[Food] Storage – Pickling/Drying/Smoking

mullen112280 · Coal Joined: May 20, 2006 Posts: 9 Location: Indiana

I'm a bit lazy....I bought a Ronco food dehydrator at GoodWill for $2.00. It works well. I've just started a little cashe of dried fruits and meat. I also bought a lil' smokeys charcoal smoker. It makes end-times taste like good-times!
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mercurygirl · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Jan 29, 2006 Posts: 1066

Schneider, you're wonderful! Thanks for all your knowledge.

MG

mikeh433 · Heavy Crude Joined: Jan 25, 2006 Posts: 201

I think I will pursue this topic more. Having done well with self-watering organic planters on balconey + moved 6 oversized ones to gravel below and some seeds I stuck into piles of dirt between hopeful land development and state land have 3 dozen big plants coming up, I'm harvesting more than I can deal with (backpack full today).

Canner (Kerr bottles, etc) came last week, but I just don't want to do that. Got the book about old world preserving methods, which do not use heating or freezing food, but other methods. That got me interested enough to just experiment with lacto fermentation. Got the jars and it is so easy so I'm giving it a try.

Like the planting situation, experimenting, I'm satisfied with results and the next headache is what to do with the stuff that is coming up in abundance. Easiest way is for me. It also seems to be the most nutritious method. Even some may produce booze... something I like now and then. I even have a cheap dryer (under $40).

I wonder when, with oil rising to record levels, etc, Walmart and other such stores stuff will no longer be so cheap? Thats why I'm busy doing these mundane things which don't necessarily inspire me much. But growing is definitely an improvement in health and lifestyle with/without peak oil as to quality. Hopefully the lacto fermentation proves to be a quality of life improvement also.

Not like super prepared, but I feel I have all of the basics covered now, so just refining, adjusting and GETTING alot more canning/fermentation bottles, and other related.

The book refers to canning as dead food in a coffin.

mikeh433 · Heavy Crude Joined: Jan 25, 2006 Posts: 201

My favorite book I bought so far has NO AUTHOR! NONE!

It has a forward by Eliot Coleman who is somehow associated with the 4 season harvesting book.

Instead, the book titled: Keeping Food Fresh - Old World Techniques and Recipes, has probably over 100 authors who relate perhaps centuries old traditions of preserving without heating or freezing (well some recipes call for a little boiling, but not really cooking the stuff to death). Each recipe has a name from whom submitted their tradition, located in France, Switzerland or Italy, etc. and is their own description of what works and for how long.

Nine different methods all of which do not destroy the food and most keep up to a year.

This book inspired me to take the next step. 100+ inspirations of what the hell do I do with all this stuff I got growing? I highly recommend this baby.

If you feel you been misled by a technique, you can fly over to France and if the author is still alive, perhaps in a nursing home, go cap them in the knee with a hammer for misguiding you (just kidding).

mikeh433 · Heavy Crude Joined: Jan 25, 2006 Posts: 201

Like starting growing in containers, I look at preserving as expirimental learning experience. If some works out, great, I've learned something.

The frustrating part is learning that I am making a food factory and also have to have the cleaning standards of a food factory. Another learning experience. Bleach cleaned off a decade of use of juicer, that couldn't likely be cleaned completely down to plastic and metal by any other means. Dissolved it all off in 8 hours in 1/2 water, 1/2 bleach. Invincible stuff, bleach.

It is a bit frustrating to change to doing things differently, but after many frustrations, you can get it down to work and work comfortably. I hope that the pumpNseal deal I'm ordering will be easy and effective. Always looking for quickest, easiest most effective methods. Lots of store bot stored food to hold off whilst I get the other methods to work OK.

Fly swatters and fly sticky tape - enough extra for neighbors so... different stuff like food factory requires the extra food factory measures to be in place.

madison · Heavy Crude Joined: Mar 12, 2005 Posts: 255

A fantastic book is "Rootcellaring" by (I think) Nancy Bubel? It's really fantastic. Wish I could put stuff by in one now!

mercurygirl · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Jan 29, 2006 Posts: 1066

Has anyone ever sundried blackberries or other fruit?

Thanks,
MG

WisJim

Ludi

I dried some store-bought nectarines and they were fabulous though one needs to be sure the fruit is sound with absolutely no mold, as any with bad spots grew mold quickly. This wasn't a problem with good quality fruit. I've found it's also important to slice fruits and vegs very thin so they dry as quickly as possible. I've been drying buckets of zucchini in the solar dryer and they're very tasty just eaten as "chips" with no cooking.
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cynthia · Heavy Crude Joined: May 29, 2005 Posts: 348

Check out the book: Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nurtrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods, by Sandor Ellix Katz
It is my understanding that fermerntation preserves and enhances the nutrients in food.
My husband attended a one-evening class with Katz and ever since, we've had sauerkraut and other vegetables bubbling with nutrients in the basement and happily in our tummies.
Today, I feel good about the 14 pints of tomatoes we water-bath canned from our garden crop, but I believe that method yields trace nutrition due to the high heat. Canning is helpful in that once you've processed the food you are not paying more for storage.
And we really paid for electical-based storage when my grandmother's 1988 upright freezer died last week. Big loss of home-grown-butchered chickens had to go to the garbage since the breakdown was discovered too late for safe salvage.
Drying foods and fermenation are good. Freezing is good until power outage or appliance failure.
cynthia

mercurygirl · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Jan 29, 2006 Posts: 1066

Did you guys make the solar dryers or buy them?

Also, my question was prompted by reading "Little House on the Prairie" which noted that Ma dried blackberries in the sun to use later for stewing. It's probably too late to try it here as the sun has lost some intensity. Wish I knew!

Thanks, MG

mercurygirl · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Jan 29, 2006 Posts: 1066

Cynthia, thanks for the info. I look for the most efficient ways of doing things and you made some good points. I need to know more about fermentation.
Right now I don't have much storage space or a cellar. Is that necessary? I will read up on it, but if it's really the best way, I'll make it a priority. Want to preserve more and save seeds.

Also, yes meat is a problem. We may get chickens in the future and I guess the age-old solution is kill 'em when you need 'em or hunt. Sometimes smoking or salting. Right now, we don't need to, but we better get that knowledge into our heads to pass to the kids, IMO.

Thanks, MG

WisJim

The latest issue of Countryside Magazine has an article about a solar food dryer, invented by some friends of ours. We built one a few years ago, and it works well here in Wisconsin. Part of the article is on-line:
http://www.countrysidemag.com/issues/4_1999.htm#drying
The current issue has pictures and more about the dryer. A booklet with plans and construction info is available.
A 2000 article about it is available to purchase online:http://owlcroft.com/owlcroft/house-design-books/free.php?in=us&asin=B0008J0X4G
I can't find a link to the current article in the magazine.

smallpoxgirl · Moderator Joined: Nov 08, 2004 Posts: 5212

WisJim

We just dried a bunch of onions, in our electric food dehydrator. Don't remember what the make/model is, but it looks like a microwave, has 9 square racks. It took 2 of us about an hour to peal and slice up a couple of gallon buckets of small onions, too small to braid into strings that we store in the root cellar. Then we put them in the food drier for about 20 hours, and ended up with almost a half gallon of dried onions. They usually keep for at least a few years, at least that has been our experience doing this in the past. And we used the smaller onions that are harder to store and don't get used as soon as the nicer bigger onions. The dried onions can be crumbled up in sauces, etc., and help thicken the sauce or soup or stew, etc, as they absorb moisture.

It has been too cloudy or overcast, too much of the day, here lately to use our solar food dryer, but I am using wind and solar produced electricity to run the electric dryer.