Pantry Purge: How to clean the pantry to save money

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• 20:47 (Cont.) Pantry Purge: How to clean the pantry to save money

Transcript

0:01

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.

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 0:23

Welcome back to another episode of the Perfectly Preserved podcast. I am your host Jenny, with my co-host Anna, and we are master food preservers, and this is season three. We are so excited to be back with another episode that is going to be super helpful and actionable for you guys. today we are gonna talk about how you can clean out your pantries to avoid food waste, save money, and really get ready for a productive season of food preservation ahead. First of all though, a few housekeeping items. Thank you so much for everyone who's left a review. We just had such a good string of really beautiful reviews that were just so lovely. Anna and I love to share them on social media and thank you that way. But if you haven't left a review, go to the purple podcast icon where or wherever you listen and leave us a review. It really helps new listeners find the show. This is our first season that we will be on YouTube search Perfectly Preserve podcast on YouTube, and then you can watch us do this podcast and get your information that way. If you love video, be sure to subscribe there. Anna's doing an awesome job of editing video and editing this podcast so big. Shout out to her. Be sure that you're following us on Instagram. I am at the domestic Wildflower and Anna is at Smart Home Canning. Ask your local bookstore or find it on Amazon. Find my book, the Pressure Canning Cookbook. And if you are interested in having Anna and I speak at your event, we are very interested in. Speaking at your class, traveling and we love teaching live classes. Email Perfectly Preserve podcast@gmail.com. Okay, Anna, let's dive into today's episode.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 2:06

Hooray. Okay. So I don't know about you guys, but I tend to overbuy when it comes to groceries and I find myself looking in my pantry or my freezer and just wondering, why did I buy that? What was that for? And maybe not using it. Also, one of the most important things for me as an Artisan Jam producer is freezing Fruit in order to extend the life and season of the harvest. And so when I look in my freezer now, I still have bags of cherries or apricots, blackberries, things that I can use now for jams and jellies because. After Christmas, I usually take a little bit of a break'cause I'm really tired and a lot of that frozen fruit just kinda sits there waiting for me to use it. And so it's spring it's time to clean out that freezer and prepare for the upcoming season. I have about a month before. I would say, yeah, about a month before cherries and apricots come into season where I live. And so now is the time to clean out my freezer. And Jenny and I were About cleaning out our deep freezers and figuring out what to do with all of that. Jenny, are you like me? Do you have tons of stuff in your freezer that you need to go through?

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 3:27

Great question. So that's the phase that I am in, just both in life and the time of the year in terms of deep cleaning. And deep figuring out what is there, what's still good, what do I do with excess, and just taking stock. That I think something that everyone might need a nudge to do is defrosting your freezer. If you have a freezer that needs to be defrosted, it's so awful to do, but just make yourself do it. It is great because it gives you a little bit more storage space if you get rid of that big hunk of ice that's growing on the side, and then it forces you to look and see exactly what you still have relabel. so the phase that I'm in right now is the deep. decluttering, the defrosting of the freezer. And I think that if you need a nudge to do it, this is your sign. It's a horrible chore, but it's really valuable, I think, to take everything out and figure out what it is that you have, what you don't have, and probably toss some things that maybe are super freezer burnt or. Realize, hey, I need to work up this fruit or do something with this particular piece of meat, whatever the case may be. It just forces you to face all the decisions, all the food purchase decisions you've made. And then once you're freezers, you frosted a good heavy duty clean on the inside. And then once you're putting things back in, that's your opportunity to reorganize. So things are like with so like I buy my butter in bulk when I drive across the border into Oregon and buy like I'll get a flat of butter at a bulk food store or whatever, usually Costco. But I'll buy a lot of butter all at once and then, make sure all the butter is together so I know exactly how much butter there really is out there. And I just, it's a terrible chore and it's such a nuisance, but it is so valuable because you end up having a really good sense of what you have. And what you don't have. So that's what I've been working on and I'm really glad that we're doing it because it forces you to figure out what it is that you've been using and what you can be sure to buy more of. Or if you're like, wow, I don't actually cook a whole lot of lamb, or we don't, we haven't gone through this thing, then that will inform your decisions going forward.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 5:42

Okay, so as an adult, anytime, I'm like, I have never defrosted.

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 5:48

What?

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 5:49

What does that entail? Like you take everything out. I never have, I don't know. I just never have.

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 5:55

What is, I'm not judging.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 5:56

if my freezer is just so full of food

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 6:00

No.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 6:01

Doesn't get a giant block of ice.

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 6:03

You probably have better appliances than I have, and you probably have a, like you wouldn't put an indoor refrigerator or freezer outside in a garage, which is so common where I live, like I guess it makes me sound like I'm a hillbilly.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 6:18

Oh, I do that.

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 6:20

Why do you not get a big block of ice?

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 6:22

that's where my freezers are.

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 6:24

I don't know what this means. Our air's pretty dry here too.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 6:27

my.

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 6:29

Mean?

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 6:29

know. We will have to do some

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 6:31

Oh,

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 6:31

but I got an upright freezer For freezing all of the fruit from the summer for my big Christmas market. And I've noticed that there is like definitely ice on the shelves in there. but I've never taken everything out and unplugged it. Is that what you do? And then

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 6:50

Yeah.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 6:50

just put a towel down? What do you

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 6:52

I haven't done it half as often as I should have because it is a huge chore. The bigger the freezer, obviously the bigger chore it is. So the idea with defrosting a freezer is you take everything out and unplug it. So all the built up ice melts, then you soak up the moisture probably with a towel. A chest freezer has a little drain on the bottom. And as we found out, it's not helpful if your floor isn't even, and thus the drain is on the uphill side. In our situation, just literally this week, we were like, wow, that's a lot of liquid and we can't drain it because the garage floor's not flat anyway. You just soak it up with bath towels and go on about your life. But the defrost is definitely. Just this big chore because you have all this stuff that you have to keep cold and presumably you don't have other empty freezers to put them in. So it's ideal if it's at a time of your shopping schedule where you're running low on meat or you haven't stocked up on a lot of things. So late winter or spring is probably a good time to do it.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 7:54

Okay.

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 7:55

Take everything out if you have your family's ice chest or you like, let's say you have a neighbor or a friend or a sister nearby, you can go put your food in their freezer for a little while. Like we had to haul my stuff up to my mom's freezer. And then just fill up other freezers in our house. Get it defrosted clean, probably with the strongest cleaning agent you feel comfortable using. And then dry and then plug back in. Then put all your food back in. So it's not a fun process, but it frees up space if you have a block of ice and it forces you to look at every single thing you had in there. We have a big chest freezer. We bought it years ago because my husband went, he had a tag to get a moose in Alaska and I thought we better get a freezer'cause you're gonna come home with all this meat. And the joke was on me because he didn't get a moose that year.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 8:43

Yeah.

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 8:44

But we, that's how big the freezer is. That's life, right? That's hunting. But yeah. So here's your sign,

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 8:50

I know people that have tons of chest freezers.

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 8:53

Right?

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 8:54

I have friends with tons of chest freezers, maybe three or four and they use it for hunting and all of that. But I have one chest freezer that's small and then a bigger upright freezer that I use just for my business. Fruit and the occasional like bags and packages of salmon that I bring

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 9:13

Right.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 9:14

And that's something that my family did every year. whatever you haven't eaten over the winter, then you can it and used canned salmon throughout that year. And the fresh salmon you get, that's what you eat fresh and from your freezer.

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 9:27

So

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 9:28

that's

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 9:29

it's a big chore, but it's really good because it cleans out what you need to eat up, right?

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 9:34

Yeah. that we've talked about freezers,

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 9:38

Yeah it's just like the meal planning before the meal planning, but now that we've talked about freezers, Anna, what's next?

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 9:43

So let's talk about our pantries. I have a small little pullout pantry in my My kitchen is very small, but downstairs I have a storage room and that's where I put most of my canned stuff, And it's a good time to go through those as well. And I was just talking with Jenny that. This would be a perfect example of a time when you could look through your pantry and say, I've not eaten this risoni. Could I donate it to a pantry, Church affiliated group that distributes food for underserved communities? And I think that's a really great thing to think about this time of year, either eating it or donating it if it's within the expiration dates.

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 10:24

And it's awful to feel like you have to make a mess of your house when you're probably trying to do the opposite, but taking everything off the shelf. Forces you to assess what you really do have and put things back in categories. We have a great article by the cooperative Extension Illinois, and they suggest to organize your pantry, put items by category like pastas together, grains together, and beans together. And then, I would say Anna and I are probably not necessarily pro. Store-bought organizers, but sometimes they can be really helpful in terms of getting a riser. So like little jars of things can be visible from the back and it's hard to say what might be most useful for you. Maybe that cupboard really needs a lazy Susan and you can score one at a thrift store because just being able to see what you have can make a difference in. Overbuying or just using up what you already have. And I think when it's time for this season, right? Usually for me personally, it aligns with Lent. And for my Lent observance, I usually try and give up extra spending. So I combine the ideas of like spring cleaning and then like spiritual readiness just into one thing where I'm just trying to eat up the food we have in the house, trying to clean out what, get rid of the things I don't need and donate what I don't need and just not shopping.'cause it's oh, I'm at the grocery store and that's on sale and that looks good and that would be good for dinner and that like little dopamine shopping. I try and give that up in the springtime and trying to just use up the things that we have and that's, we happen to have a lot of rice, so that's what we're having for dinner. Even if it's not like everyone's favorite or the most exciting. Meal, but that's how I approach it.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 12:08

I love that idea. Even though I'm not Catholic, I love the idea of Lent and trying to do something. Is the premise behind Lent that you give up something? Or what is the premise behind Lent?

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 12:20

I wanna say that anyone can practice lentin if you don't wanna align yourself with. Any particular religious affiliation, then just call it like a month of spring cleaning or 40 days of spring cleaning, because it is so much better than a weekend. It is so much harder and challenges are really good for us. As a progressive Catholic person, the idea with Lent is to give up something in order to ready yourself for Easter. And usually like with little kids, it's okay, we're gonna have no dessert for they usually choose something little like that or adopting. An attitude of prayer or like adding in something to your life, but generally, most people give up something for Lent. For adults, a lot of times it's like giving up scrolling or screens or social media, giving up alcohol, giving up red meat people choose. A lot of things to abstain from. And I started doing this several years ago, I felt like I was doing a lot of dopamine shopping in terms of oh, that looks like it'd be fun to make, or the kids might like that for their lunches just grocery shopping from this not place of practical, but more like I'm not a frivolous person, but I just feel like I was starting to dopamine shop. I'm not sure how else to describe that. So during this season of springtime, I try really hard to combine the observance of giving up with the practical sense. It's really good to eat up the food you already have in your house. And I combine the two into one. Long answer. Sorry.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 13:43

Yeah. No, I love that. I think for those of us that love food and love cooking, Is very much a thing. And that's what I meant when I said, when I looked in my cupboard and I was like, why did I buy capers? What is the point of that?

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 13:57

What was I?

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 13:58

For that? Yeah. What was that? But yesterday I looked in my pantry and I had gotten dry red beans on sale. I had two pounds and I kept thinking, oh yeah, I'll use that in a recipe. But like for me, I don't use dry beans very often, have them soaking right To can a bunch of dry red beans. I'm not canning dry. Like you

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 14:21

Yeah.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 14:22

definitely want to soak them or cook them a little bit before you do that. But yeah, just making things available that is front of mind. You're thinking Going to eat in the future. I love thinking about that and I like that you pair it with spring cleaning or lent or whatever.

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 14:39

Yeah. You can package it, however works for you, I think. But it's fine and dandy to clean for a weekend. But if you put yourself, that's what I think is the valuable about the Lent idea, is if you give yourself like every day of June, I'm gonna be thoughtful about this. I'm not a person who has ever been a budget person. I'm not really a number focused person. I'm more of like a big picture person. However, something that has been valuable for me is writing down what I spend on groceries, like after I go to the grocery store. For us, let's say all of June, I'll do it, write down what I spent on groceries on that date, and then the next time I go to the grocery store it's okay, I've already spent this much and I'll have a number in my mind. I'm like, I'm gonna try and get it under this many dollars for this month and just really try and challenge myself, which is different than a budget. It's more like I just set it up like that because to me it almost seems like a competition, and to me personally, that's. I feel more moti or it's like more fun or more motivating or more gamified or somehow, I don't know. I don't know how fun it is, but that's how it makes sense in my brain. So maybe if someone out there is not really a budget person or doesn't like, like keeping track like that, it's not even like keeping track. It's just okay, I'm gonna try and keep it under this big number, or let's see how low I can go or how long I could wait in between the dates. That's the other part of it. I like to see how long can I go without going to the store. That's just, we gotta try and get ourselves to do the hard things, but

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 16:07

And I do feel like we're very lucky in

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 16:10

yeah.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 16:10

have pantries that we can go through out what exactly we're eating and not eating. But it does keep it front of mind for me anyway, just deciding I'm not, we haven't really been eating a lot of To remember that the next time I go to the grocery store that I don't need to stock up on. I dunno. Shredded wheat

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 16:30

This article from Illinois State Extension also had good, quick tips for the refrigerator, which I thought. I just got a new refrigerator, the first new refrigerator of my life, and I thought this would be helpful for some of our listeners. So crisper drawers are great for produce, which probably most of you know, and it's great for extending the life of your produce. The refrigerator drawer is the warmest part of the refrigerator, and you should store items that are least likely to spoil in the door. Condiments and beverages are a great choice. Bottom shelf is the best place to store any raw meat fish in case your package leaks. And then it said that if you have a mini fridge, the back of the fridge is the and gets warmer closer to the door. So avoid storing produce toward the back, or it may freeze, which in my experience, that has been a hundred percent the case. I just thought that was useful.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 17:24

Yeah. That's a great tip. I have noticed that as well, that. We have two little refrigerators out in our rental and people are always like, oh, the lettuce I bought is frozen near the back. And I'm like, oh yeah, I should have mentioned

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 17:40

yeah.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 17:41

that you should store your produce a little closer to the front of the door.

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 17:45

And it's hard. And of course if it's like a newer and better appliance, then you'll have less likelihood of that happening. But we can't always just like magically get the new appliance. So it's good to know those types of details. So the other thing with springtime is the seasonality and the wonderful things that are available for us to eat or preserve or think about in the springtime. And Anna, tell us what you're canning right now.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 18:11

Oh, okay. So for those of you that can't see those on the podcast, that can't see the video, I'm sitting right next to a giant, gorgeous basket of lilacs and some jars that are filled with lilac blooms. I am making lilac jelly. Lilac syrup, and then I'm also drying lilac blooms. Lilac are the blooms are 100% edible and so the dried lilac you can put in baked goods or on top of a cake. I thought it would be so cute to create the lilac lovers bundle for my business. And so I've been making jelly and like I said, the dried lilac sugar and lilac blooms.

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 18:53

How are you doing? The blooms. how are you doing?

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 18:55

You mean drying

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 18:56

Yeah.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 18:57

Oh yeah. So I have a dehydrator and I have I think I wanna say 10 trays on my dehydrator. And. put'em on the trays and they take usually about like 12 hours at 95 degrees Fahrenheit. flowers, you have to be very gentle with dehydrating them. You can also lay them out on parchment, but like to preserve, I don't know the color and the shape, and I feel like a really heat Tray is the place to do that.

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 19:32

That's amazing. That's the tip I needed to hear.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 19:35

what do you dry flowers,

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 19:37

I've never done it. But my daughter is a super enthusiastic little baker. She's 13. And she loves baking. Beautiful and complicated and difficult baked things like, our favorite show is the Great British Baking Show, so I definitely need to dry her some flowers. We need to do that because I didn't even think of doing that. That's such a seasonally delightful thing to do.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 20:38

Yeah. And in our first episode of the Perfectly Preserved podcast of season three, we did talk about the Meghan Markle Netflix special documentary thing, and she sprinkles little dried flowers over everything. It's oh, it just needs a little bit of whimsy. And so there's blends that you can get off Etsy or Amazon from people drying flowers. And I was like, huh, I think I could do that. I could literally dry flowers people could use on their edible goods. So that's what I'm doing right now. I'm doing lilac, but then I think I will also do calendula or, I don't know. I need to think about it, but. Those are just some of the flowers that I'm doing right now.

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 21:24

That sounds awesome.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 21:25

daughter would love it.

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 21:27

She would, she really would, and I need to probably do that because I think that's, think of that for our listeners. If you don't know, dehydrating is probably one of the least labor intensive food preservation tasks. Wouldn't you agree, Anna?

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 21:42

Yeah, it's really easy. For this project it is a little bit more time consuming because I do have to take the blooms off of the stems, and sometimes if the flowers are really small, it can be time consuming. But other things like apricots, dried apricots are super easy to dehydrate cherries. I don't know, like I've, I use my dehydrator all the time.

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 22:04

I. I am hoping to use it more often now that my kitchen edition is done and I have the space because they are very beginner friendly. I feel like they are very very practical, very low likelihood of screwing something up or making a mistake, and I feel like people could be really successful with them. Definitely check out our episode all about dehydrating in season one. Because we go over a lot of really great best practices for dehydrating, but I never even thought of dehydrating flowers. That's such a great idea.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 22:33

Yeah and do be careful, like there are flowers that aren't edible. Always make sure and Do your research. I was looking at red Bud Trees. You ever seen those?

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 22:46

I think so. I should google the picture right now just to

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 22:48

they make the prettiest red flowers. They're almost like a fuchsia color.

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 22:52

Oh yes.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 22:53

I tasted one off of my friend's tree, and it's so beautiful. I wanna plant a red bud in my yard somewhere. I need to figure out a place it's edible. And I was just like, oh my gosh, I could do that. Yeah.

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 23:06

oh, they're beautiful.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 23:07

things like dandelions. Yeah. Or foria. Those are yellow. Yeah, I think there's a lot of joy that you can get from dehydrating flowers Or using, utilizing flowers from the natural world that you wouldn't necessarily think of.

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 23:27

See, we're so practical. Anna and I are both very practical people and food preservation is so practical. But we also really love the beautiful, the delicious, the excellent quality. We really love both of those things, and we believe that you can do. Those things together at the same time. As you defrost your freezer, as you clean out your pantry cupboard, as you clean out the refrigerator, as you go through the chores of cleaning things out before food preservation season really starts rocking. You also can think about what would be delightful or delicious or extra special to have on hand it's okay if you just can one batch of one. Beautiful. Not super practical thing. Like we love doing that. And that's what's so great about small batches. You can just, can a few little jars of chocolate cherry jam is a weird preserve and I don't wanna eat on every bagel all year long. But I try to can one little batch every year because ooh, every once in a while you want some weird chocolatey thing that's, decadent or different

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 24:27

yes.

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 24:28

Yeah, the lemon curd. Love to, can that'cause you don't eat it all the time, but sometimes, man, we love those delicious little treasures. It's really so fun, I think.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 24:38

Yeah, in one of the delights of hostessing, I feel anyway, is saying, oh, this one teeny little jar, Of chocolate cherry jam on a little crostini or something. For me right now, it's lilac jelly like crackers and a really hard cheese. A little bit of lilac jelly is just delightful. If somebody comes over to visit, just being like, Hey, do you wanna try some of this lilac jelly I just made? Who would say no to that? Wonderful.

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 25:07

And it just feels like something fresh and new and different. Something you're not gonna get at the store, which is fine if you buy stuff at the store, and we all do, but I feel like it just is extra. I don't know, extra special. And this is jumping subjects a little bit, but thinking about spring preserving I live really rurally and my daughter and I have detected that there are a couple of stray cats in our very remote gulch and in our search for these kitty cats that we're pretty sure are out there that we want to love and get fixed and hopefully provide them with somewhere so that they can stick around to eat my mice. I found. So many great spruce tips that I'm going to make into a spring jam. And I didn't think we had any trees here that were the right. Thing and they are. As we were hiking about and trying to be not frightening to any hiding kitty cats that we are pretty sure out there, I was like, oh, Scarlet, get something to put these in. So we were, I'm gonna try and work on that in the next couple days. So what was that episode called? We had such a good episode about, herbal, floral and evergreen preserving. So just all things springy. And it was this time last year we did this great episode and I feel it was maybe like the unsung hero of season two set so many good recipe ideas for springtime preserving. So be sure to check that out.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 26:33

Yeah, that was last year was the first time that I made a Foria jelly and a spruce tip jelly, and I wasn't sure how they were gonna sell, so I just did a very small run of it. And I had some extras and I brought'em to that Christmas And they sold the fastest.

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 26:52

Really?

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 26:52

People were like, what? Spruce tip? And so now I know that next,

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 26:57

yeah.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 26:58

in the next couple weeks, I need to be keeping my out for spruce tips.

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 27:03

Yeah.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 27:03

a lot of this lilac jelly because it is so seasonal. It's like it, I wanna say in my backyard. My lilac lasted three weeks. And I'm lucky enough where I live that if I just go 30 minutes up into the valley, it's about a thousand feet

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 27:20

oh.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 27:20

in elevation. So once I get done in my yard, luckily I can go up to the valley and I have some friends that have lilac bushes and they're like, oh sure, come get whatever. So it's a real treat and a real gift, and I don't take it for granted that I live in a place with such drastic elevation changes.

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 27:39

So if you are curious, you can Google. Spruce tip jelly recipe. And there's a good one on South Dakota Public Radio. And this is the one we referenced in the episode last season. It talks about spruce being not the only edible conifer. It has really great, lovely little pictures. It uses pomona's pectin, which we have a episode all about Pomona's pectin, i'll just tell you what it says. It's six cups spruce tips, six cups water, two cups cane sugar, which is so great. Many times jelly recipes have way more sugar, half a cup bottled lemon juice five teaspoons, pomona's pectin, and a quarter cup. Good quality honey. So it's not a crazy ingredient list. It gives the canning instructions. It's a good little recipe. So there's your bonus content you didn't know you were gonna get on today's episode was a spruce tip jelly recipe and inspiration to dehydrate flowers.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 28:33

All right. Thank you so much everyone for joining on this episode.

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 28:37

Yes.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 28:37

this content, please share it online. Please leave a review and as always, our episodes come out on Wednesday morning,

jenny-gomes_1_05-15-2025_114356: 28:45

Yes.

anna_1_05-15-2025_124356: 28:46

catch the next episode. Wednesday mornings, I try to have them out by 5:00 AM Mount Standard time. So thanks for listening and have a great day.

28:55

That's our show. We don't want you to miss an episode, so please be sure to subscribe. If you found this episode helpful and informative, please give our show a rating and review. It only takes a few seconds and it really helps our show grow. Follow us on social media at Smart Home Canning and at the domestic wildflower. Email your preserving questions to Perfectly Preserved podcast@gmail.com and we will do our best to answer your questions on the show. Thanks so much for listening. Stay tuned for our next episode released every week.