LTS

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Enemies of food storage

img_0044Light:  Exposure to light can cause degradation of taste, appearance and nutritional quality of food. Fat soluble vitamins and proteins are most likely to be affected by light. Store your food in opaque containers.

Temperature: Improper temperature for storage causes nutrient loss and degrades the texture of food. Essentially, food that’s too hot begins to cook and decay, and food that’s too cold begins preserving. Between 40-70 F is best, and in general closer to the cooler side is desirable. The storage life of most food products is cut in half for every increase of 18 degrees Fahrenheit. In a garage or attic, temperature may fluctuate between too hot and  too cold because these places usually don’t have insulation or controlled heat  and air conditioning.  Consider both temperature and consistency of temperature when choosing a LTS location.

Humidity / Moisture:  Too much moisture promotes an atmosphere where microorganisms can grow and chemical reaction in foods causing deterioration that ultimately can sicken us.  Mold in your food is no bueno. Some foods stored in a root cellar situation need a certain amount of humidity, but it’s typically in a specific range. Root cellaring is typically storing food for weeks or months too, and not years.

Pests: Insects and rodents can ruin your LTS if they manage to invade.  Sometimes grains can have an undetectable insect infestation that will eventually become apparent, which is why some people freeze grains and flours before storing.  Others include diatomaceous earth in their packaging, which deters pests, but doesn’t harm humans.  Rodents can be very persistent. If they’re hungry enough, they will get through even the strongest packaging. That’s why you should invest in some 5-gallon food grade buckets for your food and consider traps or repellents in your LTS area.

Oxygen / Air:  The presence of oxygen allows bacteria, microorganisms and pests to thrive and survive in your food.  In addition, many nutrients oxidize in an oxygen rich environment. Over time, oxygen changes the appearance, flavor, and texture of food. When fats oxidize they become rancid.

Time: It marches on, and everything gets old and loses taste, texture, nutrition, or even becomes inedible.  Rotating your food storage is important unless you are talking about very long storage foods (25+ year stuff that you buy, store and “forget”).

Human Nibblers: Kids seeking snacks.  Husbands seeking snacks.  While neither is likely to get into a bucket of lentils, no pack of granola bars is safe in my house.  I have to admit to being guilting of popping open a can of Thrive freeze dried yougurt bits; and those things, my friends, are not cheap!  If possible, store foods that tempt your human nibblers out of sight, repackaged to camouflage them.

Improper Packaging & Improper Handling: The issue here is that doing either thing can compromise your food and allow one of the other threats to your food storage to get a foothold and start degrading your supplies.  A small crack in your bucket, storing food with too many or too few oxygen absorbers, using non food grade containers that leech chemicals into your food – just a few things you might inadvertently do rendering all your effort and money moot.

Storing food is insurance; do it right.

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Food Storage, Frugality, & Feeding my Family

One thing to do now is to practice feeding my family from my food storage.  Not just making meals entirely from storage, although that’s good practice too, but just using what’s there so it gets rotated and such as I go.  While working on tightening up my finances, I started creating monthly menus to reduce food waste, make multiple meals from one cut of meat, make shopping lists easy, and cut back on my impulse purchases.  Sometimes I need to be flexible to take advantage of what’s in my CSA box or what’s on sale at the store, but overall I am finding my menus useful.  This dinner made use of all those things.

White Beans & Ham, Skillet Cornbread, and Sautéed Greens

I had a meaty hambone in the freezer from an earlier ham dinner.  I put it in with lots of meat on the bone with the intention of using for a lentil soup or something like that.  I had collard greens, leeks, and some peppers in my box, so I weighed out a pound of white beans and set them to soaking the night before.  The original recipe below.  I added leeks and peppers in addition to the onion, and I sautéed them a little before adding the other ingredients.  I reduced the sugar by half, because I don’t like overly sweet beans.  I also tossed in a bay leaf (removed before serving).  Instead of the diced ham, I threw in the whole bone, then at the end pulled it, pulled off the meat, diced it up, and tossed it back in.  It took longer than 2 hours to get the beans tender enough.  Cooked up some cornbread in a cast iron skillet, and made super simple greens with a bit of lemon since everything else was so rich.  Yum.

White Beans & Ham

1 pound dry great Northern beans
1/2 pound cooked ham, diced
1 small onion, diced
1/2 cup brown sugar
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon dried parsley

Rinse beans in a large pot; discard shriveled beans and any small stones. Add 8 cups of cold water. Let stand overnight or at least 8 hours. Drain and rinse beans. Return beans to pot and add ham, onion, brown sugar, salt, pepper, cayenne and parsley and water to cover. Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until beans are tender. Add more water if necessary during cooking time.

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Two things – the basic recipe would be very easy to make all LTS.  With spam instead of ham (I think I would add it in the last 30 minutes; it’s not as sturdy as real ham), and dehydrated onions, you could create it completely from shelf stable foods.  I think dehydrated carrots would be tasty in there.  And you could switch up the seasonings.  Ooh, I think mushroom powder would add  nice umami undertone too.

And … How do people weigh the benefits of storing dried beans v. canned?  Canned are so much heavier and take more space and are more expensive unless you get them on sale.  Plus they are way saltier, and what else is in there?  But dried beans, while they store easily, can last practically forever when stored properly and are dirt cheap, take so much more time to prepare.  And more water.  And lots more fuel. If you can nestle a Dutch oven in your heating fire, or you have a wood stove, maybe you can let them cook slowly away while you heat your space and kill 2 birds with one stone.  But if you are relying on a one burner camping stove, or a rocket stove, that’s a lot of fuel to one pot of beans.

Its one thing if you are “only” planning and prepping for a short term emergency or recoverable disaster.  Space isn’t as critical, and a bit of extra salt and crud in the cans in the short time frame won’t make much difference I suppose.  But for the long haul?  Some of each?  How to balance it?

p.s. I’m still not smoking.  I had some nicotine gum to take the edge off a couple times (I already had it from a flight last February, so no money wasted), but I haven’t had an actual cigarette in my hand for over 48 hours.  I’m grouchy. I’m hating it.  I’ve wanted to buy a pack soooo badly.   But I haven’t yet.