Sealing It Up – Using a Vacuum Sealer to Prep on a Tight Budget

 by Mrs. Heidi

My husband and I are like a lot of folks. We live paycheck-to-paycheck (his only as I am disabled and can’t work) and rarely have any “spare” funds, not even ten dollars! But, we can see the “writing on the wall” same as you and we know we needed to be ready. How to go about it was the question, though.

We found a solution. Vacuum-sealing.

Most of us don’t tend to think about it, but even on a super-tight budget, we toss out a LOT of food every year. Those dribs and drabs can quickly add up to hundreds of dollars over the course of a year. If you lose even five bucks every week, that’s $260.00 per year. You can afford to buy a lot of long-term storage with almost three hundred dollars!

One of the biggest areas of food waste is spoilage. Everything from freezer-burned meats to moldy cheese and sour milk. It adds up. Even that $1.35 box of stale saltines that you tossed out adds to your “shrink” (“shrink” is a term used in the retail industry for the loss of product that cannot be sold, thus “shrinking” the profit margin).

When my hubby and I sat down after the 2013 Christmas holidays, we decided to keep track of every single bit of food that came into and out of our home. We did a housewide inventory and kept careful track for sixty days. Then we crunched the numbers.

In just sixty days, we had lost over $80.00 worth of food! That’s $1.33 every day, $9.33 per week or $485.00 per year!

We were appalled.

I’ve always rather prided myself on my frugality, especially when it comes to my kitchen and pantry. I was even more shocked than my husband, to be honest.

We took a hard look at in what areas our food loss was greatest. Turned out that spoiled/outdated food was the main culprit.(Other things we immediately did were hubby beginning strictly taking only leftovers for lunch at work unless there weren’t any at all, any leftover “sides” becoming the basis of various “mystery” soups and casseroles, etc.)

That left us with unused food going bad and being thrown out before we even used it. Lots of high-dollar items on that list, too. That was more than 60% of the total wastage.

How could we avoid this and/or extend the usable life of these items?

Now, I was familiar with vacuum sealing from using a commercial version at my late parent’s restaurant/tavern, many years ago. Ours was a small mom and pop place, but we still had to order our food supplies in bulk cases from the distributors. Unless we wanted to waste a heckuva lot of food, we had an issue. Regular plastic bags, zipseal bags, plastic wrap and aluminum foil only go so far. We still had a lot of wasted food – and my folks couldn’t afford to run their business with that kind of overhead.

Attending a Wisconsin Restaurant Association “vendor’s food fair”, we came across a vendor showing slightly smaller vacuum sealing machines, similar to those used in the wholesale market, but geared down for restaurant use. The cheapest carried a hefty price tag of over $500.00, but after talking it over, my folks ordered one.

It saved, literally, thousands of dollars in just a couple of years.

So, as hubby and I confronted our own food waste/storage issues, I ventured the idea of getting a vacuum sealer.

We agreed to see what was available and that we could afford.

After looking both online and then in-person at many models and at varying prices, we settled on one: a FoodSaver® V2430 Vacuum Sealing System. We purchased it at WalMart for $69.99 + tax, on sale. It came with a package of assorted pre-cut bags as well as two, five-foot rolls we could cut to size.

It just so happened one of our local supermarkets was having a mega-sale on premium steaks – not something you see at our house too often! We bought what we could afford and brought it home along with our new vacuum-sealer.

How It Worked:

It didn’t take long to master the unit. The sealer has two modes: Seal and Vac & Seal. If you merely want to seal a bag and not use the vacuum function (comes in handy for liquids and semi-liquids!), you use the sealing function: place the bag just over the heat-sealing bar, close the unit, press the button and your bag is sealed in ten seconds or so.

This is also the setting you use when making your own custom-sized bags from the rolls. You cut the size bag you want, seal one end, add your item(s), then proceed to either vac&seal or seal your bag – voila`! There are only two buttons – you simply close the lid, select your button, release the lid and that’s all there is to it.

We packed single-meal packages of the steaks, as well as packets of frozen veggies and potatoes to go with, placing these “mealpaks” inside of larger zip-seal bags, labeled and dated, then into the freezer. We also repackaged a lot of previously frozen items, still frozen, and labeled/dated them.

We did the same with fresh items like cheeses, butter, lunchmeat, veggies and fruits. I even packed cut fruits and lebni (a Greek sour-cream/yogurt I like product) for our breakfast smoothies.

Ditto for dry goods like pasta, rice, etc. It was SO easy!

(Our 10-year old granddaughter used our sealer when she wanted to put away some extra Halloween candy, after showing her how to do it ONE time, she was able to successfully and easily use it by herself!)

Cleaning the unit is fairly easy as well, though you do need to make sure you get around the vacuum post very well, particularly when packaging raw meats to avoid cross a contamination and transmission of food-borne bacteria. I simply use a heavy paper towel with 1:1 diluted white vinegar while in use and then an antibacterial wipe before putting the unit away.

Results:

Comparing our previous waste costs to what we saved by vac-sealing, we saved almost $250.00 in the first three months following our sealer purchase. (This was partially due to being able to take advantage of bulk item sales as well) Deducting the initial cost of the machine, plus the additional bags/bag rolls we purchased (between $8 – $15@), we still were left with more than $125.00 in savings!

(Note: The model we purchased did not have the container/jar sealer attachment that is available on other, more expensive models of the same brand, but we improvised by vac-sealing the entire container or jar when we needed to. Worked like a charm!)

In the months since, we have had ZERO spoilage/waste of uncooked foods. We also have been able to make large amounts of things like lasagna, etc. and then vac-seal the leftovers; to freeze for use as another meal a week or two later or to simply refrigerate for my husband’s aforementioned lunches. We even have individually frozen various berries, eggs (first freeze in ice-cube trays, then vac-seal), burger patties, pastas, etc. Once frozen, we simply vac-sealed them and they retained their shape/color/consistency quite well! If we had access to liquid nitrogen, we could IQF and have an even better result.

Conclusion:

By reducing waste in our budget, we’ve been able to use that “extra” money to build our emergency supplies cache. We now have  at least sixty days on-hand as well as packed B.O.B.’s and even supplies for our pets! We anticipate being able to continue to build our stores,adding more “wants” to the “must-haves” we have already laid by as well as items for barter/trade. We even use our vac-sealer for packing our own DIY MRE’s, clothing, batteries, first aid, medications, personal hygiene and other items.

We also vac-sealed personal documents and a few books, card games, stationary – not to mention Bibles. Not only does this protect these items from moisture, etc., it also reduces bulk and we can break down waste-of-space packaging into compact emergency supplies. The purchase and use of either moisture or oxygen absorbers also further extends the usable life of sealed items.

We can even cook or reheat foods in these bags because they are “boil-in-bag”! Even a tin can “pot” can be used to heat food with minimal fuel. That’s a huge plus if you need to conserve water/fuel. Heat your food, then use the water for tea, coffee, hot cocoa or spiced cider – even use it to take a (warm!) sponge-bath. A good, hot meal and/or getting clean will do wonders to boost morale in dire circumstances!

We also have introduced our adult children to this concept, which adds to our entire family’s security in the face of a *HTF event. Now their families share the same preparedness.

You can’t put a price tag on that kind of of security!