Now that we’ve spent all that time getting the garden in and growing fresh food, what do we do with it?  Personally, I can and freeze.  I learned early how to garden, and for my family, the end of the gardening season is the start of canning season.  One year, my family had a garden that was so big, we ate corn we canned from it for 5 years…and we eat a lot of corn!  Also, if you know the seasons for the meat market, you can buy in bulk and either can or freeze it.  A day or two of work can save you thousands of dollars over a year.  I know it sounds like I’m exaggerating, but believe me when I say I’m not.  I have taught several people how to do this, and they are amazed at the amount of money they save and the increase in quality they get.  Once my mom and I went to the store to get some ground beef (we usually get chuck-80/20).  When we got there, the ground beef we were looking at was around $2.50/lb.  We were about to pay it when we noticed that the new york strip roasts were on sale for $1.86/lb.  We thought about it for a second and decided to get 50 pounds of it.  Now this was not just in roasts.  We had the roasts ground into burger and had some of the roasts cut into steaks.  This meant that we got a way better quality ground beef (ground new york strip) for a crazy savings over the already ground beef.  The moral of this story?  We would have paid double the next week for less quality and by knowing how to buy in bulk and freeze/can we got more for less.  I can’t wait to share more stories and recipes for canning and freezing with you.  Join me!