SENSIBLE STOCKING & STORING
(Page 4 of 5)
August/September 1997
By Jay P. Curry
Getting back to basics and making things at home may require a small investment in some tools. If you remember Grandma's kitchen, she didn't have many specialized cooking tools to prepare the meals for her family. Most items she had did double or triple duty, and few were powered by anything except old-fashioned elbow grease. Start with the simple hand tools, and continue to build. Hand-powered tools work just fine. They also require a smaller investment to start. A grain mill is an exception to my hand-powered rule, along with an ice cream maker, a good standing mixer for making bread and cookies. Other necessities are good quality knives. A good knife is a sharp knife. A cheap dull knife is an accident waiting to happen. Try to buy commercial quality items. You may pay a little more to start with, but less over a lifetime.
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Where Does Everything Go?
Six-inch storage containers are an integral part of any storage system. They come in many sizes and shapes. This is one area you will need to experiment in to find what works best for you. We have always used mason jars. They are versatile and readily available in many sizes from half-pints to one-half-gallon. They can be used for dry or vacuum packing and home canning. There are even jars designed for freezing. Those items that need to be dry packed in larger quantities can be put up in #10 cans (a little less than a gallon). Once opened, the cans can serve as canisters with the use of a plastic lid. The largest containers we have used are five-gallon pails with airtight lids. My best friend Matthew and his wife, Debbie, use 32-gallon metal garbage cans for some of their bulk items. Whatever works best for you. By now you may think our house looks like the corner supermarket. No, more like an old-fashioned dry goods store from bygone days. Just kidding. We don't really have a pickle or molasses barrels. We have the pickles and molasses, just not in barrels. Once you've chosen your containers, there are several ways to prolong the shelf life of dry-good products dry packed at home. Oxygen absorber packets are easy to use. Just put them in the container and close the lid. Home vacuum packer sealers offer reusable plastic bags or an attachment that allows you to seal your mason jars using standard canning flats.
Names and Dates
All foods do not have the same shelf life. Flour does not store as long as whole wheat. Rotation is necessary to keep your items at their peak food value and avoid spoilage. Don't panic. It's not a difficult process, but like a storage plan, it takes a little forethought. Use your stored foodstuffs based on the dates when put into storage, using the oldest items first. As you package those items at home you purchased in bulk, names and dates become critical. Trust me, playing "Guess what?" and "When did we do that?" is not fun. We purchase canned goods by the case from our local cannery. Their mislabeled and slightly dented cans are a real bargain (about 25 percent of what we would pay in the local supermarket). This was never a problem ...until we used our youngest son Charles's closet to store our unopened cases of canned goods. One day he and his friend used these cans to make buildings, and an excellent game of "Guess what?" resulted. (Note to reader: Fruit cocktail does not work well in the place of whole tomatoes.) Label both the long and short end of cases, and once you open a case empty it, so you avoid having three half empty boxes of the same item. This is a good exercise for the kids. Our middle son Ben, was happy to relabel our new stock of dried "potato flakes" after a year of friendly family kidding about his labels that read "Potatoe Flackes."
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