Cheap Frozen Green Beans

As I have mentioned I do everything on a budget. "Prepping" can be quite expensive as well as healthy living and eating, so when I find good deals on produce I snatch them up :)

For example my local grocery store has a rack they fill up that says "oops we purchased too much" and it is produce that is usually at the point that if you don't do something with it right away it needs to be thrown out. I LOVE THIS RACK! Yesterday I found 2.60 lbs of green beans for only $1.79, woohoo I have been wanting to freeze some veggies *snatch* 

Here is my first go at freezing green beans. First I cut off the ends of the beans and then cut them into "bite sized" pieces. Then I put them in a steamer with boiling water for about 3 minutes. you can see some of the pieces are bigger than others, I didn't make it an exact science.

Start

After 3 minutes

I then submerged them in ice water to stop the cooking. There is a lot of ice water here, you don't need this much I just noticed the ice bin in my freezer needed defrosted so I dumped it all in the sink to help cool the beans. 

Once they were cooled down I used my handy dandy FoodSaver Freeze 'n Steam bags, and put 2 - 2 1/2 cups of beans per package.

Here is want I ended up with:

By the way I love these FoodSaver bags. They came with our food saver, and have all sorts of different veggies and cook times on them. They even have cooking time for chicken breast (I may have to try that). The bags and FoodSavers can be found here. I highly recommend buying one. Your food stays good for so much longer. And I only have a family of three, but since it is cheaper to buy in bulk, we save mucho bucks by being able to separate and portion out our meat, cheese, veggies, etc. You can find them here (we have the FoodSaver Master Chef Kit) http://www.foodsaver.com/index.aspx

Until next time God Bless <3 

Delicious Chicken Broth

I never even thought of canning my own broths. I was pretty excited when the idea hit me and I called my mother in law and she confirmed that I can do that, and that she cans her own all of the time. *YAY* This will be such a money saver for us! Generic brand chicken broth is around 79 cents a can around here, and it isn't anything to jump over the moon about.

So I had some chicken theighs I cooked up to shred for tamales. I always season the broth as I boil the chicken anyways, it makes the chicken more flavorful. I usually add a little bit of salt and a lot a bit of garlic, onion powder, parsley and pepper. It makes some delicious chicken noodle soup, but I don't always want to make it, so now I have an alternative. 

After my chicken was completely cooked I separated it from the stock pot to clean the bones and skin out and let the broth cool. When I was done with my chicken a bunch of the fat had setted to the top of the pot. I skimmed some (not all, it provides flavor, but fat does reduce the shelf life) from the top and then reheated the broth to a good boil. 

Then I canned it just like I do my tomatoes. By putting the lids in simmering hot water, filling the jars with the hot broth, then cleaning the rim of the jar and placing the lid on securely and lastly tightening the ring. Easy peasey! And voila we have homemade chicken broth, canned, and able to be stored away for future use! What a happy camper I am.

By the way that is an old spaghetti sauce jar. They have enough wax left over on the lids, that you can re-use them to can. This is another tid-bit from my mother in law, and she said that  grandma canned all of her stuff back in the day in used jars. Awesome, I am excited that I can re-purpose jars that before would be tossed  out.

Until next time, God Bless <3