So, we have been having fun with a new kitchen gadget – nnnooo, not the kitchen gadget what is on the to-buy list at the Scratch and Dent Superstore (the awesome side-by-side refrigerator freezer which is on layaway and due to replace the 20-year old Whirlpool in the next month or so) – but the Food Saver vacuum device which came with half a roll of the plastic medium and the instruction manual. I spotted it at a neighborhood yard sale, barely used and for the unbelievably low, low price of $5 cash. The previous owner said that it worked – but not why she was letting it go, when it is so useful a gadget. This, when new went for a cool $170 or so. I had been considering purchasing a home vacuum-packing system now and again, but was always put off by the price. Yeah, I’m turning into my pinch-the-penny-until-a-booger-comes-out-Lincoln’s-nose grandmothers. Deal with it.

With the price of groceries going up and up, my daughter and I are running through all the means of saving here and there; to include copious use of coupons, buying on sale and freezing, and making a whole lot of different things from scratch. But the trouble with freezing is that even the sturdiest zip-lock freezer bags grow frost on the inside, and the stuff gets refrigerator-burn and generally unappetizing, and within a short time you forget what the heck it is and how long it has been in there anyway.

Insert the truism about the freezer being only interim storage for leftovers, before they are old enough to be thrown away.

But the Food-Saver eliminates the frost and freezer-burn, along with the air from the sealed package. We also discovered to our joy and surprise, that it makes the package of pre-made and pre-flavored hamburger patties or marinated chicken-leg quarters so much smaller that space-saving in the freezer is achieved almost instantly. Now we can buy the family-packs of chops or chicken-breasts or whatever, and package them in two-serving-sized bags which will not degrade the quality of the meat when frozen, or leave me trying to pry apart lumps of hard-frozen meat.

I’m already considering my options as far as purchasing a half or a quarter of a cow in one fell swoop … and we are racking our brains now, for the names of people we know who hunt. I’d like to have a bit of venison or wild boar in the freezer now and again, also.