Episode-491- Storing Food, The Why, The How & The What
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Every once in a while I feel we need to back up and go back to basics especially due to the fact that we constantly have new folks showing up for the first time to check out the show. That said even when I revisit a topic I try to bring not material, new view points and new analogies to the table. Today we will discuss the why, how and what behind the often highly misunderstood concept of storing food.
Join me today to discuss…
- Why bother storing food today at all
- Is food storage a symptom of paranoia – (some say yes)
- Time travel back 100 years and everybody did it
- What makes an item a good candidate for storage
- You and your family eat it – duh right?
- The food journal your insurance against expensive charity
- It will last at minimum six months with out freezing/cold storage
- High caloric value or high nutritive value
- Is multipurpose
- Is easy to divide and barter
- Methods for finding room to store your food
- Rotational pantry
- Buckets, Bins and Boxes
- Utilizing “wasted space”
- Mini Root Cellars
- Important considerations
- Insuring food gets used and rotated
- Decentralized storage
- “Rolling your own”
- Drying/Dehydration
- Smoking
- Canning
- Pickling/Fermenting
- Jerky vs. Biltong
- Freezing has a place
- Food storage is one of the most rational actions a person can take
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Nit-picking on definitions: “Net importer of food” doesn’t necessarily mean that we import more food than we produce, it means we consume more than we produce, and import more than we export. If our national consumption is 100 arbitrary units, we could be producing 99, importing 6 and exporting 5.
But back to real concerns, if you subtract production of wheat, corn, and soy, which combined only provide a small portion of long term dietary health needs, we probably do import a significantly high percentage of our other calories.
Excited to find your podcast…hoping to be able to listen when I get to the city as my connection is too slow. Hope these are available to listen afterwards.
@Max, welcome man! They stay available forever, I have over 450 hours archived at this point. Each show can be looked up on the site and listened to or downloaded. You may be able to download them even on dial up just right click and save as where it says download. When you get to faster connection the most recent 60 are always in iTunes.
Fantastic! Thanks for letting me know.
What about storing multivitamins + high caloric foods instead of worrying so much about getting your vitamins from dehydrated spinach (and other stuff like that).
Jack:
Regarding your experiment with the dehydrator. I would say the freezer has a better chance. I took the Kill-Watt meter to my Excalibur and it was drawing 300 watts at 135F, continously. My freezer draws about 300 intermittedly (10cu foot) and it is full. The SLA battery in your inverter box probably has a 32ah battery, so I would only say one hour max with the dehydrator.
To follow up Jack the PowerDome Ex has an 18ah SLA. So volts x amps = watts, ergo 216 watt hours. If the dehydrator is on the lowest setting, you will be lucky if you get one hour. Since the Powerdome ex probably has a low voltage shutoff at about 11.4 Volts.
I have a few of these types of power boxes hanging around, and I’ve ripped the battery out of most of them and found a higher capacity battery that has the same form factor.
I’d still be interested in the video anyway
@Brent, You are probably right. Now I never dehydrate that high but I doubt it will make much of a difference. With seeing how long it will run a deep freeze I think it would have a lot to do with what time of year it was (since mine is in my garage). Also it would have to be monitored and done against a control.
In other words if I pull the plug on the freeze how long before it gets up to say 45 degrees internally. Then how much longer could that be maintained with the EX. Of course the device is not really meant to run either one of these types of things. I did run a small desk fan with one yesterday for over four hours.
@Johnny,
Multivitamins a part of my preps of course but I can grow spinach, I can grow carrot, I can grow comfrey, etc.
I have yet to figure out how to grow a vitamin. So in a short term crisis the vitamins are fine but in long term rebuilding they are a quite finite resource. That said we have enough on hand for two a day for everyone for a year.
The other aspect of veggies though are phytochemicals.
I’m interested in trying my hand at preserving meat with smoking, jerky and biltong. This is just something I’ve never gotten around to working on.
This show came at a good time as I re-organize my kitchen to make better use of my space.
Great show.
I wanted to buy a steel trashcan for food storage until I discovered
“Galvanized utensils (some types of old refrigerator
shelves for outdoor grilling, galvanized trash cans for quantity cooking, etc.) should never be used for food preparation or preservation.”
Source: http://web1.msue.msu.edu/imp/mod01/01600817.html
Maybe I’m just being paranoid?
@Johnny, not paranoid just over reaching. Would I dump a pile of loose rice into a galvanized can for storage, nope. Probably wouldn’t be a big deal since it isn’t acidic or moist but still would not do it. No contact with the metal no issues. So you package the food in food grade packaging and put that into the can. The can is not a storage tool so much as a protective one! It is for keeping pests out, the preservative packaging goes inside it.
I do think we can worry to much though and many do.
Hey Jack,
I had bird seed in a 5 gallon pail outside by the feeder and the squirrels were chewing on it. They chewed off about 5 inches off of the lip of the lid. Luckily they picked the easiest part for them to chew but the thickest part of the pail. With a little more time they would have gotten into the pail to the seeds.
@Archer,
Little jerks! LOL that’s why I have gone to galvanized cans.
I go to my local brew shop where they allow you to make win/beer on the premisis and the owner gladly gives me 5 gallon pails with lids. If they are safe for wine concentrate, heck, why not food. I have about ten thus far. I use them for food and I place them outside under the roof to collect rainwater. He gives away hundreds every year. The local mussel fisherman use then to seed mussles in the bay’s/ocean here.
@Brent, awesome idea and tip man, thanks for contributing.