You can go ahead and call me a nerd, and it would be true. I engage in many nerdly pursuits and thought patterns. When I’m driving my car, with my phone charging, I find myself wondering if charging my phone in the car lowers the car’s performance just a tiny bit, so that the car uses slightly more gasoline than it would otherwise. Am I saving any energy by charging my phone this way, as opposed to charging it at home from a wall outlet? Which is more efficient? Perhaps it is the same either way, but I don’t really know, so I keep pondering. This is one of the odd little obsessions that I have.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that I also obsess about ways to preserve energy, as well as water, while processing food. I do a lot of canning, drying, freezing, and fermenting, and all of these methods of food preservation have pros and cons, not only in flavor and convenience, but also in shelf life and energy use.

Compare, for example, freezing with canning food.

Canning uses a lot of water (for washing jars and the water bath or pressure canner), and it certainly uses more energy up front, both my own and the propane tank’s. Canned food, however, usually has a longer shelf life than frozen food, and it comes in handy when the power goes out. Freezing, on the other hand, preserves more food nutrients, is a lot less labor-intensive, and the frozen food sometimes tastes better (think of green beans), but over time, the freezer uses up a lot of energy. Then I argue in my head. “But the freezer’s already running anyway, so there’s very little extra energy used by it”, I tell myself. But one mustn’t forget that the freezer is vulnerable to power outages. I go round and round with these arguments. If I were to be able to do without the freezer completely, then canning would be very helpful, but I do like the taste and texture of frozen foods more than canned foods. I’m working on it!

Slices of Frozen Rhubarb

There is one method that uses much less energy than the others, and that’s fermentation.

All the energy used to make sauerkraut, with the exception of the harvesting and transporting of the salt and cabbage, is simply good old elbow grease. You just have to cut up a lot of cabbage finely and mash it up with the salt to make the brine, and once you pack it into your jar or crock, you have to check it every day for floaters and pressure buildup. That’s it. Floaters, bits of food that escape from under the fermentation weight and float to the top, can ruin your ferment. They get exposed to the air, where they collect and become home to tiny critters that you don’t want in your food, like molds. Carrots are easy to ferment – just cut them into sticks or disks and pack them into jars with a little garlic and hot pepper powder, and pour in the salty brine. Make sure there are no floaters (a fermentation weight will solve that problem).

Sauerkraut of Red and White Cabbage

Red Cabbage Sauerkraut

Cranberries can be fermented with honey, and the result is divine.

They keep for a long time. I’ve fermented kumquats in honey as well, with similar wonderful results. The more local your honey is, the better, as that cuts down on food miles and energy use. Lemons, limes, and limequats can be sliced open and packed with salt, as is done in Morocco and many other countries. These are delicious sliced into little bits and baked on a pizza with just a few ingredients: olive oil or pesto, walnuts, and goat cheese. I also like to toss a salt cured lemon into the pot when I’m making black beans.

There are excellent books out there on the topic of fermentation, and I recommend Sandor Katz (“Wild Fermentation” and “The Art of Fermentation”), Shannon Stonger (“Traditionally Fermented Foods”), and Pascal Baudar (“Wildcrafted Fermentation”). Pascal Baudar has written some beautiful books on wildcrafted foods, especially foods made from invasive species. He calls himself an invasivore. Check out his books “The New Wildcrafted Cuisine”, “The Wildcrafting Brewer”, and Wildcrafted Vinegars”. I will include a few recipes at the end, all based on these writers, with a few adaptations on my part. Credit where credit is due!

Fermented Green Tomatoes

At the moment, I’m feeding a ginger bug, which I use for making ginger beer or elderberry soda.

I just made a batch of elderberry soda today – you just mix some ginger bug with elderberry syrup and water, and after about three days, you filter it and bottle it. It is the most delicious thing I’ve ever drunk, and it’s healthy. I also have a sourdough starter, which I’ve used recently to make some tiny muffins full of apple, carrot, zucchini, and spices. A great thing about having a sourdough starter is that I don’t have to depend on store bought yeast anymore. If the store runs out, I can still bake bread that rises. That gives me a tiny feeling of security.

Ginger Bug

Sourdough Veggie Muffins

Sourdough Starter

But are there any other low-input methods of preserving food?

The answer to that is a resounding yes. Some foods, mainly herbs, can be air dried, meaning you just hang up little bundles of them from your basement rafters, or leave them on a cookie sheet (lined with a towel) to dry. I dry huge sacks full of stinging nettles every year, just by hanging them up. We grow dent corn and simply pull back the husks and tie them over a string which hangs along the basement ceiling. The corn dries beautifully, and we grind it to use for making cornbread.

Dried Corn

There are less passive methods for drying foods, requiring more energy.

Normally, I dry tomatoes (some of them herbed and salted), garlic, onions, plums, apples, ginger, turmeric, pears, grapes (after blanching to burst the skins – this shortens the drying time), citrus peels, hawthorn berries, elderberries (some fresh ones are made into wine), rose hips, and peppers. To do this, I use a dehydrator, either the Excalibur or the round stackable American Harvest type, running it for anywhere from two hours to two days. I read recently that you can put your racks of food to be dried in a car or truck bed on a hot sunny day, but I have yet to try it. It certainly gets hot enough in a car during the summer! I plan to do an experiment, in which I put some of my trays of food in the car, some in the truck bed, and some in the electric dehydrator. I’ll let you know in the Fall how that turns out.

Herbed Tomatoes Ready for Drying

Herbed Tomatoes in the Dryer, Some Already Dry

Finally, another way to store food without using energy, is to bring it in the basement and put it on the shelf.

Just clean off your winter squashes (if you don’t grow them, you can get them pretty cheap at grocery stores) and put them in a dark, cool place where they won’t freeze. You can put beets, turnips, and carrots in big tubs, layering them with moist sand. Pears will keep for a while in a cool basement space, as will apples. Pack them so they aren’t pressed against each other, and use only one layer. We usually leave our potatoes in the ground for a while, but our climate is somewhat mild. In many regions, you’ll have to wipe them off and lay them on paper in a dark cool cupboard or basement. We always run out before they have a chance to rot or sprout.

Clean Squash Ready to be Stored in the Basement

Poppy and the Squash

With all these comparisons and ponderings, I may be doing nothing more than driving myself a little crazy, and in the end, if something bad happens, such as the Big Earthquake we’re all waiting for, a solar flare, or simply an economic collapse, I’ll just do whatever I can and stop worrying about it. I won’t have as many choices, and I will have to get creative. But during these flights of nerdly imagination, I may come upon some solutions that work well. In diversity lies resilience, as they say in permaculture. The more techniques I have in my tool box, the better.

It is also worthwhile to experiment with all sorts of food preservation techniques BEFORE the big one hits. What if I decided to can a ton of green beans, and then the earthquake came, and I had to eat something that it turns out I don’t like? It pays to try something new with each vegetable and fruit every year. One year I made lots of quince sauce and pear sauce. Another year I started canning stewed tomatoes instead of freezing them (canning tomatoes is a really good way to preserve them). I started making fig preserve, which I canned and then later used in fig hand pies. I had gotten sick of dried figs – one can only eat so many of those! Last summer I made a lot of zucchini chips, which have come in very handy for dipping in hummus or guacamole, now that the price of tortilla chips is going up. It’s March, and I have eaten all of them.

Fermenting Carrots, both Red and Orange Varieties

This year has been the year of fermentation experiments, with a few spectacular failures. I learned the hard way that one must refrigerate sourdough starters once they get going. One morning I approached my starter with a spoonful of flour, only to find the jar absolutely filled with feathery gray mold. It happened overnight! Never again.

Don’t make the mistake of assuming that you will know how to do it all when the time comes. The learning curve is steep! I’ve ruined many ferments, almost always because of floaters. I’ve also made a big load of that zucchini relish that it turned out nobody but the chickens liked. I’ve made jams that wouldn’t gel and I’ve dried fruits that either got moldy because they weren’t dried quite enough, or they were so hard I couldn’t even chew them. Sometimes in my zeal to waste nothing and dry everything, I dried things that I later had no idea what to do with. Now I am becoming ruthless. If I can’t think of a way to cook something, maybe the chickens will like it. They usually eat whatever scraps I throw into their yard. It’s not going to waste.

The time to start is now. Try a batch of sauerkraut or a quart jar of fermented carrots. Dry some tomatoes that have been stirred in olive oil and herbs, or slice up and dry some garlic if you have too much to eat fresh. Dry some chopped up organic citrus peel, to make fizzy water and teas more interesting and a little more nutritious. Dry some herbs for tea, or some dent corn for bread. If you’re really adventurous, you could try drying some food in your car or truck bed. Happy Drying and Canning and Fermenting and Freezing! Enjoy!

Recipes:

Basic Sourdough Starter

Mix two cups of any flour with two cups of filtered water in a jar, and cover with cheese cloth held in place by a string or rubber band. Stir well every day for a few days. When you notice it’s starting to bubble, start giving it 2 Tablespoons flour each day. Add a little water if needed. After a few days, feed it and put it in the fridge. To use it, you’ll need to let it warm up to room temperature.

Basic Sauerkraut

Chop up or grate 2 kg of cabbage (about 5 lbs), and put this in a big bowl. Mix in 45 ml sea salt (3 Tablespoons). You can add shredded carrots, garlic, onion, and beets. Mix well by pounding the veggies and massaging them. You’ll want to see a brine start to show itself. Pack this into a jar, filling up to ¾ full. Brine should cover the veggies. Cover it all with a big cabbage leaf and put a weight on top of that. If you need more brine, make some – about 1 Tablespoon salt to 1 cup water. Cover the jar and check it daily for floaters or bits stuck to the sides of the jar, and remove those. The jar will need to be burped every day. After a couple of weeks (taste it!), put it in the fridge or a cool basement.

Spicy Fermented Carrots

Put 3 garlic cloves and a tad of pepper flakes in a quart jar. Add chopped carrots (about 1.5 lb or .68 kg) and 1 Tablespoon (15 g) salt (add 2 Tablespoons salt if your ambient temperature is above 80 F). Add filtered water to cover the carrots. If they tend to float, use a fermentation weight. Allow to ferment at room temperature for 7-21 days, and burp the jar daily. Refrigerate or keep in a cool cellar. (Recipe from Shannon Stonger)

Herbed Dried Tomatoes

Slice tomatoes about ¼- ⅓  inch thick. Discard the extra juice and seeds. In a large bowl, put 2-3 Tablespoons of olive oil, some sea salt, and herbs of choice (thyme, oregano, whatever you like). It’s best to grind up the herbs a bit first. Stir the oil and herbs, and mix in the tomatoes. Do this gently, so you don’t tear the tomatoes apart. Lay the tomatoes on your drying racks and dry at about 115-120 F. You’ll have to turn them over once. When they are leathery, and not pulpy at all, put in jars and begin eating. They won’t store as long as plain dried tomatoes, because of the oil, but they don’t usually last long at our house anyway.

Dried Garlic and Ginger

Simply peel off the skins and slice about one millimeter thin. Dry in the dehydrator at 115 or so, until they’re hard like a cracker. I do this when I have too much garlic, and it’s all about to sprout. Then, when I need some garlic powder (or ginger powder), I grind it in my extra coffee grinder. A mortar and pestle will also do. I’ve also done this with Thai ginger (galangal) and onions.

Beet and Turnip Sticks with Dill

Peel one large turnip and one large beet and cut into sticks. Layer a quart jar with beet, turnip, 2.5 Tablespoons of salt, and dill (total of ¼ cup packed fresh dill). Pour filtered water to cover well, and insert a weight. Cover the jar and burp it daily for two weeks. After two weeks, move the jar to cool storage. This one is delicious! (recipe courtesy of Shannon Stonger).

Salt Cured Lemons, Limes, or Limequats

Quarter the fruits vertically, but don’t cut all the way through. Stuff salt into them and put in a jar. Squeeze in as many as you can. These can be kept in the fridge. I usually make a cup or a pint at a time.

Citrus Peels

Only do this if you buy organic. I scrape off the inside of the peels a bit, just to get the bitter tasting pith out, and then chop into square cm sized chunks. It doesn’t really what size you chop it into, that’s just what I tend to use. I put these in the dryer at 115F, and they’re usually done in a couple of hours. Just check after two hours. They should be hard and dry. I use them in cold and fever herbal tea blends, and I also put them in fizzy water drinks, just for fun and extra vitamins. If you don’t have organic citrus, just put the peels in a jar and cover with white vinegar. You can add a sprig of rosemary if you have it. Leave this for a couple of weeks and then use it as a countertop cleaner.

Honey Ferments

For cranberries, I poke holes in the berries with a fork, then put them in a jar with a couple of slices of ginger and some orange peel. Cover it all with honey and close the jar. Keep it on a plate, as some of the honey may sneak out. Shake it up every day to keep the berries submerged in honey. You can also do this with kumquats. (Recipe based on one from Colleen of GrowForageCookFerment.)

Zucchini Chips

These are a cheap and healthy alternative to potato or tortilla chips. They aren’t quite as satisfying in that junky way, but they’re pretty good. Take a big old zucchini that’s too big to cook, cut in lengthwise and scoop out the seeds. Then chop it into ¼-⅛ inch half disks. You can dry them just like that, plain, or you can dredge them in a bit of vinegar and sea salt. Don’t overdo the salt, as you may be dipping them in a salty dip. Dry them at 115 or so until they’re pretty hard and leathery. They don’t get as crispy as a potato chip.

Angela is happy that you want to save energy when you process food.