Just got an email from Food Saver. This time its for a canister assortment priced at 60% lower than original. They request teh following code in order to get teh big disount- USE CODE: S9FEAAA AT CHECKOUT THe original price was $65.99 and is now on sale at $19.99 PLUS fee shipping! Not a bad deal for all these cansiter sizes. In the bundle is also a rectangular canister and a food grater that sits on top of it. The offer also includes two 11 inch bag rolls, 1.5, 2.5 and 3.25 quart sized canisters, along with three 25 ounce leftover canisters.

Still looking. My daughter's inlaws have one of a forest scene where a deer or rabbit or something appears then disappears. This is honestly, more to my liking - just not a big H.Potter fan, I know that's heresy to some, but I'll pass it along to my daughter who is - it does sound cute. She'll ask but the inlaws probably don't know who put the aforementioned wildlife screen saver on their computer as they're not very computer savy, she said.

On the subject of oxygen absorbers..... I used a FoodSaver a couple decades for home food storage before being introduced to oxygen absorbers, but I do have oxygen absorbers and occasionally use them for dry packing instead of using my FoodSaver, but I prefer the FoodSaver. You can also use them together. Add an oxygen absorber AND vacuum seal the jar, or add an oxygen absorber to a mylar bag and use your FoodSaver to seal a mylar bag for long-term storage. There are food storage books like "Dinner Is In The Jar" by Kathy Clark or "The Gourmet Food Storage Handbook" by Stephanie Petersen (aka Chef Tess Bakeresse - she has lots of videos so check out her web site), using canning jars or mylar bags for making a whole meal and vacuum-sealing the jars using either an oxygen absorber or FoodSaver. Using these recipes you can quickly make 30, 60, or 90 days worth of meals. Chef Tess Bakeresse has recipes for individual size meals that work great for hubby to take to work in his lunch. Set up an assembly line with freeze-dried food, fill jars, pop in an oxygen absorber, put on the lid and ring and you've got your own "convenience" foods ready for storage. I would never suggest oxygen absorbers over a FoodSaver because you get so many more uses out of the FoodSaver. I use a lot of bags, especially for frozen foods. I have many of my silver serving pieces vacuum-sealed in FoodSaver bags so they never tarnish. I use the double-bag trick mentioned above. I'll portion things in inexpensive fold-top sandwich bags, quick freeze them, then repack them into a FoodSaver bag. I got a free box of Ziploc Perfect Portions bags and love them for using as the inside bag. I freeze Sloppy Joe mixture, pasta sauce, soup, stew, chili, the meat mixture for Stroganoff, homemade applesauce, etc. in plastic storage containers. I use containers that are for 1 or 2 servings. When completely frozen, pop them out of the containers. Stack the "cubes" into a FoodSaver bag and seal shut. Now all your plastic containers can be used for something else. But back to oxygen absorbers. They come in different sizes to accommodate different size containers or volume of food. For a quart jar use a 100cc oxygen absorber in the top of each jar. They cost about 1-cent per packet for the 100cc size (prices vary, so do the math) and are NOT reusable. There are charts available for how many oxygen absorbers are required for different volumes of food if you do a search on the subject. For more information check out the link below. When it comes to home food storage, the LDS Church has it covered. Information about using oxygen absorbers is readily available on-line. -Grainlady Here is a link that might be useful: Longer-Term Food Supply

Barb -- Even as an instructor, I've always found home canning to be an expensive method for food preservation if you have to purchase the food, and especially if you have to purchase canning equipment. In the home canning class I teach, we do cost analysis charts so people get a better idea of the true cost. Not to mention the hours of food preparation it takes from garden to the table. I used to break down the cost of utilities, but it changes periodically, and now there isn't just one cost, it varies throughout the day, so I don't bother with that anymore. It's not worth my time and trouble to plant, care for, harvest, and process 8-10 pints of pickled beets (about the average we would use in a year) when I can purchase them for 67-cents per can. That's one of the few commercially canned foods I buy. It's expensive for the cost of the utilities to process home canning, and for the extra energy to cool your home with an air conditioner while you process it. Do you have the kind of stove you can do home canning ON? Are your burners large enough (size and B.T.U. out-put) for the size of canner you are using? For a LOT of reasons, freezing or dehydration is a less-expensive choice for home food preservation. I also believe unless you have access to fresh-picked produce in the amounts it takes to fill a canner, you are probably wasting your time AND money because it means your home canned food won't have much in the way of nutrients after the delay from picking until it's canned if you have to wait several days to get the large amounts you need. It definitely doesn't pay to only fill a canner with a few pints/quarts when it takes nearly the same amount of energy to process a canner that is full. I also think most home canned foods are inferior when it comes to nutrition due to the lag time from harvest to processing, as well as from the heat processing, and how long and under what conditions they are stored in. And not everyone likes to eat home canned food.... Most of my friends and most of my students now can a favorite family recipe or two and jam/jelly/apple butter for gift-giving. Dehydrating takes very little energy, other than what it takes for blanching (but not everything requires blanching). I place my dehydrator in the basement where the heat it produces dissipates quickly. The exception is onions, which I do in the garage because of the smell. Kale can get a bit smelly, too. Dehydrated foods takes up less space than canning. It's amazing how many dried apple slices or dried tomato slices you can stuff into a canning jar!!! The FoodSaver product you are considering is fine for what it's designed for, but I think you would be happier with one of the full-size units which are more expensive. I have one of those small units and rarely use it (purchased it at Tuesday Morning for $19 several years ago), while I use the regular one many times each day (and have been using them since 1986). I'm into home food storage and have a whole room in the basement filled with vacuum-sealed dry goods. The FoodSaver is the center of my long-term storage, so it's a must-have for me. I have a new one, still in the box, I purchased on sale, ready to go if the current one quits. My entire freezer is organized with vacuum-sealed items, because they last longer in the freezer. No more freezer-burned food! I can pull out a plastic storage basket and flip through it for vacuum-sealed fruits or vegetables, all in a single layer in the bags. Cut the bag open, remove the amount needed, and reseal the bag and put it back in the basket in the freezer. I freeze soup/stew/chili in serving sizes. Pop it out of the freezer container, stack the "cubes" and vacuum-seal them a FoodSaver bag. Take out what I need and reseal the bag. I have all our breakfast meat in serving amounts and vacuum-sealed. I divide bulk amounts of chicken, and other meat products, into several bags and vacuum-seal it - both raw and pre-cooked. My pantry shelf is lined with foods in canning jars of various sizes. Instead of standing them up-right on the shelves two and three deep, and having to move them to see what's in the back, I lay the jars down on their side with the lid to the front. I have my shelves adjusted so they are the distance apart of one 1/2-gallon jar space (which is the largest jar I use). I spray painted the lids with chalk board paint, and I use a chalk board pencil or liquid chalk board markers (in fun electric colors) to mark the chalkboard lids. Some jars are covered with plastic Ball jar lids and you can write on them with liquid chalk markers. Not all of these are vacuum-sealed, but many are (especially those that contain freeze-dried foods). So my pantry is lined with canning jars filled with dry gluten-free pasta, dried and freeze-dried fruits and vegetables, baking aids like cacao nibs, chocolate chips (several kinds and sizes), chia seeds, palm sugar, arrowroot, whole grains and homemade cereal products, crispy nuts (soaked and dehydrated), pinto bean flakes, dried parsley..... And even more in the food storage room. You will have to determine whether a FoodSaver will meet your food storage needs and goals. -Grainlady