GardenBanter.co.uk - View Single Post

David in Normandy[_3_] · 23-09-2007, 10:31 AM posted to uk.rec.gardening

In article ,
says...

"brian mitchell" wrote in message
...
"Mary Fisher" wrote:

I 'canned' lots of tomatoes last year. They looked beautiful but it was a
long and energy consuming process and, to be frank, we were disappointed
with the result...

Do you mean disappointed by how they tasted when you eventually ate
them? Had they lost flavour, or acquired an unpleasant one?

Neither, they just didn't taste like fresh ones - not that I expected them
to.

. . . might just as well have frozen them...

Maybe so. Do you ever worry about power cuts and losing a year's
produce?

No. For a good reason.

And to keep things frozen for a year or more also consumes
energy.

Canning takes a relatively large amount of energy for a small amount of
produce. In our very well insulated and high rated chest freezer I can store
a huge amount of food - half a cow, a whole pig, a whole ram, milk, bread (I
make a large amount at a time mostly in my wood fired stone bread oven) etc.

Anyway, I'm interested in some of the alternative, old-fashioned
ways of preserving foods, including drying. What do you dry your apples
in?

An electric dehydrator. I'm concerned about the power it uses but I only use
it for a large amount of produce at one time and of course when it's being
used it's contributing to the house heating so cutting down that use of
energy. It has trays and the heat is blown over the produce by a small fan.

I used to use my highly insulated thermostatically controlled wax oven but
the dehydrator is more effective. I have dried things in the sun but it's
not usually dry enough - and the hens tend to help themselves to anything
left in the open :-(

Mary

Brian Mitchell

My mother used to dry sliced beans in the airing cupboard. They were
spread out on sheets of newspaper. After drying she put them in Kilner
jars. They kept for well over a year, but seldom lasted that long. They
needed soaking before cooking and never quite swelled back to their
original size, but were still surprisingly tasty.
--
David in Normandy.
(The free MicroPlanet Gravity newsreader is great for eliminating
rubbish and cross-posts)