I received my SureSeal from Roots and Harvest and immediately fell in love! I’ve had the other brands’ food sealers and while they worked just fine, their design was a little cumbersome, especially for storage.
The fact that the SureSeal bag compartment is attached to the sealer is a game changer! And just as easily, you can remove the compartment that holds the bags. Love it. The best part, however, was the storage of the SureSeal. The machine is created to be set on its side and it conveniently slips into a 4" space!
If you too are a collector of necessary “homestead” appliances, you understand the importance of storage for all these appliances. Well, this SureSeal, a much-needed tool for the homesteading kitchen, makes it an easy choice solely on the fact it takes up a small footprint for storage.
The SureSeal does all we would want a food sealer to do but get this…
I tried an experiment and so far, I’ve been really impressed! Cause honestly, we want our homesteading tools to be as versatile as possible, right?
It happens every spring, homesteaders are overwhelmed by all the spring medicinal flowers and “weeds” we like to harvest and preserve.
Last year, 2023, spring came on with a vengeance and everything seemed to bloom at once in the Rockies of Montana. I was working full time at the guest ranch and time was very limited for foraging in the mountains.
One day, as I was frantically harvesting arnica, fully aware the plant flowers for a mere two-three weeks out of 52, I was wondering how else I could preserve the flowers. Traditionally, I’d dehydrated them, freeze them, and infused them in oil.
I had access to a commercial dehydrator, but the potency is diminished with this method. I could freeze them, but I had a small freezer in my 200 square foot cabin. I could infuse them in oil, but I was running out of jars and oil was getting expensive. And the amount of space all those jars were taking up was getting a bit ridiculous!
I looked at my SureSeal and wondered… What if I vacuum sealed fresh flowers?
I’d never done that before, but it was definitely worth a try! I threw a bunch of fresh arnica flowers into a seal bag and vacuum sealed the bag. I did the same with wild blue bells, and dandelions. After they were sealed, I left those bags in a pile on the shelf… for months!
Well, I’ve had those sealed bags for almost a year now and you’ll never believe it, no mold whatsoever. The colors of the flowers are a little darker but still yellow.
The green stems of the bluebells turned dark but still no mold.
I finally opened the sealed bag of the blue bells after 10 months. The plants were still supple. There was a little bit of moisture but absolutely no mold on the plants or in the bag. I wanted to see if there was anything left in the plant to allow for an infusion. I chopped up the blue bells and placed them in a pint canning jar. I poured avocado oil over the top of them until they were covered. I removed all the shelves from my Roots and Harvest dehydrator and placed the jar with the plants and oil in the bottom. Set the temperature to 100 degrees and wait for 3 hours. The next morning, I drained the plants from the oil and compared the oil to the avocado oil in its original container. You could definitely see the oil had been infused. Probably not the strength of infusion I would have gotten had I used fresh plants, but it worked nonetheless!
What I needed was more time in the spring! I needed a way for the flowers and “weeds” to last until I had time to process them. This method of vacuum sealing them will absolutely buy me some time and I’m so excited!