Using Food Storage

This post is a response to a comment posted on storage of dressings. We mentioned that dressings can stay good 1-2 weeks at least in the fridge. I’ve personally stored dressings this way using olive oil. I make sure I mix up the dressings really well before use, of course. Perhaps taking the dressings out a while before they are needed will also help with this solidifying.

One idea to keep dressings is to just keep making them fresh. The individual bottles and ingredients have a longer shelf life than fresh dressings, as I’m sure you can imagine. If you want to keep some on hand at almost all times. Consider using one container specifically for dressings and put markings on proportions so it is more streamline to put together. Please let me know if this was any help at all and if you have any other questions!

Today I’m going to discuss the topic of making your own salad dressing.  The following are all reasons to make your own salad dressings:

Excellent Taste.  Homemade salad dressings beat store-bought dressings any day of the week.

You can make them to fit your taste.  You can not only get creative with different tastes but you can leave out nasty ingredients.

High Quality.  If you use high quality raw ingredients, you know your end product will be high quality.  By making your own dressings, you also do not have to add any type of preservative, which in itself makes your food higher quality.

Save Money.  Making your own dressings saves money - no question about it.

Longer lasting.  While store bought dressings have preservatives to make them have a relatively long shelf life - that preservative is not particularly healthy - like we mentioned.  The raw ingredents needed to make your own dressings are usually very long lasting (in particular dressings such as Italian, which consists mainly of an oil, a vinegar, and herbs).

Buying the raw ingredients in bulk is a great way to build up food storage for not only salad dressings, but for other food too, and you can have fresh dressings any time or you can can them too!

In general, the most popular form of food storage is dry food, canned food, things that do not require refrigeration or to be frozen.  I encourage you to buy meat and keep it in a freezer for several reasons.  First, find a local farm that you can purchase from.  Community supported agriculture is becoming more and more popular because it allows smaller farmers to maintain their way of life, allows the consumers to purchase and the farmers to provide, high quality food, and allows for less fuel to transport the food, thus is better for the environment.  On local farms you can find the highest quality food available.  These farms will often sell larger amounts of meat to consumers.  For example, you can pre-order 15 chickens or 1/2 a cow worth of beef.

If you have any questions about where to start looking for a high quality local farm to purchase larger amounts of meat, please send us a message and we will be more than happy to provide you with information.

Just a few tips when purchasing beef.  There are many different things you can do with this.  You have the ability to grind your own hamburger, or you can have a meat locker do it.  But you can also have many different roasts and steaks cut to your specifications for a flat rate - not matter what and how you want it done.

When storing food, you want to ensure the food is in the most protected packaging possible. Glass is by far one off the best and safest storing methods, if properly sealed. Canning jars are great. They provide great seals and come in a great variety of sizes to accommodate a variety of foods.

For example, if you purchase boxes of macaroni and cheese, make sure the noodles are taken out of the boxes. Boxes are susceptible to moisture and bugs, two things that will be sure to ruin the food.

Some fresh foods require different types of storage and they will maintain for longer than expected periods of time. For example, if you create a crate in your potatoes in a cool place (i.e. cellar or canning basement) and protect them from the floor and walls, you will find you can keep potatoes fresh and tasty until you are able to harvest the next year!

If you are new to food storage, or if you are starting to gather food for storage, start small. Don’t feel overwhelmed like you need to store food for a long period of time all right away. Break up your end goal into smaller time periods. You will have more fun, work into a routine that works for you, and will have the endurance to work up to your goal.

Programs such as cooking for two weeks and cooking for a month are great ways to try out storing food. Take one or two days and plan out the meals you will need for a set period of time, we recommend incriments of two weeks. Cook, freeze, bake, assemble everything. Make two lasagnas, freeze a batch of cookie dough, assemble three soup stocks, cook a turkey and use the meat for sandwiches, noodle dishes, salads, and for snacking. These are just a few great ways to get started.

One great thing about starting small like this, is you can get into a routine for budgeting. You will know exactly how much you can allot to groceries every set period of time by properly alloting food for certain meals. We wish you a great start with food storage!

Anyone can buy a bunch of food and put it away in some corner, room, or section of the house. Since you are going to be buying and, more importantly, using your food storage, make the space organized, fun, and effective. Space planning is the first place to start. Do you already have a space big enough for your storage? Do you need to modify a room in order to make it food storage usable? These are questions you need to start with.

Once you have your space, you need to start with a floor plan and draw out the space plan, organization, and how you want the space to flow. A suggestion for this is to draw not only a floor plan, but elevations of the shelves so you know exactly where you want to place each food category.

A key in effectively using your food storage space is to plan with containers and shelving. Custom make your shelving to fit containers you have, purchase containers to fit current shelving, or a combination of the two. Each amount of space that is under utilize in your storage, is wasted space that can be used for a larger container or a different organizational layout.

Before you start organizing your food storage, ensure you have established a plan of action. This preparation will not only make your organization much less stressful, but you can make the retrieval of food much easier as well.

Aside of purchasing bulk foods, there are so many different ways to create a food storage for yourself and/or your family and friends. Part of preparing for making your own food storage is growing your own food. This greatly reduces the cost of the food and allows, and requires, you to get outside and enjoy the beautiful days!

Canning is a great way to make your own food storage. You can can everything from vegetables to jams to meats. If you are just new to canning and gardening, or want a great way to start canning, first think about meals your family loves and you know will be used. Spaghetti sauce, salsa, soups, etc are great! If you are looking to can fruit and vegetables, tomatoes, pickles, peaches and pears are great starters! You can also can juices - which are more pure than store bought, and also have amazing taste!

Dehydrating is another great way to not only start storing your food, but also store food with large amounts of nutritional value such as fruit. You can dehydrate fruits including but not limited to apples, apricots, bananas, blueberries, cherries, citrus peel, coconuts, grapes, mangoes, nectarines, peaches, pears, pineapples, plums, prune plums, and strawberries. Mangoes are my favorite!!!

Get together with friends and family to have a canning or dehydrating party! It makes the processes fun and you can learn from each other!

Back in the good ole days people ate from the garden, nutrients were plentiful in the foods that were eaten, and foods were cooked & simmered over a hearth fire for hours. This was the lifestyle of the times. Everyone did it. One draw back was that this process had to be done every day. And there were few options for storing the prepared foods for another time. Families use to live closer together, and helping each other was a necessity.

Today we have different lifestyles and families everywhere are busy. Our new lifestyles tend to take us away from our homes, divide our families and leave us little time for watching and stirring the kettle.

Fortunately, we have new tools to help lessen the health horror of eating nutritionally depleted fast foods. These foods would included, over processed convenience foods from our grocery stores. I do not feel compelled to pour over health care statistics, and problems contributing to the nations growing problem of obesity as related to eating habits.

As we adapt to busier lives, we also need to adapt our cooking. We are a society that schedules and plans all aspects of our lives. Meal preparation should be no different. We plan for weeks, months and years sports, school/education, vacations and holidays. Think about the planning for major events in our lives, moving, births, weddings. We set goals for ourselves, our children, our businesses. We buy and give as gift day planners and calenders. Every cell phone, computer and handheld has some organizational planning component.

Also, consider the events we do not planned for, emergency weather, interruption of utilities, job reorganization or loss, and illness. Again, I do not feel compelled to list all possibilities of the best laid time management interruptions. I recognize that we are all busy. Everyone and each family unit has its own unique set of circumstances.

A wonderful solution to this problem is once a month cooking and proper food storage.

Utilizing food storage systems and once a month cooking can be adapted to any cuisine or dietary need. No system will work unless you use it. Finding a step by step system seems to work best for most people. The organizational aspect of using food storage is easy to do and becomes easier with practice. When the first fast food restaurants opened - people did not flock to them. The marketing companies kept telling us we needed to use their business until we no longer think if we need to eat there or not. We just do. It became just a way of life.

Once a month cooking is becoming increasing popular. You learn how to use your microwave, freezer and oven (hearth) for preparing impressively delicious and nutritious meals for your family and friends.

(1) Save Money. Buying in bulk often requires large order quantities, but you can purchase long-term storage items at lower price than you would in a grocery store. If you are able to implement a proper storage method, the food will stay consumable for a long time. Some food stays edible for over 30 years!!!

(2) Save Time. By properly preparing your food for any given duration of time, you will be able to spend less time in preparations and more doing other things.

(3) Quality. When we are tired and hungry, it is natural to want a quick fix for a meal. By preparing meals for a scheduled amount of time, quick, easy, quality meals can be planned for. You will therefore not have to compromise quality.

(4) Emergency Preparation. If you or someone you know are ever in an emergency situation where food is needed and not available, you have what you need for a longer term.

(5) Peace of Mind. With one less thing to worry about, who wouldn’t feel a little more at ease! By taking care of meals ahead of time, the stress of figuring out if you have the ingredients necessary to make a certain dish suddenly subside.

Sure food storage is not the end all to a simple life, but these are five, very practical and application reasons to have and utilize it.