Why My Food Saver is a Life Saver

This problem is one that just about every one who was born post plastic packaging can relate to.  When I went to squeeze some petroleum jelly out of the a tube the heat sealing on the back of the tube failed and I had gooey jelly leaking all over!  I was going to return it (it was almost brand new) but my crafty husband cleaned off the tube and resealed the back end of it with our vacuum sealer.

OK, so this is not life shattering "I can't believe it! I must run out and buy a vacuum sealer!" news but it did get me thinking.   I use my vacuum sealer every day and 90% of the time it is not to package things in the prescribed sealer bags.  I would go as far as to say that my sealer is the most important appliance in my home and I have a Kitchen Aid Mixer so that is saying a lot!  So if you will bear with me I am going to give you...

...my top 5 favourite uses for my FoodSaver sealer.

5. Quick meat marinade


If you vacuum seal meat with it's marinade it cuts the time needed to infuse the flavors!






 
4.  Keep apple slices from turning brown

No air, no oxidisation, no ugly brown apples!





3.  Re-packaging

My Freezer is full of items that I bought in bulk and downsized the packaging.  The funny thing is I am not going to say I save a ton of money by buying half a cow or 100 chickens in bulk and sealing them.  I do seal meat but that is not what I am talking about.  What I do is buy large cans of pizza sauce, (for about $4) with enough sauce for about 30 pizzas, and divide them into about 7 or 8 portions.  Each portion has three or four times as much sauce as one of the mini $1 cans of sauce you can buy at the grocery store.  I also do this with crushed and diced tomatoes, and pasta sauce.  The savings add up quickly!

2. Dry storage/ camping solution


These are almost endless but my best example is from a week long canoe trip I took with my husband.  I vacuum sealed an emergency kit with fire starter and some dry clothing that we could use in the event that our canoe capsized it rained every day and having some things that couldn't get wet was a life saver.  I also seal a lot of the emergency supplies we keep at home.

1.  Re-sealing non Food Saver bags

I reseal everything from chips to powdered sugar over and over again.  My personal favourite is cereal because I can start four or five boxes at the same time and they never go stale!  Because I reseal just about every thing that comes in a bag I never have to spend money on clips or containers to store things and I never have frozen vegetables escaping from the bags in the freezer or escaped pasta rolling around in my cupboards!