Storing Food in T2K

[TiggerCCW UK]

What would you need to do to prepare food for drying? Its an area I'm completely ignorant of, but it could provide an easyish means of preserving large amounts of food without having to use additional resources, I think. What about smoking meats and fish as well? There's a museum near here that has and old smoke house at it and again I think its a fairly easy way of preserving food.

[jester]

For say fruit and vegetables, simpy cut in small pieces you can remove seeds and large portions that are liquid <like the insides of a tomato> you can also peel them or skin them, then lay flat to dry.

You can also place them on screens so air flows and they dry quicker, or you can make mesh flats or racks from loosely woven flat pieces of wood or sticks or twigs or even leaves. Let air or sundry and flip them over and repeat until they are dry which they should usualy be brittle.

You can make a past of tomato, or fruit puree ansd let it dry into a leather or skin like a fruit roll up, these you can then tear off the desired portion and soak in water for use later. I have freinds who do this with tomato sauce.

Soups and stews this can be done too.

The key things is cutting them into uniform size, air circulation, and protecting them from insects and windblown debris. Its that simple.

As for smoking,

Soak the meat in a brine for a period of time, 24 hours, cut into uniform pieces, thin is good, then hang in a smoke chamber, this can be a cardboard box, or a metal trashcan or an old refrigerator.

Have your smoke going, this can be a candle burning under a pan of woodchips that have been soaked in water, I usualy use a 50/50 mix of half wet half dry, fruit wood and nut woods are the best, never use pine type trees or citrus or eucalytus. And hang your meat about 12 to 16 inches from the base of the small smoldering fire as you want the smoke not the heat to cook and preserve what you want. Racks or hanging from hooks are the best since it gives better coverage of the surface area.

And salting, the meat can be placed in a layer of salt in a box or barrel, covered in salt and then another layer and on and on until done. Of course the item should be hung for a bit to let moisture drain away.

And brining, a salt and water and spice solution, usualy used for pork like salt pork, uniform pieces of pork or the meat of choice <beef is corned beef> and let it soak for several days, or weeks.

The thing with salting is, you will need to presoak and cook out the salt that was used to preserve the meat.

And pickling:

Vinegar, spices and your medium fish, pork, vegetables. Brew up your vinegar and spices like tea, then pour it over the items you want to pickle, seal in a crock or jar and leave alone for 2 weeks or longer so the item gets pickled. And these should remain preserved for several weeks or months once cured.

[TiggerCCW UK]

Thanks for that - lots of good info there.

[Littlearmies]

I've just been reading a book called "Salt: A World History" by Mark Kaplansky which, despite it's rather anorak subject title is fascinating - it has recipes for salting and using salt and making salt. I rather think that salt producing areas would become rather valuable locations for trade and settlement. I'd recommend it to anyone.

You can also pick up lovely tidbits like where the word "salacious" comes from!

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by Littlearmies

You can also pick up lovely tidbits like where the word "salacious" comes from!

Oh, that's easy! It's from Star Wars Episode 6...

[Slappy]

This can also be a useful reason for trade. Salt can only be mined in limited areas inland and produced on the coast. Salt trading would be one of the major commercial enterprises in T2k. I haven't thought about it that much, but it seems there might be the highest demand in the fall as communities prepare for the winter and 'salt away' food. Why not kill that extra hog in October and salt it for eating later instead of feeding it all winter?

There are some spectacular salt mines southeast of Krakow by the way.

[WallShadow]

Originally Posted by Slappy

This can also be a useful reason for trade. Salt can only be mined in limited areas inland and produced on the coast. Salt trading would be one of the major commercial enterprises in T2k.
<SNIP>
There are some spectacular salt mines southeast of Krakow by the way.

There are several major salt mines in the US, one in Hutchinson KS and another _under_ Lake Erie accessed through a portal in Cleveland OH.Many have already followed the Twilight canon from Poland's salt mines in that sections of them are reserved for storage or even manufacturing. IIRC the Hutchinson Mine had machine tools and industrial equipment stored there as a hedge against nuclear war. Now where have we heard something like that before?

[Littlearmies]

Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b

Oh, that's easy! It's from Star Wars Episode 6...

Actually its from the Romans - they said that a guy who was in love (or lust) was "salted up" ("salax" in Latin) and salacious stems from salax. I find stuff like that fascinating so I'm really enjoying the book.

In the UK Cheshire is the centre of salt mining (actually it's often that you drill down and take the brine from the well - it's why salt drilling was the precursor technology for the oil industry, that and the fact that salt domes are an indicator for oil - you then reduce the brine to below 24% salt solution at which time salt crystals begin to precipitate). In the US it used to be Onondaga in upstate NY, Kanawha in the South.

Using evaporation in large tanks is a slower technology but if you have an area with a good climate (south end of San Francisco Bay) it's quite possible. Otherwise you need to build some basic technology, in a coastal area with fuel and transport links.

My view of the Twilight World is that, blessed with the knowledge of how to do things but not the equipment (or energy) to do them on a modern large scale, we would revert to 18th and 19th Century methods of production at least at first.

[TiggerCCW UK]

Theres a pretty big salt mine just outside Belfast as well;

http://www.irishsaltmining.com/home.htm

Although with this being designed to produce rocksalt for de icing work I would imagine you'd need to refine it for use in food.