Subtitle: Food Storage
According to several studies measuring food waste, people in industrialized countries waste almost ¼ of all the food they buy. 60% of the food they throw away has never been opened. Over 2 billion dollars worth of food thrown away is still within its "sell by" date, and ¼ of the food thrown away had reached its "sell by" date but was still well within its usable timeline. Bakery goods made up 19% of the waste; vegetables, in particular bagged salad greens, made up 18% of the waste; and meats, ready-made meals (like TV dinners) made up 21%, and fish, and dairy made up 18% - 5,500 whole chickens and 1.3 million unopened containers of fresh yogurt were thrown away every day! Only 24% of the food we throw away everyday is actually food that should be tossed, preferably in a compost bin.
That is a lot of food wastage. 76% of the food we throw away is still good, edible food - a large portion of it is food that's never removed from its original container.
What this tells me is that our food shortage problem begins well before the trash bin. It begins even before we enter the grocery store. We are buying food we don't eat. We buy that food - why? Because we've been influenced by nutritionists (all those unopened containers of yoghurt!), and advertisers (all those ready-made meals). We buy foods we think we should be buying and not the foods we really eat. Our pantries and refrigerators are stocked with foods that sit there until we get on a cleaning frenzy and throw it all out.
What we need to do to reduce such food waste is to start with our shopping habits. We should only buy those foods we actually eat. Go ahead, go look in your pantry and refrigerator. I'll wait. How much of that food do you look at and go "Ehh" or "eeww", that you'd far rather throw away than put in your mouth? Why do you have it there? Why are you wasting your money on food you won't eat? Why are you wasting space on food you won't eat?
If the food is still good, give it away. Don't buy it again. If it's past its expiration date and compostable, put it in your compost bin - or give it to someone who has a compost bin. America isn't enlightened enough yet to have community composting programs everywhere as part of the recycling program, so we have to find individuals who compost. That's a far better use for expired food than tossing it in a landfill and worth the tiny bit of effort. Everything else (meats, mostly) can be disposed of in the trash for city dwellers.
When you shop, don't buy foods you don't eat. Don't buy a dozen containers of yoghurt if you know you'll just throw them away without ever opening them. Even if you're stockpiling food for an emergency, don't buy food you won't eat. It makes no sense to have 20 cans of diced peaches in your stockpiled food if you detest peaches. This rule sounds simple, but it needs to be stated because we're obviously too heavily influenced by forces outside ourselves when it comes to buying food. We buy bagged greens because it's convenient, then don't eat them because they don't taste "fresh", or we think their limpness means they've started rotting, so we toss the whole bag. What a waste.
So much food is thrown away because we don't know how to manage it or store it or tell when it's no longer edible. We have an aversion in America to eating leftovers. This is an attitude we need to change because leftovers aren't evil, or bad-tasting (you liked it the first time you ate it, why wouldn't you like it the second time around?), or spoiled - not if you prepared it right.
A huge portion of urban survival skills includes knowing what foods to buy, how much to buy, how to store it, how to prepare it, and how to dispose of it. That seems like a lot of things to learn about food. Food should be simple, right? And it is, it really is. It only seems complicated because I'm making you think about all the different aspects of it that you deal with unthinkingly. Once you have given it thought and incorporated your new knowledge into your food habits, you can go back to not giving it a lot of thought. It will take far less time than you think it does right now.
Simply put:
1. buy what you eat,
2. buy the amount you will eat,
3. store your food properly,
4. preserve what you can't eat right away,
5. trust your own senses in handling food,
6. cook it right, and
7. recycle what's rotting, spoiled, or inedible.
Knowing what foods to buy is simple enough: buy what you actually eat. It really truly is that simple.
If you feel you're stuck in a culinary rut and want to sample new foods or new dishes, you have several inexpensive options that won't waste food or break your budget. One is to eat at a restaurant that serves food different from what you normally prepare. If you discover you don't like the food, you won't be wasting a lot of ingredients. A better way is to either take a cooking class (frequently offered by some upscale grocery stores, delis, or kitchen supply stores as well as continuing education classes at community colleges), ask the people selling their produce at a farmer's market how they prepare their food, or ask a friend to teach you. A third way is by sharing potluck meals with a larger group of people and asking for recipes from dishes you like - church potlucks, family reunions, wedding receptions, company picnics, an office potluck, ethnic festivals, cook-offs, county fairs, food festivals, and other such events are common enough in urban settings. All of these methods allow you to sample different foods and collect recipes of the dishes you like. This will let you expand both your daily foods and your special occasion foods. Bottom line here is always buy what you eat.
Quantity is another area some people find tricky. Real food rots - eventually. So how much can you buy before you've bought too much and have to throw a lot of it away? A good rule of thumb for buying fresh produce is to buy only what you will actually eat in 4 days. That's about how long most fresh fruits and vegetables will last in the average refrigerator.
If you plan to preserve what you buy (freeze, can, dehydrate, pickle, ferment, salt) buy only as much as you will preserve the day you buy it. If you aren't planning on canning the day you shop, don't buy that peck of tomatoes or bushel of blueberries. The food will rot before you get around to preserving it if you plan to put it up "later". In my experience, later comes after you've tossed the food. The only time you should buy more fresh produce than you will eat in four days is if you have cleared your schedule to preserve the excess immediately.
There are a few tricks to help your produce last a bit longer if you buy 4 days' worth and something happens where you can't eat it that quickly (you get a stomach flu, you have to go out of town, whatever). When you buy salad greens, remove it from its plastic wrapper (if it came in one) and wrap it loosely in foil. Seal the edges. Keep it in your crisper drawer. You can wash and re-use the foil until it falls apart, then recycle it with your other aluminum. If the greens wilt, you can revive them by cutting an inch off the bottoms and soaking it in cold water for 10 minutes. This works for spinach, kale, chard, salad greens, mustard greens, turnip green, radish greens, fiddleheads, and fresh pea greens.
Fresh corn in the husk only lasts a day or two, so eat it immediately or buy lots and preserve it. Corn freezes exceptionally well, but do spend the time to dhusk and de-silk it first.
Citrus fruits, like lemons and limes and oranges, are best kept at cool room temperatures in a wire basket for air circulation. They'll last about 2 weeks this way. If you aren't going to use citrus fruits in that 2 week period, zest them and dry the zest as an ingredient, then juice the pulp and freeze it in ice cube trays, then put the cubes in freezer bags. You can also push cloves into old citrus fruits and use them to freshen linens or closets. Or decorate the cloved citrus balls with ribbons and lace and use them as gifts or holiday ornaments.
Berries and cherries should be kept in paper bags or tightly lidded bowls in the refrigerator. Don't wash them because moisture causes them to spoil quickly. Remember the 4 day rule and eat them within that 4 days.
Bananas and avocados are best kept at room temperature and they will keep ripening. Bananas that aren't ripening can be ripened by placing them in a paper bag with an apple. If they still don't ripen after a week, they've been picked too early and transported at too low a temperature, so make chutney with them. If you don't use a whole avocado, leave the pit in the cut portion and store it in the refrigerator in a tightly lidded bowl. The pit helps keep the avocado from browning.
Eggplants, potatoes, onions, winter squashes, rutabagas, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and mushrooms are best kept in a cool dark place between 50ºF and 55ºF, the refrigerator is too cold. These should last 3-5 months in proper storage, so you can buy more of these. Vidalia onions are sweeter than most other onions and will rot quicker, so I recommend chopping, freezing on a tray, and then vacuum sealing and storing them in the freezer if you aren't going to use them within 2 weeks.
Bell peppers and cucumbers should be stored unwashed in the crisper drawer of the refrigerator. Bell peppers freeze well, but cucumbers don't unless you've pickled them first. Excess bell peppers can be chopped, spread out ona tray and frozen, then bagged and kept in the freezer. Cucumbers can be pickled or fermented for long term storage. Bell peppers can be roasted and canned, and can also be pickled.
Fresh asparagus can last up to three days in the refrigerator if you wrap them in a damp towel first. Otherwise, expect them to only last a day or two. Asparagus doesn't freeze well in its entirety. You can blanch and freeze the tips, then separately blanch and freeze the peeled stems. If you try to freeze the tip and stem together, they won't thaw or cook well as the stem is denser than the tip. You'll get mushy tips and tough stems. If you can asparagus, be sure to peel and trim the stems.
Cabbage and celery can last up to three weeks in a crisper drawer if wrapped loosely in either foil or a paper bag. Celery freezes well - chop, spread out on a tray to freeze, then bag and store in the freezer. Do not freeze entire cabbage heads - they don't that and cook well afterwards. You can shred cabbage and freeze it for adding to soups, stews, and side dishes or making into Bubble and Squeak (a dish of fried cabbages, onions, and diced or mashed potatoes, and maybe a bit of bacon). Cabbage and onions can also be pickled, fermented, or canned.
If you're storing carrot and parsnips in the refrigerator, remove the tops, and wrap them in foil. They'll keep up to three weeks. If you want to freeze them, peel them, cut them into cooking sized pieces, blanch or partially cook them, spread them out ona tray to freeze before bagging them and storing them in the freezer.
Radishes need to keep their leaves in the refrigerator. Store loosely wrapped in foil. You can cook and eat the radish greens. Radishes can also be sautéed and eaten as a hot side dish. They should keep 2 weeks in a refrigerator. Radishes intended for the stew pot can be frozen. Shredded radishes can also be frozen and make a good addition to sauces.
Apricots, pears, peaches, nectarines, plums, mangoes, kiwis, and melons should be ripened before they are stored in the refrigerator. They all only last 2 -3 days and should be eaten as quickly as possible. If you can't eat them that fast, there are a large number of ways to preserve them.
Parsley and cilantro should be trimmed and set in a jar of water in the refrigerator for a week. Basil can be set in water at room temperature for a week. All three can be frozen at any time during this. Thyme and rosemary can be kept fresh in the refrigerator in a paper bag for about a week, then they can be dried and stored in an airtight jar.
Apples should not be stored beside or below potatoes because they exude ethylene gas, which sprouts the potatoes and ripens other fruits (which is why you put an apple in a bag of bananas to ripen them). You can store apples above potatoes, but not too close. Apples also need to be stored loosely and do well in a refrigerator. They can be kept in the refrigerator for up to 4 months if you remove any that show signs of rotting. They will wrinkle and shrivel some, but they are still good. If you don't like eating withered apples, you can cook with them, they make outstanding applesauce and pies.
Bread goes stale quickly, especially artisan breads. Keep it in a dark dry place at room temperature, and it except for sweet breads, it should keep between 4 and 7 days. Clay breadboxes are the best. A closed paper bag in a wooden bread box is good. For longer storage, freezing is your best option. Rolls can be frozen whole and small breads can be frozen whole and stored in resealable bags to remove what you want from them. Loaf breads will not get freezer burn as easily if frozen whole and uncut, but then you have to thaw the entire loaf and it will go stale in 2 - 3 days after thawing. You can slice loaf breads and store like rolls, removing a few slices at a time. Be careful not to allow moisture and too much air into the bag or the bread will get freezer burn. Bread can be dried for bread crumbs and sealed in airtight jars, and it can be toasted for croutons and stored in airtight jars. Dried bread can last several years.
Bread that has gone stale can be refreshed by several methods. Soft crusted breads can be wrapped in foil and heated in the oven at 350ºF for about 10 minutes. Crusty artisan breads can be misted with water and put in a pre-heated oven at 400ºF for about 7 minutes. Toasting always makes bread fresher, as does frying it in butter.
If you lack refrigeration, zeer pots can be used in its place. The zeer is a large pot inside which fits another smaller pot with a clay lid. The space between the two pots is filled with sand, creating an insulating layer around the inner pot. In very hot weather, the sand is then kept damp by adding water at regular intervals - generally twice a day - reducing the temperature within the inner pot. It acts like an evaporation refrigerator, like what we used to make when we were in Camp Fire or Scouts on our wilderness camping trips.
Zeer pots aren't available in the US, but any potter can make them. We can probably make suitable substitutes by buying a very large unglazed clay pot with no drainage holes (or plugging the drainage holes with cork) and a smaller unglazed clay pot that fits inside, and using the unglazed clay saucer as a lid.
If you are guerrilla gardening in a city, you can also plan for root cellaring your harvests. If you've gotten permission from the city or from the lot owner, you can build simple barrel or trash can root cellars with very little effort. This
(http://www.ext.colostate.edu/...) website has easy plans for a barrel, mound, or pit root cellar. These temporary root cellars can keep root vegetables and some fruits like apples for 3 or 4 months. The garbage can/barrel root cellar is best for both very cold climates and cities with a high rodent problem (squirrels count as a rodent problem as well as rats and rabbits). The mound root cellar, with good drainage, is suitable for warmer climates.
It's good to have these food caches for the days when fuel prices make trucked in food too expensive to buy. It's fall, so now is a great time to plan for your food needs for spring planting. Plan your guerrilla gardens and balcony gardens and rooftop gardens and abandoned building gardens and window box gardens with an eye towards what you want to eat. Plan places for your root cellars and start collecting barrels or trash cans in which to store your harvests. Think of these root cellars as your free grocery stores, and go "shopping" in them between harvests.
Those who live in the suburbs and have a bit of yard space can build one of these in their yard, or can build an actual full sized root cellar. In a well built root cellar, most root vegetables and fruits can last up to 6 months.
All of this is about storing fresh foods. Let's talk briefly now about preserving foods for longer periods of time. Later, we'll have diaries covering these various preservation and storage methods. In the city, you're probably thinking "Freezer" because you have electricity and freezers are easy. Sure, freezers are a great way to store lots and lots of food. But what if the power goes out? What if it stays out? What will you do with all that frozen food that will soon start to rot?
Canning is naturally the next thought. It's simple enough to do, and there is a lot of good information about canning easily available practically everywhere. Our own tonyahky is writing a series on canning here at Practical Survival. You can get Mason, Kerr, and Ball canning jars at flea markets, garage sales, and estate sales. The screw-on bands of the lids can also be found at flea markets, garage sales, and estate sales. Only buy ones which are still sound and not rusty. Buy the lids new and don't reuse the lids because they won't seal well a second time, and you're just begging to get botulism by reusing the lids. If you've scored a box of the old glass-lidded wire bale canning jars with the rubber seal, those are good for storing grains and pastas and beans, but not for canning. Replacement gaskets are no longer being manufactured that can survive the canning process. If you decide to can (and that's always a very good option), use the more modern Kerr and Mason jars, with new lids. Get a good canning book (Kerr and Ball still publish them) and take a canning class from a friend who cans or at a local vo-tech. Canning food can be done without electricity, all you need is a good fire and something to hold the canning pot steady above the fire.
Dehydrating is a very good option for preserving food. You can dehydrate without electricity as well. Once the food is dehydrated, you can (if you have electricity) vacuum seal it in bags or jars, or store it in jars with tight-fitting lids, then keep them in a cool, dark place.
Meats can be smoked to preserve them, then hung in a cool dry place. They can also be salt cured or sugar cured, or potted. We will eventually have diaries on these methods.
Fruits can be sugar cured, like candied orange peels or glace fruits. Combined with brandy, sugar curing is an excellent choice for fruits that will be later served in desserts.
Pickling is a well-known method of preserving cucumbers to get - wait for it - pickles. We can also pickle cauliflower, peppers, herring, eggs, carrots, olives, onions, celery, zucchini, and pimientos.
Hominy, lutefisk, and century eggs are preserved in lye.
Kimchi, sauerkraut, curtido, nukazuke, cheeses, vinegar, alegar, poi, tempeh, tofu, and yoghurt are all fermented foods. Some, like sauerkraut, last longer than others, like yoghurt.
After you've bought, stored, or preserved your food, the next step is making sure the food you eat is edible, and not full of botulism, salmonella, or hasn't spoiled or rotted. Store bought foods come with expiration dates, also called "use by" dates or "sell by" dates. These dates are not necessarily there for the consumer, but for the seller. Many of these foods should still be safe to eat for days after the marked date, and sometimes weeks, or even months. How can you tell if your food is still good to eat if those expiration dates aren't meant for you?
Look at the food. If it looks spoiled, or has mold growing on it, or looks like it's rotting, most fresh produce or fruit may still be edible. Hard and semi soft cheese with mold on it can still be eaten if you scrape the mold off. Obviously, this works best with brick cheeses. If it's shredded cheese and has mold in it, throw away the moldy bits and eat what's left that day if you can. If not, rebag the shredded cheese in a clean, fresh bag. It should still be good for another couple of days. Bananas are edible long after they look rotten. The skin will turn black and it will become very soft. It will also become very sweet. This is the best time to bake banana breads, or use the banana in pancakes and muffins, or use it to make jams. If fruit or vegetables look spoiled, a lot of time, the spoiled bits can be cut off and the rest eaten. One exception is sprouting potatoes. Do not eat potatoes that have sprouted more than a centimeter, and cut the sprouted bit out - potato sprouts, unlike most other sprouts, are very poisonous. If the skin has turned green on potatoes, peeling to the white part is the safest way to eat them. The green skin isn't technically poisonous, but it's not healthy to eat. If you're in doubt and you don't have anyone knowledgeable around with whom you can consult, toss it in the compost bin.
For canned foods, if the can is bulging, throw it away. It's not safe for compost or eating. If you've canned the food yourself, the lid will bulge if it's no longer safe to eat. Open it, toss the contents, sterilize the band ad jar, toss the lid and buy new for future canning.
For frozen meats, if it has freezer burn on it, most of the rest of it will still be edible. Freezer burn just means the food has not been properly wrapped for freezing and a portion of it was exposed to the air, where it dried and froze. You can cut off the freezer burned portion before cooking or after cooking, it really doesn't affect the taste. The texture may be off, but if you use it in a stew or casserole, that may not be noticeable. Freezer burned vegetables and fruits are still edible, but they are tough. I'd put them out in the compost unless I was starving.
Freezer burned bread isn't edible. It can be put in the compost.
Moldy bread can still be eaten if you remove the moldy bits and toast what's left. Eat it the day it starts molding, or toast it for toasted bread crumbs and store it in either a tightly sealed jar (Tilia vacuum sealers have an attachment that lets you vacuum seal Mason jars - an excellent way to store these bread crumbs!) or the freezer.
Cooking food well is a lengthy article all on its own. So I'll skip that for now and we'll come back to it later.
Any food that hasn't been contaminated with botulism or salmonella or something similar can be tossed into a compost bin and that's the preferred method of disposing of uneaten food and the odd bit cut off for cooking - peels, potato eyes, and the like.
Worm composting is a viable composting solution for city dwellers - you can keep a good worm farm in a 10 gallon plastic bin. Newspapers or shredded paper egg cartons make good bedding for the worms, and they will eat practically any raw vegetable or fruit. They will not handle meat, oil, or fats of any sort, and can only take limited amounts od citrus. It takes about 3 months for a 10 gallon container to produce worm castings that you can use to enhance your garden soil.
If you are involved in guerrilla gardening in the city, you might be able to put a compost bin on one or more of the gardening sites.
If your community or city is really into recycling, you might have a community composting program where you drop off your food wastes once a week and can collect compost for your garden. Organizing a community compost could be a profitable small business that would take very little of your day and provide you not only with compost, but community contacts to barter and trade your produce - thereby expanding your food choices.
Doing these few things can seriously reduce your garbage pile, increase your personal wealth by reducing the cost of buying food, save you some storage space, and improve your garden, your local environment, and broaden your circle of acquaintances.