Considering the price of food today, it is ridiculous to let it spoil. It is like throwing your money in the garbage! If you are like me, you have a lot of good intentions when it comes to the food you buy.
Such as:
You buy a family sized package of pork chops, thinking how many meals you are going to make with all that meat and when you get home from the store, in a rush as always, you just toss it in the freezer. Then when you want to make porkchops for dinner, you go to the freezer, only to see six porkchops frozen together in a big lump. Now you know if you thaw them all, the ones you don't cook will probably spoil before you decide to have them again for dinner, so you just leave them in the freezer and have spaghetti instead.
This same scenario is played again and again over the next few months until that package of porkchop is darkened and dried up with freezer burn. With regret, you take it out of the freezer and throw it in the trash.
You know this has happened to you, it has happened to all of us! I cannot count the number of times I have bought large portions, intending to save money by meal planning, only to end up thowing it out. It either spoils or gets lost in the freezer.
The day I decided to change this pattern of behavior was the day I cleaned out my chest freezer when we were preparing to move. I just could not believe the amount of freezer burned meat and other items that were in the bottom of that freezer. The food that I ended up throwing out could have fed us for a month!. I said right then and there, no more!!!
After much research and talking to friends, I decided to buy a Foodsaver V4400 Vacuum Sealer.
It is their middle of the road sealing machine, not the top end or low end. I had recently had a dozen meat chickens butchered (we moved out to the country) and I thought this would be a great time to try out our Foodsaver. With only two of us in the house, those 12 chickens would be in the freezer for a long time and I did not want them freezer burned.
My husband and I sat down and read the directions and found them very clear and easy to understand. We grouped the chicken pieces how we wanted to freeze them and we were off! We were both surprised how quick and easy it was to package all that chicken. While we were at it, we decided to package up some green beans that I had picked and cleaned the day before. They came out beautifully. Even after packaging all that, we still did not use up all the bags that came with the machine when we bought it. We were impressed!
How to Use a Foodsaver Video
In case you are thinking that you only need a vacuum sealer if you raise your own chickens and garden, nothing could be further from the truth. We also use it for cheese, lunch meat, fruit and many other things that we buy at the grocery store. It cuts way down on food spoilage. A block of cheese that is vacuum sealed will not mold for weeks if stored properly. You can also vacuum seal all kinds of leftovers, from steak to Sweet and Sour Pork. It will lengthen the shelf life of just about anything in the refrigerator.
As many bags as they did give us with the machine, they did eventually run out. To buy more, I took a look on Amazon, and found the Foodsaver bags to be pretty pricey. However, there are perfectly good bags of other brands that work well and are less expensive. The kind I use and like best are Reli Vacuum Sealer Bags. You get 4 rolls of 8" wide x 50 feet long, so they can be cut to any size.
