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When the power goes out, you won’t be able to rely on electric-powered refrigeration to keep your healthy fruits and vegetables fresh. Given the state of the world today and the fact that panic buying is becoming the norm in grocery stores all over the country, you may want to consider alternative ways for keeping your produce fresh for as long as possible. You can still do this by utilizing cold storage.
Cold storage is simply the act of keeping your fruits, vegetables, meats and other foods in a cold place for preservation. This usually means – but is not limited to – keeping your food in the refrigerator. For example, the Inuit people, who live most of their lives near or inside the Arctic circle, were confident enough of the temperature to bury their meats in ice. These meats would ferment over the months and still be good to eat when they dug them back up.
Before you attempt this survival food storage technique, consider where you would keep your fruits and vegetables. (Related: Stockpiling perishables: How to store fresh fruits and vegetables for the long term.)
Once you’ve decided on a place to store your fruits and vegetables, here are several factors to consider when you begin putting your produce in your cold storage.
Don’t forget that dry and moist vegetables need to be preserved differently as well. Dry vegetables need more space but require less effort in storing. They can take up any unused, dark spaces in your storeroom. Keep them off the floor, and don’t let them touch each other. If you need to stack them on top of or next to each other, they will need to be checked on more frequently, and any that start to spoil removed.
Moist vegetables, on the other hand, will require a little more effort. They cannot be exposed to the air so you will need to keep them in containers. You can use peat, sand, sawdust, newspaper, plastic bags or cardboard boxes. If you use plastic bags, poke a few holes in them to help excess moisture escape.
For more information about different ways to store your food, be sure to check out the articles at FoodStorage.news.
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