This is an old thread, but I thought I'd put in my 2 cents. IâÂÂve been using FoodSavers for years for both seed and food storage. I seldom use FoodSaver plastic bags because they are permeable and develop leaksâ¦and you just throw them away. If you have to use bags, mylar is a better choice, but you have to use the trick mentioned by an earlier poster. Look for the YouTube video by Offgridgeeks. It works. Glass jars are the best choice. They are reusable and arenâÂÂt permeable. Mason jars are available in sizes as small as 4 oz. and as large as ý gallon. FoodSaver makes separate adapters for regular and wide-mouth jars, so be careful when you buy your jars and order the attachment. You can also use almost any commercial jar with a platisol lid. Those are the jar lids with the inner silicon-type ring on the edge of the top. To seal them, you have to put them inside a mason jar or the canister attachment sold by FoodSaver. There are other workarounds, but I wonâÂÂt go into them here. If you really hate the 2-piece Mason jar lids, you can order 1-piece plastisol lids on-line. The regular-mouth jar lids are 70mm and wide-mouth are 86mm. In addition to seeds, many DRY food items can be vacuum-sealed and stored for years and even decades, depending on the food type. Items such and beans, legumes and whole grains are wonderful candidates. Pastas, chocolate, dried fruit with very low moisture content, freeze-dried or dehydrated fruits and vegetables store very well. You can double the shelf life of foods such as nuts with a higher oil content. My husband occasionally comes home with huge sale bags of blue corn chips. I divide them into quart jars and vacuum-seal them. I have kept them up to 18 months and they are still perfectly fresh. Very fine substances such as flour are poor candidates unless you go to great lengths to contain the fine powder. Unless they are contained, the powder is drawn out between the jar and lid, preventing the jar from sealing completely and the seal will fail. Worse yet, the powder is drawn into the machine which will eventually stop functioning.

Shelley, you know you are ALWAYS invited, just knock on the door and come right on in. (grin) That goes for everyone here. The food was good, especially the salmon which Elery cooked on the grill. I could have lived without the store-bought cupcakes, LOL, but Mother brought them and who am I to turn down a gift, especially one made with sugar. (grin) We do usually have fun, we all manage to get along pretty well pretty much all of the time. That means everyone recognizes my authority as Empress of the Universe, LOL. Cathy, she's sure getting big, isn't she? I've been invited to her very first school concert in a couple of weeks. She's excited and tells me that she's going to sing "B-I-N-G-O". ROFL I'm sure it will be wonderful... Annie

I'm sorry to hear all that Azzalea. I hope things are getting better. We had a beautiful day here. I slept in until 8 (although Gary was up early as usual), then I made brownies (which I decorated with pink and yellow easter eggs (designed in decorator frosting) and jelly beans plus mixed up my corn casserole to take for dinner at my sister in law's house. Then we walked to Easter Services at a small church just a block from home. We enjoyed the church and the services tremendously and plan to go back this coming Sunday. I don't know why we've never stopped in there before, during the 10 months we've lived here. There are two of these little churches near us. This one only one block and the other only two blocks from our home. After that, it was time to take the dogs on a nice long walk (did I mention it was a warm sunny day) and then pack up to go for dinner, which was at 3 pm. Although most of the yards here in town are still under several inches of snow, we did walk by one yard where crocus were blooming up by the front door. What a pretty sign of spring! We stopped at Walmart on the way, wanting to pick up an Easter Lily for Gary's mom, but the few they had left were pretty sad looking so we ended up with a pot of tulips instead. Just one pretty red tulip was opened and there were a dozen buds so they will last her a while, then she can plant them in the yard. We stopped by her house for a few minutes and then went on to his sister's for dinner. Spent a couple of enjoyable hours there, then stopped back at his mom's again to check on the sump pump in the basement. The hose had come unhooked so the pump was working but no water flowing and there was a foot of water standing down there. This is an old house with a primitive basement and it's like that every spring, so nothing new there. Gary was able to wade in and get it going ok. After that, we drove around for a while 'out in the bush' as Gary calls it. Just enjoying seeing the snow and the ice on Lake Superior melt. There's not much growing out there yet, but we saw a few deer and the birch and aspen trees are lovely (even bare) with all that pretty white bark. Then it was home for another walk with the puppies and a couple of hours of tv before bedtime. All in all a lovely day!

Well, I can tell you this much, I first got a small model at Kohl's, and you had to hold down each side of the lid while simultaneously holding the bag in the machine. It worked about 25% of the time, maybe less, and would be far more convenient if people had three or four hands. So, when you shop, be sure you look for one that doesn't require you to push down on the lid to activate the sealing mechanism and then continue to hold it down until the sealing is complete. My new one is bigger and I can hold the bag and just push the button, it seals while I'm holding the bag and doesn't require constant pressure by the user to activate the mechanism. I hated the old one so badly that I would have never purchased a new one, but Peppi convinced Elery that it would be a perfect Christmas gift last year and so we "upgraded". That said, I seldom use the new one either, as we are remodeling and just finishing up moving, and I haven't had time to do much of anything other than paint, tile, trim, tear down, build, move furniture then start on the next room. Ugh. I freeze a lot of fruits and berries, but those get mushed up by the vacuum and the juice interferes with the seal. Even when I freeze them on sheet trays the vacuum will crush them somewhat, and the only way that works at all is to freeze them on sheet trays, then put them into plastic bags and then put the plastic bags into food saver bags and seal them. Many here suggested that I use produce bags from the grocery store. The produce bags here are flimsy and tear immediately, if they even make it home intact, so Peppi brought me some! I'll use those when we raise chickens for the freezer this spring, and hopefully it will go better than it has in the past. I broke down last year and bought plastic storage bags, packed chicken halves in those and then sealed them in Foodsaver bags, and that worked mostly, I've lost seals on about 20%, probably because chicken halves are weird shapes. I've not yet been successful in sealing a canning jar. Ever. (shrug) I still just put chips and crackers into plastic Lock N Lock containers and save myself the time and aggravation and don't worry about the extra packaging to discard, LOL. I did get some Foodsaver containers for sandwich meat and cheese, but they get unsealed EVERY SINGLE DAY, and the contents are consumed far before they could spoil, so that's pointless and I quit and Elery and I just eat leftovers and don't freeze them at all. I do freeze Ann T's green enchilada sauce in pint canning jars, as well as freezing apple cider in quart canning jars. It works well for me, although other people have mentioned that they don't like to freeze things in glass containers. If I were a single person, cooking only for myself, I'd probably use the Foodsaver a lot so I didn't have to eat an entire pot of soup or pan of scalloped potatoes. Cooking weekly and always making double batches is a good way to get the freezer stocked and if your stuff "migrates" to the back or bottom of the freezer like mine does, if they are sealed up, they won't get freezer burned before you can find them. Good luck, I don't love the new one as much as I had hoped, probably because I just haven't had time to fully utilize it, but I don't despise it, like I did that old one. I'm just waiting to find someone I cannot stand, and I'll give the old one to them, LOL. Not really, my nephew is an avid hunter and often gifts me with venison, and he wanted one, so I gave him the old one with warnings about the efficiency of the process. He has his 7 year old son hold the bag steady while he pushes both corners to activate the seal. He says it works "OK", but he makes sure to check his packages in a couple of days and reseals the ones that lost their seal. Annie