Because of the way rolls are wound the quilted side tends to curl down. Placing the embossed quilted side up in the sealer, may cause the end to curl up, which could catch on something. I usually date mark (felt tip) the smooth side and and have the embossed side face down. The impulse sealer I have is the exact same as the one sold on the eBay site. They have 6", 8", 12", and 15" ones, but I use the 12" model. Its even useful when you wish to reseal some other things that are packaged in plastic bags or heat sealable materials. The knob adjusts the heating time. It can be set to pulse for less than a second, all the way up to about 6-7 seconds. By that length of time, the material being sealed would really burn and melt. I also use it to fuse together the white garden fabrics I use to protect some plants from bugs and frosts. The white fabrics are spun, and can get fused together very easily. I was able to fuse a 25 foot sheet of the light weight fabric to another sheet 25 feet in size. I had to do it in 12" increments, but it held up well. The FS models have a built in over heat cut off, if the sealing is done repeatedly and the heater gets very hot after several seals. A lot of the things I use for kitchen have been bought over many years. Some of the things I have here belonged to my parents, as my mom and dad canned a lot when they were younger. My dad started the garden out back many years ago and loved blueberries, so I have a lot of blueberry bushes out there still growing over 35 years. I expanded on the garden, and added a big asparagus patch, horse radish, 5 apple trees, 3 different Asian pear trees, raspberries, peach/plum/apricot grafted tree, Pluot 4 fruit grafted, garlic chives, wild onions, and even a sour cherry and quince tree. There are sausage making supply companies that also sell generic bag rolls cheaper than FS. Sign up for the FS emails as they just had a 30% discount on a recent vertical model and rolls. I would have posted the link, but most of the time the special prices only show up if you go to the special web page from the email link they send you.

I had something similar to that device for marinading meat. It came with a shorter version of a hand pump and a squareish container with flat cover and a rubber seal in the center that would allow the hand pump to pull the vacuum. If the vacuum were done in the down stroke it would be much easier to pull a decent vacuum, but it will not pull a vacuum until you pull UP on the plunger, using pull force. For most people thats a bit more exercise than I would like. The electric pumps on the FS go down to about 25in mercury where 30 is usually the maxiumum for larger, more powerful vacuum pumps. My special external vacuum is a dual chamber diaphram type pump and all this is done by a double shaft motor and two pistons. The full strength 5% vinegar will eventually soften the tender peppers, but if stored, they usually last up to about a year before getting soft. I also add the Pickle Crisp to act as a buffer for all that acid when doing the peppers. The method I use has no heat of any kind applied to the jars or contents. Because of that, I don't think that diluting the 5% vinegar is a very good idea unless a heat processing were done after filling the jars, and that heat process is what will soften them. If I were to attempt to can them using a conventional pickling recipe, the end result would be all green mush. Sweet cherry peppers are also a favorite of mine, and are very hard to find pickled in jars. I grow them here as well, but have not tried the vacuum method on them yet. Marinades work very fast to tenderize things if they have acid in them. Even soy sauce marinades can make mush out of beef if left soaking in it for too long. Simple brining marinades like salt, sugar, a little flaver and a good soak in a vacuum for about 2-4 hours will work nicely. The thicker the meat, the longer it should soak. One of my favorites on the grill in summertime is a marinade made of lime juice and a few other herbs. Chicken breasts are marinaded in it for about 30-60 minutes and they come out really tender. Red wine vinegar is OK as a marinade, but again, because of the high acid, a very short soaking is needed. I don't know what a potato would do in a red wine vinegar, but must assume it would turn dark and be like a potato salad without the added dressings.

I've actually had a couple of sealed bags, out of hundreds, that had air leak in over time from a failed seal. The only result though was some freezer minor burn. I modified my method to try to get a more reliable seal. I used to pop the lid of the FoodSaver open as soon as the sealing light turned off, but now I count to 5 before opening the FoodSaver to let the seal cool for a moment. I think it helps, but who knows. On reusing bags. If the seal area is clean then you can seal it. For dry goods, or things like cheese, it's easy to make the bags over length, then when you cut the top off to open, you have enough area left to reseal. I don't bother reusing the bags once they're empty since mine would usually require a a pretty good cleaning, and it's not worth it to me. But speaking of cheese, I probably save the cost of the bags by the amount of cheese that doesn't spoil anymore in my fridge. I always buy 2LB vacuum packed cheese with a marked shelf life around 6 months, and then cut it into thirds. I used to keep them in ziplock bags, or wrap in plastic wrap, but the mold would start in a couple weeks at best. Now I take the 1/3 block chunks with the exposed ends and seal in a vacuum bag. They seem to last as long as the original 2LB block. One last point, I have run across a roll of bags that the FoodSaver would have a hard time pumping the air out. The bags have a textured pattern to them that allows airflow out of the bag even when pressed in the sealing process. I must have gotten some bags that were too flat. As I remember, this was more of a problem when I used some cheaper brand of bags. I do keep an eye out for sales on FoodSaver bags.

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