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  • Always store in a cool, dry and well ventilated environment.
     

  • Check your stored goods now and then, immediately removing any rotten ones.
     

  • Don't stack them. Give them some space.

Pantry Tips:

Storing for Winter

In our house, we sometimes jokingly call winter ‘the cabbage period’, because besides the occasional winter leek from our own garden, not much is in season, unless cabbages.

 

Our ancestors (as close as our grandparents sometimes) were the absolute masters of preserving foods, without the modern convenience of a deep freezer. Trying to regain some of that (often lost) knowledge, we look at storing food alive.

Perhaps the easiest and most energy-friendly way is to store food alive, without processing them. There are three ways you can go about storing food alive:
 

  • Leaving it into the ground.

    That’s right, a number of winter crops, who are rather resilient against frost, can simply be left into the ground until you need them. Jerusalem artichokes, purslane, cabbages, lamb’s lettuce, parsnips and winter leeks can all be left outside in the free refrigerator that nature provides.
     

  • Another way is to store food in a dry and colder cellar or pantry. Make sure temperature is relatively constant, there isn’t a draft and most importantly, that it isn’t humid. Temperature around 10 degrees Celsius is often ideal. Arrange your fruit or vegetables neatly on a flat surface (I always use wooden boxes) and make sure they don’t touch each other. Check regularly and should one begin to mould or rot, remove it immediately. This is an ideal way to store potatoes, apples, pears, … throughout the winter. Pumpkins and squashes can also be stored this way for quite some time.

 

  • A third method is often used for root vegetables is storing them  in sand. The idea behind this is that because the sand regulates humidity: it’ll keep excess moisture away from the food, thus keeping them from rotting. It puts the vegetables in a sort of winter sleep, as long as temperature is, again, cool and constant enough.

    You simply fill a wooden box with a layer of white sand
    (the type you’d find in your kid’s sandbox) , arrange the vegetables in it and cover them with another layer of sand. Again, make sure they don’t touch, since air needs to circulate. In case of root vegetables such as carrots, you’ll want to store them vertically, just as they grow outside.

    Make sure you remove all greens and leave them to dry out in the open air a bit before you put any vegetables to the sand.

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