, or two large packages of blueberries, which I froze. The slide closures were a little stiff the first time I used them, but they slide on and off easily after that. The bags are heavy duty and the slides are also sturdy.

My only complaint? Each bag is wrapped in plastic and then all of them are put together and wrapped in plastic again. Getting rid of plastic is why I bought these in the first place. I plan to make a comment to the manufacturer and see if they can change that.

The bags came through the dishwasher fine and are ready to go again. I plan to buy some more at some point.