When we wrote our earlier post about storing apples for the winter we hadn't yet read the piece in today's New York Times on the root cellar. Seems like gardeners, CSA-advocates, and other cooks interested in eating locally have returned to a very, very old-fashioned way of storing their food.
Cynthia Worley and others like her are trying to continue to eat locally throughout the winter by storing homegrown or CSA-provided fruits and vegetables in cold storage. They are trying to get their local produce to last all winter and feed themselves without resorting to, say, tomatoes from California. They do this by storing potatoes, apples, squash, onions, and other long-lasting produce in sand in their basement or outside cubbyholes.
Have you read the article? What do you think of this?Just this year we've been thinking about trying to preserve a couple dozen squash (so cheap at the market!) for reasons of practicality and economy. We'd never even considered a root cellar or this kind of long-term storage until very recently. Is it the economy? Is it a natural outgrowth of the local food movement? What do you think? (And have you ever maintained a root cellar?)
• Get the article - More good tips on root cellars and cold storage of food in general at the New York Times: Food Storage as Grandma Knew It
Related: Gumdrop Coffee Jars and a DIY Root Cellar: Delicious links for 10.27.08
Image: Leah Nash for The New York Times
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I have a cold storage room in my house and it works great for canned goods and potatoes. I had also stocked up on 5 butternut squash to last the winter...but after about 3 weeks they were all getting moldy. They did have good stems on them and no wounds so I'm not sure what the problem was.
I am not lucky enough to have a basement in my apartment, but I do enjoy canning to preserve tomatoes. It isn't necessarily cheaper than buying canned tomatoes at the store (at least not until I can get my tomato plants to produce a decent yield) but the taste is much better and it is good to know where your food comes from. I hope to get a pressure canner next year so I can start preserving vegetables.
I also always go to the farmer's market to get the last bit of tomatoes and produce and make big pots of soup or chili to freeze. That one of more for economy and convince.
weird.
I just posted to my blog about 20 min. ago.
http://thepleasanthouse.wordpress.com/2008/11/06/urban-prairie-fall-forage-roots/
Last year I decided to try to eat local as much as possible through the winter. I canned 150 lbs of tomatoes (condensed down to about 40 qt of sauce) and apples, and bought 50 lbs of potatoes, 25 lbs of carrots, and 100 lbs of hard squash. Unfortunately, my root vegetables only made it through to January, but they were good while they lasted!
My basement is too moldy to store food in (I have serverely bad mold allergies), but recently I have been pondering buying a used refrigerator and turning it up to about 50-55 degrees, and using that as my "root fridge."
What I'd love to see is -- what kind of options for root cellar kind of storage are available, if any, for those of us who live in fourth-floor rented apartments and have neither basement OR roof access?
Yeah, lots of folks don't have room for a root cellar. I've always kept potatoes in my refrigerator, and they last forever.
150 lbs of tomoatoes! Amazing!
I've been googling for quite a while today to try and figure out if I can create a fake root cellar in my 20th floor studio condo (and in FL, where the temps are high). No basement or roof access.
I like the idea of a small fridge kept at 50-55 degrees. I realize this is not a "green" solution and for the folks who would like to hurl abuse at me for using electricity to keep the temp that low, I get your point.
I'm not sure it is any worse than getting in my car and driving to the supermarket daily to have fresh root veggies on hand.
I'm a single and avid cook. The amount of waste (food and dollars) that goes down my garbage disposal every day horrifies me.
The effort involved in shopping - I have a life, a job, time commitments - means I don't eat fresh veggies every day, and I seem to always run out of one ingredient. It would be nice to have this little electric store-room tucked away in a corner.
I'm going to try it!