After talking to a few friends, I know that food storage is one of the most important things we can put our efforts into, but many don't understand that it requires certain tools to do it correctly and to get the longest and safest life from those efforts.
You wouldn't attemp fine wood working without the right tool, so why think you can take a food item and keep it for years without the right tools to do that?

Canning tools:
- A water bath canner:preserves high acid foods, pickles and jams. Also handy for sterilizing jars.
- A pressure canner: preserves safely meats and regular vegetables. Also handy for speeding up the cooking time for roasts and such. I chose to get on with a weighted guage instead of a dial type guage so that it doesn't need adjusting on a regular basis. Remember to get a "canner" and not a "cooker" type. Also, purchase a couple of rubber gaskets at the same time.
- Ball Blue Book of Canning: an absolute MUST !!! Make sure you read it and learn the entire proccess.
- Canning tool kit. Simple and cheap, it will save a lot of head aches and burned fingers...contains a wide mouth funnel, jar lifter.

Vacuum sealing tools:
- A Food Saver type machine is not all that expensive. You can find them at WalMart and most other stores that have kitchen equipment or camping/hunting gear. I think I paid under $100 for mine. It uses special bags and sucks out the air and then seals the bag. It will double the shelf life of what you have in your fridge and freezer and will make things like pasta and other dried foods last for 10 years or longer in a safe way. It prevents moisture, air and insects from getting into your product.
- jar sealer w/vacuum sealer. I have trouble using this the way it was intended, so I got a vacuum sealer canister. I put the jar in the canister and then the lid on the canister and vacuum seal the canister. In the process, the jar gets sealed also. I keep things like extra flour, chocolate chips, herbs and other dried goods in the jars, using regular canning jars.
- Vacuum bags. These are found with the unit you buy. They are reusable. There are several different brands out there, they are more expensive than regular bags, but remember, they are thicker in order to prevent air from getting in. Well worth the money. You can also seal important documents in the bags to prevent damage and moisture issues. A friend of mine also vacuum seals his first aid kit supplies so that they are always in top condition, fit better in his kit and are able to be accessed without contaminating his other supplies.
- Dehydrator. Yes, you can dehydrate food in a natural way, but it is NOT reliable for long term food storage in many cases. A simple dehydrator is cheap (under $30) and can be upgraded as money allows. This will enable you to make a wide range of items that can then be vacuum sealed to increase the life to as much as 10 years! A site I reccommend is "Dehydrate2store.com".

To me, those few items are the absolute MUST have kitchen tools to enable you to stock food in the safest manner possible to get the longest life possible out of them. There are many more that are helpful, but to my thinking, you can't expect to store food without the proper tools.

And don't forget the canning jars!

Adding to the list- buckets. They are tight fitting & can be stored in many places in your home, including but not limited to making tables with them. A board across the top with a tablecloth. If you store what you eat, you don't even have to go the mylar & O2 absorber route.

Adding to lardel's- LOTS of extra lids (flats), too. I advise keeping the cases your jars come in (if bought new) so that you easily store & stack safely. If you buy your jars used, you can often get box flats from the store that were used to hold various sized cans.

I make it a practice to buy at least two boxes of lids at the same time I buy a case of jars. That gives me a sure three years of use before I have to worry. However, this year, I am going to go and just buy another two years of lids for each case I have. I can no longer trust that they will be available.

Thank you all for this thread. If I have enough produce from my garden this year, (we ate it all last year) I may try some canning. I may do a little anyway, just to learn how.

Oh, let me just warn you..... It is ADDICTING!!

I did some canning last winter when I was off work. Not alot, but enough to know it's easy

I planted alot of pickling cuc,s want to can those this year(did I thread drift)

I can not say enough good things about vacuum sealers! I absolutely love mine!

I have been digging in the back of the freezer and we have been eating meat and veggies that I froze almost a year and a half ago! They are just like the day I froze them!

To add to the list, one of my favorite books is Stocking Up: The Third Edition of America's Classic Preserving Guide

http://www.amazon.com/Stocking-Up-Americas-Classic-Preserving/dp/0671693956