It Could Happen Here - How to Prep Like A Smart Person

Episode Date: September 24, 2021

The team talks with Bea and Elaine about how to get cheap produce and how to make that food last longer via preservation including the process of canning, dehydrating, and freezing. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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This is It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things not being as good as they are and trying to make them better uh i'm robert evans my co-host today as many days garrison davis garrison say hello to the people hi people garrison what are we what are we what are we what are we what do we what do we what do we do what do we do what are we doing today nice yodel like thank you um we are going to be having a discussion on um food and food preservation and finding you mean like putting it in the freezer well what if the freezer's not working the freezer is always working this is america uh-huh things never break down the power goes out for two weeks matt aren't you from well that's one of our guests for today uh my friends b and elaine um who who you've heard

earlier this week and who are going to talk about food storage and particularly again our focus this week is like we keep getting a lot of people being like i have no money or very little money or very little space i'm not gonna be able to grow things how can i possibly you know gather food store food like build resiliency i don't have any any kind of farmland and the good news is no matter where you live things that are edible grow and you can get those things and you can find ways to make them last longer than they would if you just kept them in a sack. And that's a pretty cool thing to do.

So I'm going to hand it over to be in a lane. Hello. After that. Hey. I don't have much space. I don't have much money. Was kind of how I got into doing canning in the first place. For myself, I used to be very, very poor. I was on food stamps.

I had no money. I was a broke punk. And one of my friends was like, oh man, there's this farmer at the farmer's market. And if you help them clean up, they'll let you take away whatever leftover produce they have that they don't want. So you can just load up a bag with produce. All you got to do is help them load the truck at the end of the day. So that's what I did every single Wednesday for the next five years, no matter what, come hell or high water. But with that, that also became, there's, you start realizing that there's gluts and then lacks of things um much like you know everything that's happening in society now just in general there was seasons when there was nothing but you were it was easy to at the end of a farmer's market day walk home

with a 50 pound flat of tomatoes and you know times of the year where it was nothing but cabbage and you might have wanted tomatoes a lot. And canning was great because it helped to equal out when I could get things without having to dive into the, you know, 60 bucks a month I got in food stamps and spend it at the farmer's market on that. Instead, I could use it to have a variety of vegetables or canned goods or other things in order to flavor my ramen. Yeah, I first came at this kind of from working on farms where similarly there are gluts. There are times of year where you literally cannot eat melons fast enough. And everybody who works on farms talks about getting the melon shits because you're eating

as many melons as you possibly can. And it turns out that doesn't always agree with you um yeah and uh and then you know there's the time of year where well if you want to eat some month old potatoes and some two month old squash and maybe some storage cabbage great and otherwise there's no produce to be had so preserving food is well there's a lot of different ways to do it and it seems really intense a lot of the time because people talk about like botulism you're going to die of botulism if you have home canned food and so first off there's just to dispel a lot of myths about things there's actually really really really low instances of botulism um i'm not going to say it doesn't happen but there's actually very few cases of botulism

per year and a lot of them are from industrial canned goods don't eat a can if it's bowing out into the sides of the top. Yep. Throw the can. Well, bury the can. Bury it in the woods far away. But then also beyond canning, there's a lot of different ways of food preservation. You know, you were joking about like, but don't toss it in the freezer. I don't know. I toss a lot of things in the freezer. It's certainly not a bad idea.

Yeah. I mean, we got all sorts of animals from the farm in the freezer right now we got a lot of blueberries because a couple squirrels yeah that was a random thing um just just some squirrels on the side yeah five squirrels for squirrel fajitas uh-huh but yeah it's not that having a freezer is a bad idea it's just that the freezer depends on you know having power or at least having a backup power source or a generator or a generator or or or um and in the case that you don't have access to those things or can't afford to get a whole extra freezer and that fills up a substantial part of your very small power the freezer or can't afford to power the freezer.

You know, we, we definitely saw this past winter with the power outages that were caused by, you know, inclement weather that it suddenly became very hard to acquire dry ice because dry ice will keep stuff cold for longer. But everybody who's gone camping and used dry ice in their cooler knows that. So as soon as there's an interruption in people's ability to refrigerate their food,

the entire regional stock of dry ice is going to disappear. So what we're looking at more in what we're talking about today is a little bit more like the things that you don't need to keep anywhere but like a cabinet that maybe doesn't get boiling hot. And if it's sort of a room temperature cabinet, you can store a lot of stuff. I've personally found the backs of closets. Like think about all of the areas that you don't clean. You're like, I just shove things back here and hope that they disappear because I don't actually care about them. Or like the backs of broom closets. That actually for a long time was my place where I would store canned goods because you can just stack the pallets of jars, the flats of them.

Because if you buy jars from the supermarket, Buy Mart, canning stores, anywhere. Safeway has them. Yeah, Walmart has them. Yeah. They're not expensive. You can just, they come in a little square flat. And so after I would fill them, I'd just put them all back in there. And then I could just stack those as a little tower and then, you know, hand them out as gifts for the rest of the year. Which was also definitely something that you do when you have absolutely no money and people are like, oh, we're having a New Year's Eve party. And you're like, I brought you jam.

And they're like, oh, great. Blueberry. Lovely. But it's nice. It's something you can give people. Beyond canning, because sometimes, like right now, it's incredibly hard to find the metal lids that go on canning jars or in some cases the jars that's actually I was recently looking for more jar lids and ended up buying flats of jars instead because as four different stores told me there's a supply chain disruption in getting jar lids there's also a lot of ways that you can preserve stuff with drying you can also do a lot with salt, vinegar, and sugar preserving as well so that you don't necessarily need the resealable jars or new lids for that. So there's a bunch of different methods.

Lacto-fermentation as well, like fermenting things. So what would you like to talk about first? Let's start with just like what is the actual process of canning beyond like just dumping stuff into a can and sealing it? So there's canning by itself is sealing jars with heat. So that was really came into its own around like World War II. It was like industrial canning. its own around like World War II. It was like industrial canning.

And the thing about it is that even within canning, there's two different types. There's low heat and high heat canning. Low heat is actually just boiling water temperature. And high heat, you actually need to go above the temperature of boiling water. So you can

pressure can. You need a pressure cooker. They terrify me. I don't pressure can because I haven't quite gotten over the images of when they explode and give people steam burns. I know plenty of people who do pressure can and it's great for them. You can pressure can at high heat anything. You can toss raw fish or raw meat in oil and jars or in water and jars and you can pressure can it and it will cook and seal the jars and it is very safe. Low temperature canning is still relying on one of the other methods like salt, sugar,

acid for the to keep down bacteria. So all it does, though, is it makes the same. So you can do this with or without canning. It just makes the jars keep a lot longer because it preserves them. So it's the process of you take a jar and then you either use a clean ring if you're using those latching reusable jars with these nice rings on them that you can use over and over again. Really handy when there are supply chain disruptions to know that you can reuse your jar and ring. when there are supply chain disruptions to know that you can reuse your jar and ring we're talking about like the mason jars that you you you would get in uh bars that are too expensive five years ago they would pour your terrible ipa in them yes yeah but you can use them for other things too

no these are the well there's two well they're the bigger there's big jars that have a lid that is attached and it latches oh yeah with the the, yeah, yeah. And so those have a rubber... Gasket thing. Yes, that you can... And as long as you keep those oiled and clean, you can reuse those for years. They do eventually wear out, but they use a long time.

Yeah, the rubber doesn't last. The others is mason or ball canning jars. And those actually have a two-piece top. They have a metal ring that you just need to make sure it's not horrifically dented or rusted through. It's reusable for a very long time. And then they have a metal ring that you just need to make sure it's not like horrifically dented or rusted through it's reusable for a very long time and then you have a lid and the lid can only really they are recommended to only use once i've reused them like twice only used to can once

you can like once it's canned and you can take stuff out put it back on you don't have to like replace the lid every time you get some preserves out. Yeah, but the tiny piece of rubber that is what seals it is very thin, and so it's not very reusable for multiple batches of food. And true to form, if you go looking around in rummage sales, vintage stores, whatever, you will probably find either very cheap or very overpriced some of those old hinged jars and tons of mason jars and tons of mason jars you will often need to replace either the lids or the rubber gaskets in order to make them safe to store food in but in either case whether you're using the little the mason or ball jars that you'll

find in lots of stores or the big latching ones, the jars are the more expensive spot things. The lids and the rubber rings are more inexpensive to replace. So if you can find them at Goodwill, if you can find them at Goodwill bins or other places, it's great. You should always grab them. Jars are never a bad idea. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows

presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows.

As part of my Cultura podcast network. Available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother

trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez.

At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the

My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry,

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Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions.

Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. So canning, there's a million different ways to can. I do a lot of jams, jellies, pickles, and tomatoes, which are all things that are canned that are preserved either with acid

or sugar in either case james and jelly's being sugar and pickles and stuff being acid yes those are my two favorites they're very simple to learn and then you can always expand recipes and everything else but with pickles and tomatoes and other things, having the pH be very acidic is what actually does the preservation of the food and keeps down funguses, molds, bacterias, and stuff. And with jams and jellies, the natural acidity of the fruit mixed with a lot of sugar is what keeps the fruits from going bad or anything. Yeah. And the great thing about canning fruit is that like when you, when you're thinking about what is the greatest number of free calories available to most people in a city during the seasons where fruit grows, it's often going to be fruit. And like you,

you'd be surprised like where you could do like Los Angeles, where I used to live, there was much of the year, like seven, eight months, you, you could fill your arms with fruit if you knew where to go. And there's an app called Falling Fruit that you can use to find people mark like where different trees are. A lot of like, you'll be surprised even if you think like, well, there's no fruit in my area. Good. Try Falling Fruit. You may find that, oh, actually there's a shitload of fruit and I just was not looking. Or as you often find, I didn't realize that was an edible plant. I assume those berries were not food and they can be and and that's a lot of like free you know when you especially when you're making preserves that's really calorically dense

and and that also ties in with in the sort of survival utility aspect of this because like canning is fun and harvesting fruit is fun and having stuff you made to yeah steal pomegranates from rich people's houses do it sure absolutely i mean but part of part of the other thing to think about here is that like providing yourself with a reserve of different kinds of nutrition and different like there's you get an assortment of stuff so you know you aren't having to constantly buy it because honestly the most expensive in terms of carbon output, the most expensive in terms of cost per calorie in grocery stores tends to come from the stuff that's been shipped up from Argentina because it's not in season up here. Yeah, that's why you're getting grapes in January. right and blueberries you can actually watch them move all the way down the northern hemisphere over

the course of the growing season until they're like growing them down in chile right before they start being able to grow them again so yeah so just thinking about like the things that are available when they are available um and you'll see this all the time like the good forage spots when they're available there will be crowds of people there all collecting stuff and getting to know some of the things that you like and that grow near you and what time of year they come into season. And maybe forming some relationships with people and being like, hey, I noticed you have a chestnut tree in your backyard. Can I come and harvest chestnuts? Hey, you have this kind of oak. Can I come and get acorns from you because I want to do a leaching project?

Hey, I was grabbing apples and I noticed that you're harvesting all these acorns. I didn't know that you could do anything with acorns. What are you doing with all those acorns? Yeah. And one of the greatest things, things too is that a good fruit tree makes a lot of fruit so much so you know we have a little plum that's near our house there's a little plum tree and since this year we managed to get to it before the raccoon did that likes to clamor over the roof we got about 250 pounds of plums off of this small fruit tree.

And it is not very big. It has a footprint of maybe about 10 feet in diameter of the widest part of the tree. But it drops quite a bit of fruit, especially if we get to it before it all drops on the ground and our cars and the driveway and the walkway. And the cat. And the cat. But if we get to it, it's a lot. and the walkway and the cat and the cat but if we get to it it's a lot so honestly i set aside about a 50 pound tub that was like okay we're gonna make some jam we're gonna dry some of these we're gonna do things with it and the rest we were able to give to friends we tossed some in

the free fridges we tossed some all you know we handed out because one good fruit tree makes a lot so when you see fruit trees around town, when you walk under someone's cherry tree, it's okay to ask for fruit too, because I don't know anyone that uses every single piece of fruit off of any other fruit trees. And, you know, one of the things that you will see is that a lot of cities try to discourage people from planting fruit trees along roads, precisely because when they come into fruit, they produce so much fruit that it causes a problem. Also, it's a good way to form relationships in your neighborhood.

You say like, hey, we have a whole bunch of plums. We have a ton of whatever is dropping all over your front yard. And then your neighbors may be like, oh, those weirdos who were collecting fruit that one time, this tree in my backyard that's about to drop all this stuff, I'll let them know and maybe they'll come so I don't have to clean it up afterward. Yeah, which is again, like people, we talk a lot about the importance of building like community resiliency and community self-defense and folks ask like, well, how do I actually do that? Well, that's maybe that's a start for you. Maybe the start is like you get to know what do

they have? What do I have? And then you start talking about like, well, I'm going to can some stuff. Do you want to learn how to can? You're like, oh, well, I was going to dry these. Do you want to learn it like or do you want to borrow my dehydrator? And then you're making connections that are very practical and also social in your area. Also, one plug. We've talked a little bit about the process of canning. Dehydrators are great and are pretty affordable. They're not expensive. Yeah. Like I think, you know, for 60 to 80 bucks, you can usually get a decent dehydrator. And if you don't have one, but you have an oven, if you put things on a baking rack, very low heat, you can just put it. If you put things on a baking rack.

Very low heat. You can just put it. I would just turn my oven on to warm and you can lay out things in your oven. I have a nicer oven now that won't let me do this. But when I used to live in my first junky apartment, I would literally just stick a metal spoon, like one of my big cooking spoons, in the door of the oven so that it would open. And that would just vent all of the steam of whatever I was drying in the oven. And meanwhile, if you live in, say, a really dry climate or a climate where you have a really dry stretch of time when fruit is in season and you have window screens and an area where you can make sure there's a steady breeze flowing across your fruit, cut it thin, lay it out in the sun. And that make sure there's a steady breeze flowing across your fruit.

Cut it thin. Lay it out in the sun. And that's why there's so much sun-dried X, Y, and Z that's really expensive when you go to Trader Joe's or whatever. And it's not just a matter. We shouldn't just say that you have to forage for all this stuff. It can be a matter of, well, during these months, beef is much cheaper. It's half as much as it will be later. I'm going to buy beef when it's cheap, and I'm going to make jerky now,

and then I will have protein when I can't afford to purchase protein or as much protein later in the year. Speaking of jerky, just in the vein of building your own dehydrate or something, one other thing that I've done is you can just get a you know a decent box fan and some furnace filters and strap them all together and that can very successfully dry out jerky yeah um so dehydrators there's a lot of different ways to yeah it is it is literally just kind of warm yeah like 130 degrees or less in some cases and air that is moving and it's it's like everything we've been talking about there's the you can buy very expensive dehydrators if you want to if you

want to get a primo jerky making thing together you can you can make that a real expensive thing or you can do it for like trash like with with discarded crap that you find around in people's like take piles and i think also the other thing to think about, we're talking about it's not all foraging is to think about we've been talking about supply chain disruptions, but also one of the things in our current circumstances is the weird gluts and excesses and surpluses that are produced by our supply chains. and surpluses that are produced by our supply chains and again one of the big ways that i learned about food preservation was food not bombs and food preservation and also just food preparation was food not bombs way back in the day like you need a special sound every time on specifically it could happen here someone mentions food not bombs at this point that was my entry back when i was just kind of a liberally journalist guy to like anarchist praxis was like every protest i go to there's these like crusty punks handing out sandwiches yeah yep um and they have neat

stickers yeah i wonder what's going on here and well and one of the important things about food nut bombs is that food nut bombs has sort of two different ways that you obtain food for food not bombs one is you form relationships with grocery stores farmers yeah people who are going to have a lot of food a lot of supply coming in and there's stuff they're not going to be able to use or so either because it's ugly you know, it's carrots that look like dicks and they don't feel comfortable putting the carrots that look like dicks on the shelf. Yeah, because it's just too hot. It happens all the time.

It's just too hot. Or, yeah, so you have your relationships with like local businesses and local suppliers who aren't going to be able to sell or use some of their stuff. Day-old bread. Right, day-old bread. We are a bakery and we pride ourselves on fresh bread so we're going to give our day olds and it makes us feel good as liberals to give it to who not bombs and then on the flip side there's the the fact that the supply chain is designed to produce these excesses but then if it can't make money off of them dispose

of them that's where you end up with you know cops guarding cops guarding dumpsters for example don't dumpster from the cops that the cop guarded dumpsters those are the wrong dumpsters other dumpsters yeah go to other dumpsters i know it's infuriating it's very frustrating i get the desire to yell at the cop but there will you can find dumpsters that are also also if you are a store or a restaurant you're legally protected to let people go through your dumpster yeah not to not it's not on you yeah during the clinton administration there is legislation that was passed that straight up said like at a federal level if you present i think the wording is uh seemingly wholesome and healthful food to people for free, even if it has passed its expiration date, that you are legally protected because it's dumb to throw out food just because the thing

that's stamped on the package has expired. Now, that does mean if you pick up some meat that's expired and the package is puffy, don't eat that. Yeah. And it also there are also local ordinances and local laws that do restrict that more because there are places where people get arrested for handing out food to like, you know, homeless people and whatnot. But,

you know, check your local laws before doing anything as radical and violent as giving out food. As giving out free food to poor people. Yeah. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter

Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America

since the beginning of time. the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him.

Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series,

Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them.

Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, or wherever you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday.

There are these gluts and there are these points where the supply chain is going to dump huge amounts of stuff into the system. For example, right now we just talked about how canning supplies are kind of in short supply right now, which is weird. I guarantee you that that means in a couple of months there's going to be tons of canning supplies everywhere. Or, you know, when there were power outages in Portland, then there was a bunch of stuff, even stuff that doesn't need to be refrigerated was getting thrown out if it was stored in the refrigerated section.

Yeah. Because stores have their specific protocols about like, oh, well, if this is left, if this freezer is unplugged, we have to throw out everything in the freezer. Never mind that a bunch of stuff in the freezer straight up says right there on it does not require refrigeration or only refrigerate after opening or refrigerate after opening so think about like where are your local systems going to produce these huge gluts or maybe it's super cheap at certain times of year

you know you maybe corn goes down to like 15 cents an year or five cents an year. At the end of at the end of August. Right. So maybe you can get a whole ton of corn and then you can dry it. Like, you know, when I have options. When I was a kid, we lived in California and we were not doing a ton of canning. I did not grow up canning. I didn't grow up preserving food. I didn't grow up preserving food. I didn't in that type of way. But one thing that my mom would do is when our little Meyer lemon tree

was covered in lemons, she would just juice a whole pile of them and then pour it into ice cube trays and then empty the ice cube trays into gallon bags. And then we had lemon, you know, we would make lemonade all year round. And her recipe literally called for three lemon cubes to how much sugar and stuff, but she had it measured out. And so she would just pop those in and that would just live in the refrigerator all year round was just constant lemonade. One other plug in terms of preserving stuff that I want to talk a little bit about, but with the disclaimer that I am by no means an expert. One of the other things that, you know, the punks of yesteryear with their Food Not Bombs houses

got really excited about was things like kraut and kombucha. And there are some really great resources out there, specifically Wild Fermentation and The Art of Fermentation, which are both by a guy named Sandra Katz, on how to ferment food without, you know, you're using naturally occurring bacteria. And fermentation as a means of preservation is possibly the oldest means of deliberate food storage that human beings have. And you can do it with a wide variety of things. And so again, if you're faced with one of those gluts, where you have a ton of stuff and know

where you can store it in your refrigerated storage areas, there's probably a way you can jam it, you can dry it, you can ferment it, you can, you know, make vinegar out of it. And you can find guides for all of this for free online like all of this is accessible if you have a phone there are people doing people putting up videos on youtube where you can watch them do it too to make it you do not have to purchase books in order to learn there's also a lot of ways you know you can make cold storages in your backyard you can definitely like i have a lot of guides on how to make your own root cellars in very small spaces and do things because as long as you're not having your

food produce the thing that makes it that makes your food go bad there's a lot of different ways that you can prevent food spoilage but that you can learn from but honestly crowd and canning are probably some of the quickest and easiest and as a a general rule, you know, similarly, if you don't have access to building a garden, you probably also don't have access to like digging a root cellar. That being said, if you have a room or a space in your house where you can reliably keep it cool and dark like below i don't know 70 degrees closet dark yeah like closets there's probably a spot in your basement if you live in a house where you have a basement or if you live in a basement because you're in an illegal renting situation right yeah um it's pretty easy and for that matter when we talk about like root cellars there are totally some diy schematics for literally digging a like three foot cube hole in your yard and sinking in something to line it and

then that's where you store stuff because if you dig down a few feet below ground it stays 50 degrees year round yeah so and i i get like when you hear again we keep coming back to this like i think a lot of people get uh overwhelmed or get very anxious when they think about trying to build resiliency because they live in a tiny apartment they don't have much in the way of money the important one of the most important things to understand is like a lot of people no matter how poor you are poorer than you have have been doing this kind of stuff for generations like it's why most of our grandparents survived the 30s yeah and i think one thing that people have a misinterpretation of with canning and stuff is that they are going to put stuff up and they're

going to like put up their cans and their jars and then they will eventually build this you know i have food for 12 years buried here nothing has that great of a shelf life i mean i've definitely uh pulled out some jam that was from 2014 i definitely didn't do that this year that i had forgotten in the back of the cupboard and eaten it and it's fine it's fine but usually a couple three years yeah a couple but the idea of canning and preserving was not that you are saving food in case the sky falls in and everyone is doomed the reason that people preserve food was to extend the bounty of a harvest season for a few additional weeks or months right and if you think about it that way you're extending what you have to times when it would be more enjoyable to eat it when it feels special.

No, I mean, it's like jam. A big part of the reason for jam is there's really important nutrients in fruit that maybe you can't get in the dead of winter, but you can if you have jam. Just to be a farm nerd for a minute, because Robert, I know that you are a huge fan of pumpkin spice. Oh, the reason that I just had my first cup of the season today. Amazing monster. Pumpkin spice. Oh. The reason that. Just had my first cup of the season today. Amazing. Monster. The reason that pumpkins and cinnamon and apples and baking goods, baked goods with

raisins in them are all like a big deal and are all like apples are a fruit that if you put apples in, say, a barrel, there's the saying about one bad apple, because if you make sure that an apple isn't rotting and you put it in a cool, dark space with decent ventilation, apples will keep for a very long time. Squash are a big deal. Pumpkins are a big deal around this time of year, because buttercup squash, for example, and butternut squash are both storage squash. They taste better if they have been sitting in a dark storage area for like two months. Then they have metabolized more of their starches into sugars and they're tastier.

A lot of like squash, root vegetables, all of that sort of stuff that you associate with, you know, fall harvest season is specifically storage crops because I'm originally from New England. That's the time of year where you stop being able to get food out of the ground and everything freezes and dies and then it doesn't start up again until April and you need a way to like keep eating in the meantime. And also though, let's just remember that a lot of preserved foods are also meat, not just because they are a substitute or because they're extending the harvest, but because in order to preserve the food and keep the nutrients, you have to go through a process. You want to have the salt be too high or the acidity

be too high or the sugar content be too high or the water content be too low to enable bacterial growth and so that the fruits and vegetables and meats or whatever don't rot. But that means that you get so many awesome and different flavors that you would never, you know, grapes, grapes are great, whatever. Grapes preserved in wine vinegar. That sounds cool you can do that and then you have a completely different thing that you normally don't eat you know dried uh dried figs apple chips like you also get a whole new variety of foods that are not just extending and harvest but are also other things to eat you know my kids are not going to toss a whole pile of fresh fruit in their backpack sometimes because it squishes at the bottom of their backpacks and i find it weeks later and it's absolutely terrifying unfortunate yeah on the other hand a bunch of you know dried uh dried prunes plums and stuff from the garden

that dried out they'll take baggies of those and if i find them a month later because they didn't eat them it isn't the end of the world either yeah and and again like there's a lot of fun stuff like you know yeah grapes by themselves are are fine you can also turn grapes into stuff that will help you preserve other stuff and raisins in baked goods if you've ever had a loaf of raisin bread and a loaf of white bread in the same bread box, the white bread will mold first. Raisins are actually a preservative. It's why people started putting raisins in bread.

Yeah, and I think we should close out. But I kind of wanted to do that by circling back to the overall topic of this week, which is like building resiliency when you don't have much in the way of money or resources. And one of the things that you may not think of as building resiliency is exactly what you were talking about, Bea, and you, Elaine, paying attention to what is available, what time of the year, what is cheap, what time of the year, what is like, when do the gluts happen and when do the shortages happen? Because that doesn't actually cost any money. You don't even have to buy things. Like you buy things. You're always going to be going out to the store to get food occasionally. It's keeping an eye on understanding what is available growing naturally and what is available in the economy because that connects you more to

the environment you live in, to the climate as it changes, and to your community, all of which make you more resilient and none of which costs you a dime. It just costs you attention. community, all of which make you more resilient and none of which costs you a dime. It just costs you attention. Also, just a plug for people who have access to the ecosystems where this is relevant. Things like shellfish licenses are great. I'm not going to tell anyone that they should seek out sport fishing as a means of obtaining calories. On the other hand, in Oregon, at least for, I think it's five bucks, nine bucks. Oh, it's up to 10 bucks now.

But so for 10 bucks, get a shellfish license. You go down to a cove and you rake cockles for an hour. And then you have, you know, an enormous amount of food that you can do all of the preservation that we've talked about. You can also just make chowder and freeze it you know whatever but there's a lot of ways to to cheaply obtain calories from out in the world yeah all right well that's going to do it for us today um until next time

remember experiment on your friends with different medical care treatments nope don't do that although on the other hand look up the if you are in the pacific northwest there is the portland fruit tree project up here which goes around and connects gleaners with fruit trees that need to be gleaned um so people who have overabundant trees that they don't want all the stuff that's a really great resource in other cities i'm sure there's other things and also the falling fruit maps yeah the falling fruit maps you can go online and if there's not already one in your area they also make it really easy to be able to chart and put in trees in your area so if it's something that you're excited about and you love identifying trees you can go in and actually start charting your neighborhood.

Also, figure out how to identify, you know, five wild plants that grow in your area that you can eat. Because it's always nice to have more variety. And it's fun to be out on a walk and be like, oh, cool. Now I have a thing that I can toss in with dinner when I get back. Yeah. And we've talked about how there's like the poor version and the cheap version. There's also like the centrist version and the radical version of that. The centrist version is like, I just want to know like what kind of edible fruits grow

naturally in my area. The more radical version is I'm going to start gorilla grows of edible foods on like available land in my area. Yeah. I'm going to seed ball some shit. I'm going to like, I'm going to get insurgent. It's very easy. I'm going to get insurgent to prepare food. Things that grow rhizomally take root real easy in the ecosystems they like and are real hard to get rid of once they get going. Plant crime gardens.

I'm not going to say people should tear out the random trees that cities plant and then replace them with apples. No, no one would say that. Of course not. I'm just saying that if you were to replace trees that didn't make food with trees that did make food in the same spot, probably nobody would notice except the people who got food from them. And there would be more free calories in your area if, you know, the kind of things that have been happening the last several years continue to happen. All right. That's the episode. That's the episode.

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