Fridge-less Living

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Biennials—especially onions and cabbage—can also be let go to seed their second year. The big seed stem that emerges when a year-old cabbage splits open is something to see. You can reap a good dry quart of spicy little seeds from one cabbage. Only folks with plenty of open land and planting, cultivating, and harvesting equipment can grow alfalfa, clover, and other seeds that make up the bulk of sprouting mixes. I have none of it anymore and am satisfied to purchase mine along with other small grains, dry beans, and dentistry.

I do grow and recommend small plots of oats and storage corns: popcorn, dent corn for grinding into meal, grain sorghums, broomcorn, and old-fashioned open-pollinated sweet corns left to mature and dry on the stalk for parching (heating in a pan coated with a little hot oil for a chewy semi-popped treat).

Heads of oats, sorghum, and broom corn, including their edible and poppable loose grains, are best harvested in plastic bags and winnowed as other seeds. Storage ear-corn can be left in the shuck and on the stalk to dry till the crows find it. Then—quickly—pull ears and let them dry in open-weave baskets in the barn or piled loosely on a warm porch. Over winter, keep dry grain where you store your tropicals, such as pumpkins. Shuck as used. Store bulk grains in metal trash N. Lima, Ohio, is the only source I know for white popping sorghum that produces canes full of juice that can be pressed out and boiled down to make syrup. You can then drive the livestock wild when you give them the pressed but still sweet stalks. The loose round grains in the tassels can be soaked and parched, or popped dry.

As with any preserving technique, always select prime fresh produce. Slice it thin so it will cure quickly. Dry vegetables bone dry. Most fruits can be left chewy; their high concentration of sugars and acids will keep them good.

Always store dried food in airtight containers. Clear jars or plastic bags are best so you can spy any mold. One of those electric vacuum-packers sold on TV and in outdoor-sports catalogs will evacuate pint, quart, and gallon-sized food-quality plastic bags or jars almost completely—removing all the moisture, and mold spores as well. Their price is down to about $25 now. You do have to purchase special bags that are sturdy, washable and reusable several times and can be recycled along with your grocery bags. They are then made into artificial lumber that is a good non-toxic substitute for poison-laced PT timbers. Larger vac-bags that contain a one-way valve and that are evacuated with your vacuum cleaner are useful for storing bulky items such as corn. Available on TV or the As-Sold-On-TV Internet site. (Sorry, fellow TV-phobes, but that's the future, like it or not.)

The easiest dryer is a pair of plastic mesh window screens on sawhorses set out in the sun. Sandwich-thin sliced fruits or veggies between a pair of screens lightly oiled with Canola Oil to prevent sticking. The top screen is to keep off insects—many of which will lay eggs in your eggplant or feed on your figs. Yellowjackets will mob any drying fruit, and if they get a good taste, they'll fight you for it till dusk and be back at dawn.

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