This entry was posted on Thursday, July 9th, 2009 at 2:24 pm and is filed under Canning, Food Storage, Money Saving Ideas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
What are the chances that you have empty mason jars sitting around somewhere? Perhaps they’re filling a box in the bottom of a cupboard or tucked away at the back of a shelf in the garage. Of course, they may not be all that inaccessible, but it’s not unusual for at least a few, odd jars to be in the home, available but unused.
They’re designed for canning purposes, of course, but if they’re not at the moment needed for canning, it is possible to make use of them for other food storage needs.
Consider, for example, that half consumed jar of peaches — or whatever other fruit or vegetable may be left over after having opened that jar of preserves. Likely, you will want to refrigerate them so that they might be saved for another meal on another day. Once the lid seal has been broken, however, the practicality of using your jars for that purpose diminishes – UNLESS – you are ready to make use of one simple adaptation.
Ball is now marketing plastic storage caps that are designed to be used on either wide mouth or regular mouth glass canning jars. Sold in sets of eight, these lids allow those preserving jars to be adapted to refrigerator storage.
It is a simple matter to grab one of those dishwasher safe, reusable, plastic storage caps; screw it onto the jar which is now containing leftovers, and store it and its contents conveniently away in the refrigerator. You have just eliminated the need to transfer the extra food into another glass or plastic container.
Those spare, empty jars could similarily be used for dry pack storage. Do you have packages of rice, cereal, or some other goods that you would like to put into storage, but hate the fact that they come packaged in non-rodent resistant cardboard boxes? Even if you are not particularly worried about mice or rats, you might want to consider the possibility of insect infestation, or water damage.
In these situations, glass jars would certainly provide you with much peace of mind. There are, of course, food storage containers that are available and that are desigend for those kinds of uses, but if you already have the preserving jars, this may just save you a little extra expense.
A Final Thought:
Before you discard the original packaging, you may want to save the package directions. Take a pair of scissors and simply cut them away from the box. These instructions could then be saved with the rice, or pasta, or whatever it might happen to be, in the storage jar.
That should avoid the “How do you make this stuff?” type of questions when it comes time to use it. You may know, but whoever is planning on doing the cooking, may not.