What do you think about dried food?
Since we had Brexit and Covid as a double whammy in the UK, the news has been full of doom-mongering stories about food supply disruption, and not without foundation. We now have a shortage of lorry drivers and a shortage of fruit pickers. There is still plenty of food in the grocery stores, but it's true that supplies have become more sporadic, and staples — milk, fish, that sort of thing — often run out leaving an empty space for a while until new supplies come through. More of an inconvenience than a disaster.
It's made me think about store-cupboard food. In our garden we grow mostly fruit and herbs, and we eat wild food (and drink wild water) as well. I do firmly believe in the power of fresh food — an apple or a greengage picked straight from the tree, dandelion leaves and nasturtium flowers plucked straight from the garden for a lunchtime salad, mint leaves picked and made immediately into a cup of tea; that sort of thing. That's Ayurvedic food.
Surely, though, food that has been picked a while ago, travelled here and there in lorries, stored in plastic bags in the supermarket, then kept in my fridge for several days, is going to lose some nutrients. Dried food is probably just as good, possibly better.
Dried food also addresses some of the challenges of cooking for one. Sometimes Tony and I cook for each other, but what we want to eat (and the times we want to eat it) varies and differs, so most often we each cook our own. I practice a kind of slovenly variety of intermittent fasting, with a shorter eating window than Tony, so my supper time has come and gone long before he's ready to eat, anyway.
The thing about cooking for one is that it easily becomes any of a) expensive, b) wasteful, and c) boring — because you either have to keep eating the same thing until you've finished the pack/item, or eat more than you really wanted so it doesn't go off; and you have to buy more than you wanted in the first place.
Dried food seems to me to offer a way out of this dilemma.
As a (very) young woman I enjoyed cooking, but lost all delight in it by firstly cooking for monks in Devon whose idea of ingredients included huge blocks of rubbery processed cheese, loaves of sliced white bread and carrier bags of chicken livers; then secondly cooking for five children who were always hungry and never liked anything but sausages, baked beans, cheese, bread and processed food. One wearies of hearing how onions have the same texture as slugs, she doesn't like it with gravy, or she'll throw up if you make her eat this fish.
So food prep for me, in my 60s, cooking for one, endlessly combatting through nutrition the onset of all the usual health problems, is more a science than an art.
I have bought bags of dried rice, dried vegetables (various) and herbs, dried mushroom powder, bone broth concentrate, bouillon mix — and I just mix in some handfuls or a pinch or two from the different bags with spring water and cook it for a while in one pot, and bingo! There's lunch!
I buy dried seaweed in sheets, and use it to make little parcels — sort of rice-less sushi. I cut into fingers an avocado, some cucumber, part of a pepper and some smoked salmon, and roll up a piece of each inside a little sheet of seaweed. Finger food. I love it.
Meanwhile breakfast is some oats from the huge multipack box of same, mixed with oat milk (also from a big multipack box of cartons). I sprinkle a little coconut sugar on it — it's less sweet than regular sugar, and has fibre in it, and actually has a flavour.
Then supper can be fruit and nut butter (good fat there too), or maybe an egg and salad. Or I can soak some prunes or apricots and have them with coconut yogurt.
It carries on being delicious and is always easy. It's a buffer against the vagaries of food supply issues, and doesn't take up shared space in the fridge and freezer because I can store it in boxes under my bed.
It's economical, and gives the farmer more leeway with produce — less is wasted all along the journey from the field to my stomach — the shelf life is long and the packaging is minimal.
You need some fats as well of course — I like olive oil. Occasional pancakes, or some fried (fresh) onions and seasonal zucchini or tomato or fresh mushrooms are a delicious addition.
It seems like a good solution to me — but what do you think?
9 comments:
I have been thinking about dried food as well. I have always wondered how much nutrition is preserved, and it would be good to know... but yes, my romaine lettuce picked in the San Joaquin Valley in California has come a long way to me in Northern Minnesota, and even now has sat in my refrigerator for four days. I will chop it up today and make a big salad, and will store it another day or two so I don't have to chop up a bunch of vegetables every day, because I guess I'm a bit lazy. I put in romaine, tomatoes, red cabbage, cucumbers, mushrooms sauteed in sherry and garlic and olive oil, carrots, and sometimes asparagus. A few sprouted walnuts or pecans. And the occasional chicken breast sliced up. Anyway, I'm interested to know what others use in the dried food department. It would be nice to have a plan, and just get started putting a few things away. Your menu sounds delicious, Ember. xoxo
Sprouted walnuts! That is entirely new to me. I didn't know they existed.
Red cabbage in a salad sounds a bit challenging to me — I do like red cabbage, but cooked slowly in apple juice.
I often buy one of those dense, hard, round, white cabbages like a ball, and I find those last ages — I just hack a few bits off to add in with my food. I think I'd carry on getting those even if I went onto more dried food, because they're easy, don't need peeling, don't have caterpillars, and never seem to go bad. xx
I bought myself a dehydrator last year. I have dehydrated celery, herbs, mushrooms and apples so far. Of course mum doesn't like the food I have dried. I do wish I could buy more in the dried food items. Dried foods make sense to me. They do not need refrigeration, they are light to store and convenient. Sadly I only have what I have dried, some potato, peas and legumes and grains. I am not good at eating pulses but I keep them now in case I cannot obtain other foods.
Yes, it was getting in some "just in case" food that started me off thinking about it — and now I find it so easy and helpful and tasty. of pulses, I keep a few tins of borlotti beans and butter beans and kidney beans and chickpeas, but I have a couple of bags of the normal kind of (red/orange/pink) lentils, that I find great for thickening soup, or just making dahl to go with rice.
Well done for doing your own! That's a great achievement. I drink nettle tea every day — in teabags from the wholefood co-op. If I were more focused and motivated and determined, I'd hop over the low wall at the bottom of the garden into the wasteland there that's got more nettles than you could possibly imagine, and pick them in the spring to dehydrate and make my own tea.
There's another aspect - dried milk is much lighter to carry home from the shops than wet milk.
I believe in parts of the world where food supplies are usually more intermittent, dried foods are more usual. And that they used to be here - I remember dried milk being more common in the seventies but that may have been because of doomsday prepping.
If you're not vegetarian salt fish is nice after much soaking.
John
I use lentils to thicken foods as well. If Philippa and Mia knew what was in their favourite lasagne and spaghetti sauce they would refuse to eat it.
I have never thought of making tea bags. I don't drink tea or many hot drinks so I just buy what mum prefers.
Hi John — Some years ago in America there was a publication called The Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn,, all about frugality and thrift. By the time I came across it, publication of it had ceased, but I was still able to access the material online, and it was also made into a book that's still available (I'll link to it below). One of the things I remember her saying is that dried milk is a way cheaper alternative — and the older people I knew who'd lived through the World Wars *always* had dried milk in their store cupboards and used it regularly.
I am a fan of whole milk rather than low-fat milk, and organic milk because of nutrient status, care of the land, and animal welfare standards. It used to be that one could buy only low-fat factory-farmed dried milk, but that's no longer so; I see there are organic whole milk options on the dried milk shelves these days (hooray!)
For my particular health profile I avoid dairy most of the time (I like it but it oppresses my breathing), otherwise what you suggest is exactly what I'd do. Thanks for the tip! Milk is indeed one of the heaviest items people have to lug home from the store, which if you're on public transport makes a difference, because milk is a regular staple for most people who consume dairy foods, and they get through it fast.
I have Oatly Original, and also Rude Health Coconut Milk sometimes, and I get mine delivered from Amazon in a multi-pack, which is no cheaper than the supermarket but no more expensive either — and minus a bus fare, of course.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Tightwad-Gazette-Amy-Dacyczyn/dp/0375752250
Hi Suzan — I did once come across a shop that sold the paper part of tea-bags to put your own dried herbs in, but if I were drying herbs for tea I wouldn't bother with that, just put some loose herbs in and make the tea in a pot. Yes, lentils are great in spaghetti sauce. When my children were small and I was cooking for a family, I'd buy 4 ounces of meat (125g, I think) for the pot of food, then add pulses and vegetables to make it up to the right amount for the seven of us. I think meat is good for us but we need only a little. I don't really like it and all the carnage upsets me, so I'm moving on to mainly just bone broth for the meaty part of my food — it has the nutrients, and just uses the part of the chicken that might otherwise be thrown out when people have had the meat they wanted.
What do you drink if you don't have hot drinks? Just water, or do you like juice?
Pen I drink a lot of water. I do have a fondness for diet cola which is a probably no improvement on the full sugar version. Occasionally I have coffee and very rarely hot chocolate.
I use varying amounts of meat in sauces such a spaghetti Bolognese because those are the meals I share with my children and their families. 125 g of meat is probably not enough for us. Both mum and I have low iron levels. Mum's is extremely low. When I had my last colonoscopy both she and I had iron transfusions. I was stunned that my levels had fallen that low. So we do eat meat and I am very careful to add lots of vitamin C rich foods to increase the iron uptake. Non haem iron (plant sources) are more difficult to absorb. I am also very aware that foods such as mushrooms become very important when you eat less meat.
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