Post-Apocalyptic Cuisine

It has been my intention to follow up the previous post on storing grains and beans with comments on how to store other foods. Today I was dealing with just that as I began to unearth the caches of potatoes I'd buried in the garden last fall against seed potatoes this spring. The seed spuds fared very well over the winter and I will be "chitting" them this week so they can be planted in mid March.

It also reminded me to check some of the other stored items and the above picture was taken as I was going through the squash, cabbage, potatoes, and onions. These items will keep fresh for months, up to a year, with no refrigeration (fossil energy). The above picture is of items from my larder thusly stored.

Choose vegetables (and fruits) in the best condition and grown late in the season. Alas, this last year a severe drought cut the gardening year short and almost all stored vegetables had to be harvested in August and September. And yet here in March they are still in very good condition. But given a choice, harvest or buy as late in the season as possible.

Then store the food in the type of conditions it is expecting from its native habitat and it will last the longest time. Squash needs to be stored where it is warm and dry, so there is a great heap of squashes in the corner of the kitchen near the wood range. Onions need cool dry conditions so they were stored in an uninsulated room which stays cool all winter. Cabbage needs cool moist conditions and they are stored in the basement. One way of doing this is to hang the cabbage from the overhead joists by a string tied to the. The outside leaves will whither and sometimes blacken but the cabbage stays fine for months. Potatoes need cold, damp dark. Some are stored in a corner of the basement and many are cached in the garden by digging a deep hole, lining it with hay, filling it with potatoes, and covering it with hay and dirt to keep out frost.

Apples, pears, turnips, carrots, sweet potatoes, beets, parsnips, rutabagas, and a host of other things will keep fresh for many months, even up to a year, if stored in ideal conditions. Tomatoes will keep for many weeks and melons, cucumbers, peppers, eggplants, and other things thought perishible will last for a good long time.

Take the case of the squashes in the above photo. They were harvested in early September, far too early, but we chose one for tonight's supper and here is how well it kept:

(By the bye, Deb, I'm sending you seeds from this very squash.)

The squash was baked and then half of it filled with farmstead salt ham and farmstead cheese, and the other half filled with butter, honey, sugar and cinnamon.

Using food shown in the first photo, we served up a homestead supper of squash, both cheezy and sweet style, baked potato with butter and sour cream, steamed cabbage, and grilled onions:

Am I serious when I say that it is possible to eat meals in which virtually no fossil fuel was used in bringing them about? Serious ... as ... a .... heart attack. The only thing we don't produce in my above menu is the cinnamon and brown sugar, both of which are optional. Everything else is produced right here on the farmstead. The butter and sour cream can be made as needed since there is always milk. The cheese is cooled and the ham has been frozen, but that is a matter of convenience, neither is necessary since both are salted enough to preserve them. As I have itemized above, the rest of the food has kept for nearly half a year now without refrigeration and is still in top condition. Nothing involved anything but hand tools and animal power to produce and the meal was cooked using wood from the place which itself was cut with handtools and hauled without the use of engines.

This is truly a post-apocalyptic meal.