Today was a really productive day here at the Empty Nest Homestead. While the hubs spent most of his day working outside and researching the best of the best of the very best hunting rifles (because he really, really, really needs a new one before fall!), I set about setting up my pantry room.

And, I got pretty far today, in between doing a bunch of other fun stuff. Like playing with my new mason jar vacuum sealer attachment for my FoodSaver…

And dehydrating more veggies. Today it was bell peppers, onion, carrots and broccoli.

I also froze my excess eggs using silicone cupcake pans.

We had a double yolker today so it went into the fridge since only one normal sized egg at a time fit perfectly into each spot.

I bought these nifty little colored dot stickers to use on all my food stash so I can see at a glance when the expiration date is.

Not the best buy date, but the actual expiration date of things when you factor in if they are frozen or vacuum sealed or dehydrated or freeze dried or put into suspended animation or whatever.

I got sick of squinting to see the printed dates and then trying to remember how long past that I could reliably trust that whatever it is won’t kill us so this colored dot system worked out pretty well.

For things like butter, which can last six months past the printed date in the freezer, I wrote the month on each dot…

I did all that while I waited for the eggs to freeze, which they did beautifully.

All the while I was moving things into the pantry room, like my dehydrator and FoodSaver but I kept feeling like something was missing.

Then it dawned on me! I needed some extra lighting for my workspace. It was just too dark in there. So I dug out some press on, battery operated lights and fixed that problem.

Soo much better.

It’s a work in progress, but so far, so good!