food preservation

Last weekend my wife and I went to a strawberry festival and brought home a flat of fresh berries for a pretty reasonable price. We had the intention of using quite a number of them to make jam and give us further practice in learning how to can, as we’ve only canned one batch of tomato salsa since learning of Peak Oil.

The lids we used for the tomatoes were from a canning kit I had received as a gift several years ago, and we’ve since acquired a number of jars. We’ve heard from a variety of sources that you shouldn’t use the lids more than once, and being beginning canners we’re complying with that for now.

So, that meant we needed to purchase some lids. No problem, we thought. We stopped into Bed, Bath & Beyond -- a warehouse store full of kitchen supplies -- and searched around for a bit until we decided to ask an employee.

This is a question that’s been tickling the back of my brain for quite a while. We tend to refrigerate just about everything in America because (a) energy is so cheap and (b) it’s easier than thinking about it. But what do you do if there’s an extended power outage – what gets thrown out, what is kept? What if you don’t get the energy system for your Peak Oil Homestead installed before Peak Oil hits and you have to live without a refrigerator?

From our earlier breakdown of energy requirements we can see we have some requirements for cooling our food for preservation (we will develop formal requirements shortly). While you should always consider alternative food preservation (smoking, canning, etc.), preserving food by cooling is extremely effective and convenient.