Food Preservation Disasters

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It’s ain’t 24/7 kittens and rainbows at the Root Simple compound. We do have our homesteading disasters. I was reminded of this after I emptied a box full of failed home preservation projects and contemplated a stinky trash can filled with a slurry of bad pickles and too-loose jams.

Of course you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet and, in the interest of learning from mistakes, I thought I’d review two lessons learned.

Not Using Tested Recipes
I vow to use tested recipes from trusted sources. Both for food safety reasons and culinary reasons, it’s a good idea to use trusted sources for home preservation projects. Some of the recipes I tried were from unfamiliar books and dubious websites. Some sources I’ve come to trust:

Between those two sources I’ve got just about all the recipes I need.

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One Ring to rule them all
When you’re done processing jars and they’ve cooled down, remove the screw bands. Why?

  • So you can clean underneath the band to prevent spoilage and bugs.
  • The screw band can create a false seal.
  • Leaving the screw bands on can cause corrosion.

That’s advice from our own blog and yet I failed, for some reason, to remove the bands on many of the jars I emptied. I found all three of the above problems as a result.

Have you had any epic food preservation disasters?

Sauerkraut demo at the Hollywood Farmers Market

Photo: Library of Congress

Photo: Library of Congress

Fellow Master Food Preserver Shelley Marks and I will be doing a sauerkraut demo this Sunday February 2nd at the Hollywood Farmers Market. We’ll make the kraut at 10 am and 12 pm. Between the kraut demos we’ll be sitting in the Master Food Preserver and Master Gardener table to answer questions for the duration of the market. Please drop by and say hello! It’s freeeeeeeeee!

Roots Simple’s Last Minute Gift Guide

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A KCET blogger asked a couple of Master Food Preservers, including myself, what we thought would be good gifts for homesteady types. We all came up with, pretty much, the same items. Here’s the ones I suggested:

Saving the Season by Kevin West. We reviewed this book a few months ago but I’ll say it again: this is my favorite book on food preservation.

417AOIGAt9LExcalibur dehydrator with stainless steel trays. Expensive, but this thing works a lot better than those cheap round dehydrators. Truly the Cadillac of deyhdrators.

il_570xN.503980826_66051.5 liter lactofermentation kit. Yes, you can make one yourself, but this is a nice all-glass model. Plus, when you buy this you are supporting Ernest Miller who has given countless volunteer hours to build LA’s Master Food Preserver program.

What did you give to the homesteaders in your life? Or did you forgo gifts altogether?

Hoshigaki Season

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Astringent persimmons (such as Hachiya) are in season now which means that it’s time to make hoshigaki, a Japanese delicacy made by hanging peeled persimmons up in a window to dry.

Hoshigaki are chewy and subtly sweet. The texture of hoshigaki is different than what you would get if you just put persimmons in a dehydrator. And if all goes right the sugar comes to the surface making it look like the fruit has been dipped in powdered sugar. If you can find them in a Japanese market they are extremely expensive. And the ones I saw at our local market were vastly inferior to my homemade hoshigaki.

I added some details to the instructions I posted last year. Don’t hesitate to leave a comment if you have any questions about making hoshigaki.

Primitive Grain Storage Technique

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When thinking about technology, I like to play with the idea of what is the absolute minimum you need to get the job done.  This may be because I’m not very handy at building things, but yet have survivalist tendencies. So while I’m pretty sure I’ll never actually have any need for these skills, it’s fun to think about how I’d get by in a DIY world.

So I was delighted when I ran across this minimalist grain storage technique on the BBC documentary series, A History of Celtic Britain (2011), hosted by Neil Oliver of the Delicious Scottish Accent. (I am watching it on YouTube. Fingers crossed the BBC will not take it down before I finish it!)  I love this technique because while it is simple, it is far from stupid.

The technique is described by the Dave Freeman of the Butser Ancient Farm in Hampshire, where they’ve been experimenting with grain storage iron-age style (c. 400 BCE.).  Turns out all you need to do is dig a pit in the soil. The pits they dug are circular, and look to be 2 or 3 feet in diameter, and maybe 3 or 4 feet deep.

So you may ask, how can you pour grain into a hole in the ground and expect it to keep? The secret is a clay cap on the top. In the screen grab below you can see the cap and some feet for scale:

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If you go to YouTube,  you can watch this sequence starting around 52:36, but what Freemen says is that when the grain goes in the pit and is sealed with a clay cap, the clay blocks out moisture, air and light. Moisture is still available at the sides and bottom of the pit, of course, especially as they are in green Hampshire.

The grain touching the sides of the pit sucks the moisture out of the soil at the edges, and uses it to attempt to germinate. The germination process sucks up oxygen and releases carbon dioxide, effectively clearing the chamber of oxygen. At that point, as Neil puts it, “Time stops.” Nothing can grow, nothing changes. The grain cache keeps for at least a year, perhaps two years, and provided a very handy safety backup for hard working iron age farmers. And some very basic appropriate tech for modern armchair survivalists to ponder.