Perfectly Preserved Podcast
Want to learn to safely preserve food at home? Join Master Preservers Anna Cash and Jenny Gomes as they teach you all the ins and outs of canning, from water bath canning, to steam canning, to pressure canning. You’ll learn tested, up-to-date techniques that work for a modern, busy home. Each episode will cover a specific topic relevant to food preservation such as canning equipment, excellent recipe choices for both beginner and intermediate canners, and even other methods of food preservation such as dehydration, fermentation, and freeze drying. Friends and food preservation enthusiasts Anna and Jenny will guide you expertly and share laughs along the way.
Perfectly Preserved Podcast
How to Save Money and Plan Your Pantry in 2025
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Canning Supplies We Recommend
Welcome to the Perfectly Preserved Podcast. I'm your host Jenny Gomes. And I'm Anna Cash. Here we come together to bring you a podcast all about preserving food safely, easily, and dare I say, perfectly. At home. We are master food preservers moms wives, and we love talking about canning. ready to can like a master preserver. Let's get into today's episode.
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:we're gonna talk about how to store things properly and in different conditions. So I'm excited. Thank you so much for everyone who has left a review. If you haven't, go to that purple podcast icon or wherever you listen and leave us a review. It really helps new listeners find our show. Like we said in previous episodes, you can find us on YouTube as well this year, so that's exciting. I'm learning how to edit videos and download online. You can find Jenny at the Domestic Wildflower and me at Smart Home Canning on Instagram. You can find Jenny's book, the Pressure Canning Cookbook on Amazon or at your local bookstore. If you would like Jenny and I to come and speak at your event, we absolutely love talking about food preserving. We could geek out about it for hours. You can send us an email at Perfectly Preserved podcast@gmail.com. Let us know we're open to travel speaking opportunities and we love teaching. Okay, Jenny, let's dive into this episode. What's happening? What are we
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:Yeah. Okay. So we wanted to talk about how to plan your pantry and save money and manage. Imperfect or limited storage options because it's great. And we're gonna go over what the ideal storage conditions are for canned food and other preserved food. Because obviously that's one of the main reasons people seek out food preservation is because we wanna avoid food waste and thus save money. So it's great if we have these ideal situations, these perfectly cool cupboards, and. Great ways to store food, but we wanted to tackle, what do you do if you don't have that? And if you live in a place that just isn't super ideal for food storage. And we wanted to give some suggestions for people living in that kind of situation. And then just some tips for just general saving money on groceries and how we can store food all the foods, all the ways and how we try and approach that whole topic of saving money on. Groceries, which is just, it's a daunting time to be a grocery shopper. I think just generally speaking, because prices don't seem to be coming down and there may be more expenses related to your grocery bill. For better or worse, there it looks to me like it's gonna say hi or maybe go up. I hope I'm wrong, but anyway, we wanted to tackle that. Anna, do you wanna tell our listeners what is the ideal storage? Like, where should you be storing your canned food? If you have all the options available to you, where should you store your canned food, and how should they be stored?
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:So ideally you would want your canned items to be in a dark, cool place free from. Obviously a lot of humidity or mold, but if you have a downstairs basement, that's cool. That's where ideally you should store your canned foods. You wanna keep it out of direct sunlight, and you wanna keep it between, oh, I would say 50 degrees Fahrenheit. To 75 degrees or 80 degrees is really pushing it. But yeah, that really cool Temperature is perfect for canned foods.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:Great. I, for years stored my canned foods on an open shelf, a pantry shelf situation, but it wasn't, there was no doors to it. It was in my laundry room where the door had a big window in it, an old window that was a single pane, and the light damage and the warmth in the summer months was significant, easily noticeable. It was very clear that having those jars in the direct light and in a warm spot. Shortened, their shelf life degraded. The quality, they still were safely canned and the, my lids still were sealed and that all was fine, but it just really, it was obvious within a year or two this is terrible. This is not a good place to store the stuff. But because our house was still teeny tiny, that was my only option. And it just, you're gonna do what you gotta do. And I that, that's. We get it, but it is not a super great idea if you can avoid the heat and or the light. Hopefully both. But if you can cut down, what I should have done is I should have hung up a curtain. I should have hung a light blocking curtain either on the door or on the, probably on the shelves. I needed the light coming through so I could see to do my laundry, but I should have hung a curtain on the shelves'cause there was no doors. I should have done that years ago and I never did it. But. It does. It makes your peaches just feather apart into mush. It breaks down your cher. Even my cherries, that normally canned cherries can hold their shape pretty well. Those got soft. It just dis, just
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:Interesting.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:your softer. All your fruit's gonna be soft if you can. It dissolves things. Your green, your dly beans won't be as crisp. Your pickles get softer. It's the opposite of what you want. So if you can avoid. That do and do as I say, not as I did. And if you can hang a dark colored and if you can, a heavier fabric curtain to block out that direct light.'cause that will help a lot.
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:Oh, that's such a great insight because I feel our biggest failures can be our best teaching opportunities.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:Totally.
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:I think it's great that you are able to talk about that now and just say don't do what I did. I. I think that's great and I'm lucky I have a basement. Not everyone has basements. I actually received a text message this morning from a friend who moved from Utah to Florida where they don't have basements. They have high humidity and high heat, and she was just asking, how do I store food? What's the best way? What would you focus on Doing some food storage here? So maybe we could riff on that for a little
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:Yeah.
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:knowing what we know about ideal conditions, you really need to out your heat, the coolest place in your house, and also the Darkest place. So I recommended in closets
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:Yep.
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:and under beds.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:Yes.
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:Yeah, I know that's, not as cool or glamorous as what people might want in a storage space, but you do what you can. And a lot of people, I know a lot of our listeners live in an apartment building Apartments usually don't have a ton of storage, and so you have to get creative. I was telling Jenny before this episode that when I was growing up, it was recommended that people have a really good food storage from our church. They really recommended that people stock up on and. Flour and wheat and things like this. And so one of the things my mom did is she filled two five gallon food grade containers with, they weren't gamma lids at the time. They were the ones that you like, really have to work to get the lid off. She stacked those on top of each other, and she made a side table. She put a round of wood on top and then a tablecloth over it. And that's where we stored some wheat.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:Yeah.
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:there are definitely ways that you can use your food storage for interior design.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:That's, if you're short on storage and you don't have a garage or like a space that's out of sight, then it's gonna be inside. So you have to get creative with where you're gonna keep things. And I'm glad you mentioned the. Under couches or under bed you said? Under beds. I remember Marisa McClellan, the author of the Food and Jars blog and four or five very good cookbooks by the same name. She canned for years and years in a small apartment in Philadelphia, I think. And she would, I believe her canned jars on cookie sheets and slide them under her couch. And I thought the cookie sheets was such a good idea because if you're sliding on carpet or trying to access them. Okay, great. Those take up, they'll give you no height, right? You don't lose any height and just a handy way to access things. And Anna said under'cause heat rises. We don't wanna put things high up on a shelf if we can avoid it because heat rises. So underneath
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:Right.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:things or in a cupboard down low is a good idea because I think. A lot of people may think that the garage is the place to store things, and that's probably, I don't wanna say that's the worst place to store your canned food or food, but it has a lot of problems. And while I say garage, I wanna remind our listeners that a pressure canner should be stored if possible, in a place where the temperature doesn't swing widely. So a garage is not a great spot for. A pressure can or to be soared. Mine is inside in my closet, like under my tub of shoes, which is a terrible place. That's like not a real place, it's not a real kitchen storage place, but that is where I keep it because it's the same temperature all year long. It's in the box. So the garage is not a super great place for canned items because of the heat, temperature, heat, and the temperature swings, and it's not a great place for your pressure cleaner either.
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:Okay, so I hadn't even thought of that, Jenny. Why what? Why not a pressure canner in the garage with temperature fluctuations.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:It can make your gauge read incorrectly. And also the temperature changes can be problematic if you have a model that has a gasket, like a rubber seal if you have an All American, you don't have a rubber seal, but many other. Brands of pressure, canners have a gasket or a rubber kind of flange thing around the inside of the lid. And heat especially would, and potentially cold could cause that to become brittle over time. So the dial is the most
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:Great.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:reason. And then secondarily, the, and you don't want dust and mice or you don't want the garage dust. Some people's garages are really nice. So if you've got a nice one, that's great, but you still can't monitor the temperature in a garage the way you can inside or excuse me, not monitor, moderate. You want that to be stored where there's not the huge swings in temperature. Good question, Anna.
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:Yeah. No, it's a great point. I hadn't even thought about that. I luckily have this I store a lot of my canning supplies inside my house, but yeah, that's a great point. Okay, so then. We talked about canned goods. Let's talk about dry goods Bit, because obviously part of a pantry, we're gonna have some dry goods as well. What do you recommend for dry goods? How do you store yours, Jenny? And we'll go from there.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:As a canner, I always have jars available to me. So a canning jar is a useful tool for dry good storage. Use your funnel all day long to get your flour or sugar or coffee grounds or whatever into the jar.
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:flour.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:That said, the step beyond that can be incorporating a tool like the Mason Genie. Mason Genie was kindly kind enough to send both Anna and I a this, it's like a, what would you call it? A tool
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:Yeah.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:Sucks the air out of the canning jar and then seals the lid. So it's appropriate for dry good storage and we've used it not a lot yet because it, we just got them. So we'll probably have an episode all about that coming up. But there are several tools that a person could buy, like the Mason Genie that remove air from the jar, which keeps your food fresh for longer. The problem with storing dry goods and jars is they're small. But then the bigger the container, the more heavy it is. So I think you have to figure out like, is this gonna be high up on a shelf under the sink? Like where am I gonna move this? How will I access it? And it's hard because what we're asking To do is live like the pioneers in like we're saving, we're storing, we're homesteading. But some of us don't have the home structure that suits that. We don't have a seller, right? And it's not, you can't just dig one tomorrow. You don't have that infrastructure. So you have to do some thinking about where am I gonna store these dry goods, you can get plastic gamma lid containers that are pest proof and they are opaque so light doesn't get in, which is a plus. What can you add about storage for dry goods, Anna?
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:Yeah, I use the five gallon with gamma lid storage containers for both my flour and my sugar. That's something that I just have in my kitchen because I do a fair amount of cooking. With my business, I use ton of sugar. So I go through probably a 50 pound bag every month and a half maybe. I know it's insane. But yeah, I, like Jenny said, we got a Mason Genie from the company and so I've been tinkering with that. There's also a food saver has a mason jar attachment where you can suck air out of that. We haven't really tapped into Mylar bag storage. That's something that, I've seen a lot of people use. And you can use a Mylar bag with an oxygen absorber for, they come in all different sizes, but ideally it would be in sizes that you would use maybe, I don't know, a emergency situation, Freeze dried foods in there, you could do dehydrated foods. I'm, I haven't done a ton of Mylar bag. Saving. Have you used Mylar bags,
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:Never a friend of mine or I have two friends that have a freeze dryer, and I know they use the Mylar bags to store their freeze dried foods. And Mylar bags are like I mean like a Mylar balloon. So it's like that kind of tinfoil look. But it's not tinfoil at all. It's an opaque. Silver and black on the inside. Kind of crinkly. I guess it's a plastic, right? Is that what that is?
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:yeah.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:Yeah. So it's an interesting material. You don't,
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:I, it's got some metal in it, but
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:yeah, it's like an, it's a kind of a unique thing. You don't encounter that in your daily life other than Mylar balloons. But it keeps light from breaking down the food inside and you can use it for freeze dried food or just dried goods, dried food, dehydrated apple slices or anything you dehydrate in a dehydrator. But I haven't done it and I think it's because I have a chest freezer and I can, so I don't really have the occasion where I have a ton of dry. Good. I don't know, I just don't have the need for that right now,
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:sure. And I think too, one of the reasons I haven't dived into Mylar bag storage is that I use the five gallon buckets, and then I also, I. of the things that's on my list this year to get is actually a wheat grinder. I want a hand crank one, and then I also would love an electric one, for, and then I wanna get some wheat, like dry wheat. And there's different kinds of wheat that you use for different products, right? Like baked goods versus bread Or whatever,
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:I think that there's a lot of options, so you could maybe start with one let's say you got the Mason Genie. I think it's a very useful tool that sucks the air out of a canning jar. And it's great for being very thoughtful. If you bothered to buy, let's say I don't know, some good quality chocolate chips or you said you use your use for shredded coconut, right? Even those small amounts are worth saving and if you save them well then they will be good a long time in advance. So I think that is a shift from. I don't know, like the fast s the two thousands where things were cheap and we just consume and toss things out. Maybe that was like the vibe then it seems like it was,
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:Maybe that was.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:Just shifting that thinking from, and I'll just like twist the top and just keep it in the cupboard rather than putting it in the jar and sucking the air out and feeling it for later. I think that might. Be a really good step towards saving money on your grocery bill and preserving food for long term storage or longer term.
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:Yeah. And it's always good to think about as well, like the pests There, or the bugs. I know people don't wanna think about weevils, but there's almost always weevils that are in wheat. Flour. And if you don't take care and suck the air out or keep it in an airtight container, those can thrive and ruin a whole batch of flour or wheat that you purchase. And that's just money down the drain. Sure that you're taking care of your food and keeping it in airtight containers.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:Yeah. That's actually such an unsexy topic, but pests and rodents and, oh man, it's so important. We live, we have mice. Thank God, knock on everything wood. I don't have any in my house, but they're in my garage. They, it's like a constant thing with the chicken food. I gotta try and always be thinking about mice and ground squirrels and the chicken scene. That's a whole thing in itself. And we have really the ant
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:sure.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:just a little harmless ant it's. So crazy how quickly you can leave the house and then if you come home. This happened when I was making a, it was such, it was, I had such a good water keyer going, and I came home and the ants, it was like apocalyptic level, just devoured my whole water key for, and I was like
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:Oh no.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:in the down the drain that went, that was like two years ago. I gave up and I, they,
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:Oh.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:yeah. So it's like a real thing you have to think about, I guess is what I'm saying. So even if. Even if you don't want to, you still have to think about when you have a bulk of food or you're shopping, shopping bulk, buying large quantities, buying things when they're on sale, you have to think about pests. The more food you have available for them, the more likely they are. They're gonna try and get to your stuff. So
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:Yeah,
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:that's one thing that I'll never forget about the paraffin wax. Old, an old fashioned, outdated, not safe method of sealing jars is to dip the tops in paraffin wax. My grandmother said, no, we don't do that because it attracts mice and I have never forgotten it. I think about every time I see paraffin wax or sale in the canning section in the grocery store, that's disgusting and ineffective and I don't want anything that's attracting mice. Yeah. Especially with things that might attract
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:They are opportunistic.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:Yes. So even if you're, especially when you're shopping for. Sweet things, especially like sugar ants and other creepy crawlies will love that. Mice love anything that smells, has any kind of fragrance you gotta be thinking about that too. I wanted to say this a little bit off topic, but I don't wanna forget it. There are canning jars that are colored, so they're not opaque, right? There's, you can still see through them, but they are a color. And while I wouldn't. Encourage our listeners to go out and purchase them because they are more expensive. They're like clear pink or clear purple or clear blue. The blue ones are definitely trying to look old fashioned than they're farmhouse chic or whatever, and you might put your cotton balls in them, but they do have canning safe jars that are tinted. Okay. While I wouldn't necessarily go out and buy them brand new, they do block light and they have amber colored ones, which are definitely like. A darker brown, an opaque, darker brown, like a brown beer bottle color. And that would be the color you would choose. If you're like, okay, I'm canning. I can't block all the light because I have to store it in this garage or whatever area. Okay, though that is the jar you would choose. And maybe you'd go out and buy all brown jars. I wouldn't, I, that wouldn't be the worst idea. That would really prevent a lot of that light degradation. I should have mentioned that when I was talking about light earlier, but I forgot. So yeah. Anna, what? Take it away. What else could you add to this discussion?
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:no, that's a great point. That's a great point. And in fact, I would show you right behind me, these are jars that I have made for an upcoming market and it's just stressing me out that they're in my sunroom and light is getting to them. So I need to, I have a curtain over one side of my And I should probably just. Hang another curtain right over it because it does, it breaks down that fruit, it breaks down the cell walls of the fruit in your jars.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:It fade your color. Fade your color.
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:reminder, Jenny.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:Fade your color too.
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:track.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:Oh, fade. Your color. Just like your skin,
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:yeah.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:So you wanna try and avoid that if you can. What about, I wanted to say a little bit about meal planning. With the idea being not necessarily, I feel like my feed just accidentally has become like meal planning for weight loss. I, it must have lingered too long on someone's fitness post on accident. But meal planning for grocery shopping is a good way to think ahead and plan ahead in terms of buying things when they're on sale or buying things when they're seasonal. Anna, what can you say about encouraging or helping our listeners buy things seasonally or locally or both?
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:listeners? Yeah. For, I love this topic. I could talk about it. It's Empire. I could talk about it all day
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:yes.
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:But tapping into your local community and your local systems is one of the best to eat healthfully. I'm sure you all know this, but when you purchase commercially from a farm, say in the Midwest, or coming from California and you live in the middle of the country or you live in Alaska or whatever that produce is picked so early that. A lot of that good flavor that comes toward the end of the growing season isn't there. So not only does it not taste as good, it probably doesn't have as many nutrients as it could. Always encourage people to eat seasonally and try and eat as locally as possible. That way you know exactly what's going into your food, what the practices are that are going into the growing of your food. And that's not always going to be more expensive. A lot of people think, oh, it's local. It's gonna be more expensive. But if you have a good relationship with farmers or if you have a good relationship with growers, you can ask for what's called seconds and seconds is just like the misfits, the slightly bruised, the misshapen. Whereas commercial growers if you get your food from Cisco or US Foods or whatever, they have a grading scale of what say, like aroma, tomato should look like, and anything that's above or below what it looks like they reject. And If you're more open to some of those seconds or misfit looking produce, you can get a lot of really delicious, amazing food locally if you're open to that.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:That's a great point. We have several episodes that I feel like. We'll link in our show notes or we can just mention briefly. Now, that will help you guys if you're thinking about how do I save money? We have an episode all about dehydrating. So even if you don't have a dehydrator yet, you can use your oven. We have a episode all about steam canning. We have an episode about pressure canning. We have three or four episodes that are exclusively of blood pressure canning. And those are tools for you to use to preserve food when you can get them.
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:Preserve food,
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:Great ripeness at a good price. And that's the name of the game is being able to preserve them when you can access them so that they are preserved taste delicious from somewhere that you're excited about. We have an episode about freezing. We have several episodes, I think especially in season one that are very, like beginner 1 0 1. Best tips for getting started with those practices. Like the whole first 10 episodes of season one are just how to get started with canning and they're really great if you're new. And then I think we had one other episode about saving money that actually was a very top performer of season two, I think. Just how we think ahead and plan for saving money when it comes to. When it comes to food preservation, because there is just a, there, it's a very big idea. And if right now you're feeling like wow, things are very expensive and you're trying to stay on budget and it can be very overwhelming. So we would love for you guys to check out our podcast episodes. That will will help you, I think.
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:Yeah.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:What else do we have on our list, Anna, that will be helpful?
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:And I was just gonna say here in the Northern hemisphere, if you're listening it is almost summer growing season, and I. I would just say bit of advice, and it goes for all different kinds of food, not just what I'm gonna tell you about. So I have a friend that lives just south of me, about 30 minutes, and she and her brother grow corn They have a cute truck and they load up all of this corn. It's, she's called the corn lady. Her mom was the corn lady, now she is the corn
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:Cute.
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:she says every year. Toward the end of the year, we process however many bags of frozen corn we're going to eat. And on it I label Christmas or New Year's or Thanksgiving, and I think about what my year's gonna look like and how I'm going to eat corn at each of these events. And she packs it for that and she writes on
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:So smart.
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:that was so cute. And such a good idea to think about,
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:Yeah.
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:These traditional foods that you're eating and that you're known for. I have I have a friend that absolutely loves dilly beans and every time I go down to Southern Utah or I try to anyway, I bring a can of dilly beans because she loves them. And for us, green bean season is peak summer, it's usually the end of July, beginning of August. And I make sure that I make enough jars so that I can share with her. And I think it's really important that not only do you get things seasonally, but you also think about. Traditions and how Throughout the year and what kinds of foods you will actually eat. And Jenny and I have an episode I believe it's a full episode about canning and preserving what you'll actually eat.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:Right?
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:And that's something to really keep in mind as you start buying in bulk.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:Yes.
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:gonna use it?
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:Amen.
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:to eat it?
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:Yes.
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:not, don't waste your time, money, and effort. It's not worth it.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:So good that you're saying that, and I was thinking as you're talking about. About planning ahead and thinking, okay, what am I gonna do all year long? My husband and I just defrosted our chest freezer, which is such an epic chore because you have to put all the meat somewhere that's gonna be frozen, and it was such a good chore to look what is at the bottom of this freezer or what is on the far back shelf, the top little nook and cranny. If you are getting serious about food preservation this year and thinking about saving money, you need to take everything out and clean out what is junk, get rid of what you're not eating and not using, and really get a handle on what do I have, store all like with like store all the rice together, have all the flour together, have all the spices together so that you aren't overbuying or buying duplicates when you have something available that is aging, that needs to be consumed. The chest freezers are hard because it is such a chore to figure out what to do with the frozen stuff. But if you can do it, now spring cleaning time, springtime, do it now and then you can have a sense of, okay, this is the stuff I still have. Oh, I found a bag of popsicles. I bought, I don't even know what your, I bought these good pops, like the kind of nice good popsicles and my kids were like, yay, we have good pops.
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:My
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:They just got stuck underneath all the roasts on accident, yeah, now's a good time to take stock of what you have, because if you're getting serious and you're ramping up for the springtime and summer, you gotta take stock of what you have and get rid of what you don't need to be keeping around.
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:Oh, that's such great advice. I'm so glad you said that because a lot of times we just I feel like my my, whatever I. My freezer is where things go to die. Like I just put things in there that I don't want to think about. But you're right, like things in the bottom. I'm just like, what is this? I don't even know where I got this.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:Yeah.
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:What was I thinking when I bought this?
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:Oh, I'm a hunter's wife. I
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:great. Thanks for sharing that.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:I won't even say on the internet all the things I found in the bottom of the freezer as a hunter's wife, I was like, what animal is this? What am I supposed to do with this random, see some feathers? I dunno what your, the ambitions included here, Ruben. But yeah, it's a lot. It is really good to clean things out. That's the moral of the story. It's really good to clean things out.
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:I love that.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:it's very real. It's very real.
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:love that.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:you have still have wedding cake? Your wedding cake?
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:Okay. No,
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:I do,
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:do you.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:yes. Yeah, I have the top of my wedding cake,
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:wedding cake in your freezer.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:and it is,
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:Oh, that's sweet.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:I think we've been married 13 years. It's gonna be 14 this summer. Why am I keeping that? I couldn't make myself throw it out. I couldn't. I was like, we've just come this far.
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:Don't eat it. Don't eat it.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:I'm not gonna eat it now, but I was like, I'm not gonna have to just throw it down the hill.
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:W what are you gonna do with it,
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:I dunno. I dunno. I'm really sentimental, Sally. I have a very hard time doing things out. We also found a package of meat and my husband labeled it Gus's first retrieve our bird dogs first retrieve. And I was like, what are we gonna do with this?
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:Aw.
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:We're a bunch of snaps. We're a bunch of SAPs. That's terrible. Ah. Anyway, what,
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:cute
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:on that note, do as I say, not as I don't keep things for forever. So anyway, that is pantry
anna_4_04-30-2025_121709:your chest
jenny-gomes_4_04-30-2025_111709:Do clean out. We, I did throw out a ton of stuff. I did. I really did. I need to make a social media like a good reel. I've got in my mind of my two canning jars or my canning lid drawers that I really thought of. Anna very hard when I was cleaning things out. They're all sorted by size. They look very organized, looking good. So here's to planning our pantries and saving money the season and just kicking off a big summer of saving money and food preservation.
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