Preserving by Making it Small

S.D. and I have been canning and preserving the summer's bounty as much as we can, and have observed that 2011 has been the year of the experiment.  One experiment that has gone reasonably well is dehydrating foods.  Generally, I freeze things or can them up, but some things just can handle dehydration well and take up far less room that way.  After my sister, F.J. had a power outage that lasted for about a week, S.D. and I started thinking about what would be lost if the ZA came to being, and there was no power anymore, how would we deal with things, then?

So we figure, food storage that lasts a while but needs no additional energy to maintain, that means canning or dehydrating for now.  So far, we've dehydrated peppers, tomatoes, celery, pumpkins, and onions, all of which are easily powdered for use in recipes as seasonings, sneaky vegetables, flour replacements, thickeners, and a wider culinary repertoire.  There is higher energy use at the start end of things, but less for long-term storage.

We're practicing FIFO and other forms of stock rotation, and labeling is a must for this situation, but so far it's looking pretty good.  It goes back to something I learned the hard way: there is often more than one right way to do things.  We're just figuring out which right way is best for us.

Along with the year of the experiment, we are keeping notebooks of what we're doing.  If humanity rises again, perhaps they might want a record of all that we're figuring out, or, we just won't make the same mistakes twice.  

As a bonus, while doing these things, the grocery bill has come down considerably, and we're eating less and less processed food with ingredients we can't pronounce, less GMOs and other nasty things.  Hopefully it will keep us alive longer and less like the walking dead.