Food Saver
So, last week I went out and bought a Food Saver. We actually had have one in the basement that we never really used. It was white and got dirty easily; it seemed really loud so I didn’t like using it.
But with this new baking kick I’ve been on, plus the fact we are trying to eat/shop more responsibly, made me start thinking about bringing it back upstairs. Then I got a flyer from Costco with some coupons in it. There was one for $30 off a Food Saver plus $5 off a box of bags. Last time The Hubby and I were in Costco, he actually pointed out the Food Saver and noticed how different (a.k.a. better) it looked than the little white one we had. It was about $150 and I didn’t want to spend the money at that point. So, with this coupon, it would be down to $120 or so.
I got a free pass to BJ’s Club, so I went down to check out their prices and get some supplies for the church fundraiser. When I was getting my pass, they talked me into a membership. Since I still had 2 months on my Costco membership, they upped the membership from a special of 14 months to 16 months! The membership fee was $45 – which is about $10 cheaper than Costco. Plus, BJ’s is alot closer than Costco for us.
I looked at BJ’s Food Saver. It looked a little less sturdy – not quite as heavy duty. It was $130, so I went back up to Costco and picked up the “better” one for $120, plus got a box of bags with the $5 discount.
It took a few days to find time to get it out of the box and play around with it. It’s still loud, but it has a LOT more buttons and settings to work with. It has a light up dial that tells you the progress of the vacuum and when it starts to seal. You can use special containers (which we bought with the last one and we still have) with a hose attachment. You can use a DRY or MOIST food selection; a PULSE selection to manually vacuum to your own idea of “just right”. It has a roll dispenser inside the unit, with a slide cutter to cut the bags evenly and easily (very nice!).
So, last night I made spaghetti sauce with meatballs for dinner. After we were done, I put the leftovers in some tupperware and put it in the freezer overnight. Before dinner tonight, I popped them out of the containers (5 of them!), made bags, put each one in a bag, and vacuumed it up. Now I have 5 bags of sauce and meatballs, in 1 or 2 person quantities, that can go into a pot and boiled, ready to be eaten in 20 minutes or so. I went through the freezer and bagged up stuff that was in regular ziploc bags; then I went through the fridge and cleaned that out. I threw away stuff that had met its’ end and bagged up some other stuff. I bagged up some hot dogs, used the Pulse feature to bag up a head of lettuce (first I peeled off the lettuce leafs so it wasn’t a head shape, but actual lettuce leafs laying down. I used one of the containers for The Boy’s leftover taco stuff.
Now my fridge is clean(er), my freezer is better stocked and I’ve actually used an appliance on my counter top.