Gimme Somethin' Good To Eat!!

I don't know about you, but chocolate has a place in my home food storage.  We have been counseled to store familiar food, comfort food, food that will keep us sane in an emergency.  So maybe I took that literally :) and I found a great way to store chocolate and candy for long term storage!!

There are only a few things that you will need to be able to store candy on your pantry shelf long term.  I have talked about using a FoodSaver before and it is essential to long term candy storage.  You will also need mason jars, lids, and of course candy.  This time of year is a great time to find candy on sale.  Look for sales after Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and stock up for a great price.

The process is simple:  buy candy, place in a mason jar, and seal with your FoodSaver.  Easy, almost too easy to have candy preserved!!

I keep my FoodSaver plugged in so it's ready to use.

 There are two ways to seal your jars with the FoodSaver. The first way, and the way I like to do it, is to use a FoodSaver canister (I got mine on Amazon.com). I place the lid and ring on my jar and set it in the FoodSaver canister and put the lid on the canister and plug in the hose.  

If you use the FoodSaver canister you have to put a ring on the jar first or it won't seal.

 Then I press the button and the FoodSaver  does all the work.  The machine will stop on its own and you will need to hit cancel, release the air with the button on top of the canister, and then check to see if your lid sealed.  You can take the ring off and if it sealed, place on your pantry shelf!  I do this with all kinds of candy;  chocolate bars, suckers, M&M's, candy canes, candy corn (leave in bag and seal the bag in the jar), Werther's, Tootsie Pops, etc. 

Another way to seal is to use the FoodSaver jar attachments to seal your jar.  In the picture of my FoodSaver above you can see one leaning against the canister.  They are a lid that fits over the mason jar (don't put a ring on your mason jar, only the lid) and you attach the hose to the top of it.  I haven't had consistent luck in sealing jars with the attachments, but sealing with the canister I rarely have a jar not seal.  And if it doesn't seal it is usually because I need a new jar lid, not because of the canister. 

What a lovely picture :)

Just at note though ***Don't store chocolate with any other kind of candy.  The chocolate will absorb the taste of other items. ***   You don't want fruity tasting Butterfinger bars, at least I don't.  This goes for chocolate chips as well.  I put my chocolate chips in mason jars and seal them up.  Ace Hardware sells the 2 gallon jars and they hold A LOT of chocolate chips!!

The 2 gallon mason jar from Ace Hardware.

After Halloween this year save some of the kiddies candy and store it for a later date.  It would be a great way to make the candy stretch so your children don't eat it all at once.  You may wonder how long the candy will last, and I know it's at least a year.  I just used some M&M's to make cookies and they tasted as fresh at when we got them on Halloween in 2010.  

"Be faithful.
Unecomber your life.
Lay up in store."  Keith B. McMullin