When All Hell Breaks Loose (53 page)

Because of the sugar content, I used to think all candies were invincible to spoilage. Several months back I found the remains of an old stashed survival kit. I went through all the components with great curiosity. I wondered if my opinion had changed over the years on what to store and how to store it. One of the items I found were two Snickers candy bars in a freezer bag. I estimated they had been in my jeep for fifteen years, and had been subjected to temperatures well over 120 degrees F (48 degrees C) to below freezing. As I excitedly unwrapped my archeological find, I found that the chocolate coating had completely vaporized, the peanuts were rancid as hell, and something that I think was caramel and nugget was more or less intact. Of course I ate it anyway and it wasn't bad, other than a slightly funky aftertaste more than likely caused by the rancid peanuts.

Other Cooking Basics

Baking powder
, if kept dry in a moisture-proof, airtight container will store for about a year before it loses its potency. It can be tested to see if it's any good by putting a rounded teaspoon into half a cup of hot water. If the baking powder is good, it will bubble like crazy. Most baking powders contain aluminum, except for the Rumford brand.

Baking soda
will keep indefinitely if it's stored in an airtight, moisture-proof container. If it's left in the cardboard box, it will last a little more than a year, much less if it's inside your moisture-filled refrigerator.

Yeast
is a living organism and needs to be faithfully rotated. The commonly available dried yeast in the foil packets has the expiration date stamped right on the package. If kept in an airtight, moisture-proof container, and as cool or cold as possible, it will keep much longer than the stamped expiration date. It can be tested for potency by mixing a bit of the dried yeast with an equal amount of sugar and putting the mixture into warm water. It should begin to bubble in about six minutes or so.

Spices
are, well, the spice of life. The spice trade of centuries past revolutionized the taste buds and the monetary flow of the world. Truly, spices have been so unknowingly important to the nation that some of my friends plan on storing extra spices as a means of barter when the skies fall. Having a variety, or at least a few basic spices, on hand will help counter the dreaded "appetite fatigue" syndrome from setting in on your family. Most spices can be used to cover up bland or bad-tasting foods. There is a reason why standard military-issue MREs come with a bottle of Tabasco sauce.

Spices can be a challenge to store for long periods of time, especially if they are ground up and powdered, which most are. Like other foods they are sensitive to heat, light, oxygen, and moisture. Buy spices that are "whole" if you can, put them into smaller containers if you purchased them in bulk, store them like you would food, and keep your choices simple.

Vinegar
comes in many flavors. A common one, apple cider vinegar, will keep indefinitely if stored in an unopened container at room temperature. White vinegar can also be used as a natural cleaning agent around the house.

Insect Infestations

Everyone likes a free meal, especially in the wild world of insects. Grains, legumes, and many other foods can fall prey to serious insect infestations if basic precautions are not taken. I'll never forget the carnage that lurked inside my bag of rolled oats that I foolishly stored in the closet in its original paper sack. I'm not sure what kind of bug it was, but I had perfected a breeding ground for thousands of them—even the neighboring horses wouldn't touch the leftovers.

It's critical that your stored food be bug free, and the easiest way to accomplish that is to make sure the bugs are absent in the first place. Don't buy bulk grains and dried foods from cheap sources or the problem might already be in the bag. Large companies that go through product quickly are a better bet as the food won't sit around as much. With many insects, like my oat bugs, the party seems to happen on the top few inches of food, so look before you agitate the product and hide the evidence.

If you store food in the ways that have been recommended in this book, attracting bugs after the fact should not be a problem. Don't tempt bugs or rodents by being a slob where you have your food stored. Keep things clean. If bugs get out of control in some of your food, get that food out of the house and check to see if other food has been infested.

Some bugs can be eaten along with the food, or the larger varieties sifted out. I don't know how many times I've eaten cereal with weevils in it. I consider it extra protein, as you might, if food is scarce. But the bottom line is, bugs eat your food, and their nutritional value is not likely to make up for the difference in what they have pilfered.

Killing Bugs [and Their Eggs] in Food

Sometimes when the bugs are absent, the eggs are not. One year I harvested native mesquite beans that were a staple food of the desert Indians in Arizona. At first glance the pods looked fine. After a few weeks, the eggs of whatever bugs were within the pods ate away at the goods, unbeknownst to me, and ruined most of the crop. The same thing happened with some pinyon nuts I gathered. Some native peoples used large winnowing-type baskets and hot coals from the fire to parch foods before they were stored.

Freezing and Heating

Cold can be used to kill bugs and their larvae and eggs. If you have access to cold temperatures, large quantities of food such as a full five-gallon bucket can be placed in a freezer at 0 degrees F (minus 17 degrees C) or lower for ten days. If smaller packages of food are used, the days can be lessened to four or five, as the food will require less time to be chilled all the way through. General household freezers are wimpy when needing to achieve seriously low temperatures but many chest freezers can do it. When it comes to killing bugs, the colder the temperature, the better. As the Native Americans have proven, buggy food can also be treated with heat. Most people recommend placing the food in question on a baking sheet into the oven for thirty minutes at 140 degrees F (60 degrees C), a temperature easily achieved by solar ovens. The dictionary definition of "tedious" references processing five hundred pounds of grain that way. Heated food should be eaten within a few weeks of doing so.

Molds and Bacteria

Mold
can affect
any
type of food, including "dry" foods such as grains and legumes where enough moisture (humidity) and warmth are present. Of course there are fungal strains as well that grow in the refrigerator, as anyone who has opened forgotten leftovers can attest. Notice that hearty molds can infect foods with high sugar or salt contents as well (both excellent preservatives), even when refrigerated. Who hasn't looked in the bottom of a jar of jelly and seen mold or trimmed a piece from a cured salted piece of meat? Not all molds are bad for human consumption, but the ones that are can nearly kill you or at the very least make you extremely sick. As I mentioned with my squash incident, some molds produce toxic mycotoxins, which are produced around the root of the mold itself, so they can be deep within the food itself. Like skin cancer, superficially trimming the surface of the mold will not get the part that's deep within the food. Worst of all, fungal mycotoxins last for long periods of time and are
not
destroyed by heat.

Here in the arid Southwest, we marvel at the rare occurrence of mold and mildew, throwing parties in honor of its extraordinary mustiness. Those of you who live in humid climates are unimpressed and are probably well versed in how to deal with invading mold and mildew. Keep your food storage areas clean. On countertops, refrigerators, and other food storage surfaces, mold can be eliminated with an assortment of household disinfectants such as our beloved chlorine bleach solution. Many "hard" foods such as potatoes, apples, and cheddar cheese can be trimmed of mold. Cut away the infected area along with an inch or so of the unaffected food without letting the knife touch the mold. "Soft" foods such as tomatoes, melons, cream cheese, and peanut butter should be thrown away. If you mess around with these and many other soft foods, you may pay a high price. Moldy foods should be thrown safely away so they can't be gotten into by curious kids and hungry animals.

Bacteria
need moisture to grow, and many strains found in foods can be very tough to kill. Some of the more nasty varieties toxic to humans can form
spores
that are very resistant to being eradicated. Moldy "wet foods" such as canned goods can become havens for the bacterium
Clostridium botulinum
, or botulism, one of the most deadly forms of bacterial food poisoning around. The toxin created from the growing bacteria is the culprit and is reportedly so potent that one teaspoon of the botulism toxin is capable of killing hundreds of thousands of people.

Because of this, don't screw around with bacterial spoilage in any type of wet food, whether fresh, home-canned, or commercially canned from the store.
Any canned goods that are bulging, leaking, smell bad, or that squirt liquid when you open them should be thrown away!
As with moldy foods, make sure you dispose of them safely away from kids and pets. (Note: Canned foods that have gone bad will have at least two of the above traits. Some cans that have been physically dented will squirt fluid when opened with a can opener, as the volume inside the can has been reduced, thereby putting the canned goods under pressure.) However, IF IN DOUBT, THROW IT OUT!

Using Salt to Reduce Moisture

It would be almost impossible for dry grains and legumes to grow harmful bacteria due to the lack of moisture. They can, however, grow mold. There is an easy method used to keep the moisture content in certain stored foods low that involves our friend salt. For food products such as rice, dry beans, dried peas, and pastas (other grains will require a different method), putting one inch of salt in the bottom of a container such as a food-grade five-gallon bucket before adding the food will hold the moisture content below 10 percent. This eliminates the environment required for molds to grow and prevents many insect eggs from hatching. Don't separate the salt from the food. Just pour the food right on top of the salt. As we know from our salt talk, the salt will store indefinitely and can be used as is. This method is a great way to have salt work for its storage space until it's used for its own sake.

The Dizzying World of Food-Storage Strategies

The technical information involved in storing foods is incredibly intense and has been the subject of dozens of books. I have only so much room in this book so you're on your own to research the other methods used to increase the storage times of food. Other home storage strategies might include Mylar bags, flushing with carbon dioxide and nitrogen, special enamel-coated cans, moisture-absorbing desiccants and oxygen absorbers, dry ice, vacuum sealing, and food-grade diatomaceous earth. Your local LDS (Mormon) church might have a cannery near where you live and you may be able to use their food-packing facilities for a fee. If the option feels right to you, it doesn't hurt to ask.

Come on, Man, Tell Me. . .How Long Do Stored Foods REALLY Last?

I wish I knew for sure, other than the obvious good keepers such as salt and white sugar. In the months of research I did for this book, I came across many, many contradictions as to how long stored foods will last. Some sources say whole wheat lasts for six months, others, indefinitely. And I could go on and on with the discrepancies. This is the main reason that I don't include a one-size-fits-all, handy-dandy food storage chart stating exactly how long your stored food will last. I looked at several such charts and many of them have very different answers for the same food product.