Anyway, my tip:
I only use rolls, and make my own lengths as needed. After I wash the used bag in the dishwasher, I seal the 4th side. It’s a rectangle, right? So the side I seal is the longer side. Then I cut across the very top of one short side to make a new opening, because it gives you the clearance you need in the machine.

I often use the newly created “sideways” bags for individual meal portions. If I do that, I make an extra seal down the center, thus creating two long skinny bags. Then, when I’m ready to defrost only one bag, I cut only that side off without messing up the sealed other side.

I like to make sure I’m getting my money’s worth!

photo: LarimdaME Yes, this past Black Friday we added to the masses of people who got up before the sun and trekked to our neighborhood department store for consumer goods. We weren’t as hardcore as Boston Gal, but we……

I also use it a lot for preserving my garden produce. You can take fresh, uncooked green beans and seal them in without cooking and then freeze them. You can’t do that with regular ziplocks. .. .

Another nifty gadget that came with my model (which is probably 5 years old) was a wine cork. I LOVE that because you can open a bottle of wine, just pour a glass or two and then vacuum seal it without wasting (or over imbibing).

If you are going to use the food as one serving, I like to cut in half. However sometimes, I’ll cut a big block of cheese into many single servings bag them loosely in sandwich bags and put those together in one gallon Foodsaver bag. When I want a new block of cheese, I simple cut open the gallon size put out a sandwich bag of cheese to use and reseal and freeze the gallon bag. Between the freezing and the FoodSaving, I bet the cheese will last a year before going bad.

Another point, don’t re-use ones used to store meat. It might just be raw meat that was mentioned in the manual, but to be extra safe, I don’t re-use ones that have cooked meat as well.