We Make Do Without A Refrigerator

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A big aid in our initial adjustment to a life without refrigeration was the fact that we're almost entirely food self-sufficient. Virtually everything we eat is provided fresh on a day-to-day basis. For example, our milk is consumed within hours of the time it comes from the cow, and what's left over is made into butter and cheese. Likewise, our meat (which includes chickens, guineas, ducks, rabbits, and deer when in season) is either eaten fresh or dried right away. Hence—because we rarely buy meat, milk, or other perishables at a grocery store—we don't have the problem most people have of coming home from the market and needing a cool place right now for our food.

Of course, for most folks—and that includes us—the list of refrigeratables goes beyond milk and meat. Here's how we dealt with other common edibles:

Fresh fruits and vegetables, in our experience, tend to keep very well without refrigeration. In fact, some fruits (cit rus, apples, and others) require no chilling at all. Grapes will store for quite some time if their stems are placed in wet sand.

Lettuce leaves, we've learned, remain fresh when their stems are submerged in a little water at the bottom of a jar or container. Even whole heads of lettuce can be kept this way (a head is set on top of a water-filled glass so that its stem just touches the water). Okra, carrots, greens—in fact, most anything with a stem—will keep well in water much the same way that flowers stay fresh when arranged in a filled vase. Once again, for what it's worth, we allow only the tips of the stems to touch the liquid.

Storing leftovers without a refrigerator hasn't proven to be a problem at all. We simply leave them on a corner of our wood-burning cookstove—where they remain toasty-warm and reasonably well-preserved—until a subsequent meal. Sometimes it's refreshing to wake up to a breakfast of stew, or perhaps refried steak 'n potatoes, instead of the traditional fare. ( Due to the ever-present possibility of microbial infestation, I don't—repeat, DON'T—advise anyone reading this to try the above technique unless the food can be kept steaming hot at all times. Even then, the vittles should be eaten as soon as possible . . . certainly no later than 24 hours after they were originally prepared.—MOTHER.)

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