Preserving
food has become an important focus of many families. After reading this
article, you will understand what is involved in preserving and be able to
decide if it’s for you. Food prices are soaring, and food quality and
quantities are decreasing. You can save lots of money by buying things on sale
or take advantage of bulk purchases, because you can preserve the food and use
it later. You will be protecting yourself and your family by having safely
stored nutritious food in the event of an emergency, and you can help your
neighbors. With all these pluses, it’s a wonder why everyone isn’t preserving
food. Methods for preserving will be discussed in enough detail for you to
learn about the primary ways to preserve foods, the pitfalls to look out for
that can interfere with good practices, and how you can adopt a preserving
program.
Why
preserve food?
Because
of the changing times, interest in preserving food has grown as families become
more and more concerned about providing healthy, delicious food for their
families over the long haul. When you preserve food, you are maximizing the
nutritional value while changing the food’s structure for long-term storage.
Preserving your own food guarantees higher nutrition, which translates into
better health. Preserving food has always been a strategy for surviving hard
economic times without experiencing poor nutrition. This article is divided
into three parts. We’ll begin by looking at the two goals for preserving
successfully. Then, we’ll look at the most popular methods for preserving, and
we’ll end with basic tools to have in your home to begin a preserving program.
Two
Goals for Preserving
You
can preserve foods by drying, dehydrating, canning (hot bath), vacuum sealing,
freezing, and smoking. Your first goal in preserving is to pick adequate types
of food. You need to consider a food’s nutritional value and track how much of
each food group you have so you keep an adequate supply. Pick foods based on
the overall nutritional value they will provide, which can be found in foods
that are fresh, natural, or organic, representing a good variety, and in good
quantities.
Goal
1: Adequate Types of Food
Your
body thrives best on certain types of foods and will get sick when deprived of
the right kinds of these foods. Think of the scurvy epidemic, which was a
simple lack of vitamin C, that killed many immigrants sailing the long voyage
to America. If you’re going to go through the trouble of buying, growing,
preserving, and storing food, then pick foods adequate for providing proper
nutrition. Your time and resources will be better spent if you choose foods
with a premium for good health, giving you the most bang for your buck.
Not-with-standing some comfort foods are definitely encouraged, e.g. jelly
beans, chocolate, and so forth.
Fresh,
Organic, or All Natural – These are foods that are either recently
harvested at the time of preserving, and/or are grown or processed with little
or no preservatives, hormones, chemicals, or dyes. It’s a fact that consuming
these types of foods brings you to optimum health. Keep in mind that foods that
have been stored and transported in plastics, though claiming to be organic or
all natural could have chemicals that leached out from the plastics, due to
heat. These “leeched” chemicals have been responsible for some cancers.
Good
Varieties –
Having a good variety of foods allows your body to benefit from different
enzymes, minerals, and vitamins. Too much of one type of nutrient, or not
getting enough of other types of nutrients, will make you sick. Poor nutrition
causes your body to have a lower resistance when you get sick. Strong, general
health will enable your body to fight infection or illness better. Having a
good variety of foods assures that trace minerals will be consumed, and this
helps you in ways you are unaware and in ways that science does not even know
yet. It has been recently discovered, for example, that if you eat honey from
your region you will become more immune to allergens in that region. Since we
don’t know what we don’t know, it’s best to eat a big variety of foods. It is
also better for your body, appetite, digestion, and sugar levels to eat small,
frequent meals and snacks and not to eat too late in the day.
Good
Quantities
– Try to keep plenty of food around. This will ensure enough healthy foods to
choose from and help you to eat small, frequent meals. You will eat what is
available – both good and bad, so be proactive in your planning, and pay
attention to what’s in the pantry and frig.
Food
Groups -
Learn about the benefits of eating food groups that complement each other. For
example, fruit and dairy combined eases the stomach and helps digestion, but
red meat consumed with milk is very unsettling to the stomach. Foods rich in
vitamin C help your body absorb foods rich in Vitamin A, like fish. Overcooking
meat destroys enzymes naturally present and necessary to properly digest the
meat. Learn about and use this type of information to your advantage.
Goal
2: Safely Preserve Foods
Your
second goal is to make sure that, when you preserve, you do it safely. To be
safe, you will need to consider sanitation, temperature, moisture, storage
methods, and a rotation plan.
Sanitation – You would be
surprised at the many ways you can contaminate your food, such as simply
touching something briefly when you’re preparing food. For example, if you’re
in the middle of preparing or preserving something and you pick up the back of
a chair to move it, you could pick up the last thing your friend, spouse, or
child was working on outside when they came in and moved the same chair a few
minutes ago, like shoveling manure, working in the compost pile, or cleaning
your dog’s ears out! Don’t touch anything around you when you are in the middle
of preserving. Wash your hands frequently.
Temperature – You will have
to consider temperature in almost all you do when cooking, preserving, and
storing food. For example, you use boiling water during the canning process in
glass jars, and you will need to achieve certain ideal temperatures for
properly storing all your preserved foods. There are also taste benefits to
using temperature correctly, such as heating up oil in a pan to a very high
temperature before laying anything in the pan to cook. Don’t dismiss mentions
of temperatures when following directions for cooking or preserving.
Moisture – Moisture
causes mold; moisture prevents herbs from drying properly so they can be ground
up; and moisture causes caking of powders, spices, and salt. Controlling the
humidly of your storage area will be essential.
Rotation – An important
part of preserving involves a plan to use the oldest items first to cycle all
items through storage. Make your own method for utilizing older foods before
newer foods. You can color-code items to indicate old vs. new, write labels, or
use shelf space location to store items in a way that lets you know what is
older. We have a simple rotation method in our pantry for “staples” (catsup,
mayo, peanut butter, barbecue sauce, and salad dressing). We buy large
quantities of these staples, because I always stock up when it’s “buy one get
one free” (BOGO). I store them close to our living space, because we use them
all of the time. Our method for rotation is to “add to the back and left; take
from the front and right”.
Seeds
If
you are a gardener, you will want to know how to preserve seeds properly. Seeds
need to be clean and dry to store them properly. Below is the process to soak,
skim, rinse, dry, and store seeds. Seeds need a lot of TLC. We keep them in a
cool, dry, dark place. I add to them and look through them every few months to
contemplate what I’ll be “starting” in my seed starter trays for next season.
There
are two types of seeds– heirloom and non-heirloom seeds. Heirloom seeds are
seeds that produce a food whose seeds can produce the same food again,
perpetually. Non-heirloom seeds will produce food, but after the first time,
the seeds from that plant will either not produce at all or will produce an
inferior plant, whose seeds will not be viable.
Soak – Soaking seeds
is the first step in preparing them to preserve. Seeds found in “wet” fruits
and vegetables, like tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash need to be soaked to
remove all organic matter. Seeds that don’t need “soaking” are dry seeds such
as those found on the outside of plants, like in flowering parts of lettuce and
broccoli. Check your literature for where seeds are obtained from each plant
and when they should be gleaned, if you’re not sure.
The first thing you do is take the
strongest samples from your crop. Take seeds from a mature fruit or fully
grown, flowering plant.
Take the seeds out and put them in water
(room temperature) in a bowl. Do not use chlorinated water. Cover them
with a napkin and set the bowl aside on the counter for about three days.
You can stir it a few times to loosen
the organic matter, but don’t stir them near the time you are going to do the
next step– skim, rinse, and dry.
Skim,
Rinse, and Dry -
After a few days of soaking, do the following:
The bad seeds float to the top, so skim
the seeds off the top along with the organic matter that rose to the top, and
throw this away.
Rinse the rest of the seeds, and then
lay them out on a plate. You want them clean of any organic matter.
After they are completely dry (several
days later), scrape them off the plate into a jar or plastic bag. Label and
date your seeds.
Store – Store in a
cool dry, dark place. If there are seeds you haven’t used in several years, you
don’t necessarily need to throw them out. They may still be good, but don’t
count on them. Always have two or three generations of seeds, properly labeled.
Use the older seeds first. If you want to discard any, pick a place on your
property that may get adequate amounts of sun and rain naturally, and throw
them there. You may have volunteer plants come up in a year or two.
In
Part 2 of this article, we’ll get much further into the subject by taking a
look at preserving methods and tools in detail.
From
the Survival Blog