Post-Pandemic Pantry Management, pt 2

How you store food items makes a big difference in how long the food can be safely stored.

Apples can stay firm for about a week without refrigeration (in the Pacific Northwest); but as it gets warmer and there is less humidity in the air, the apples will start to wrinkle and become not as firm. They'll start to rot after four weeks at room temperature without refrigeration during winter/spring, maybe faster during summer/fall. They can last a lot longer when kept in a sealed plastic bag in the refrigerator for a month or more; but not longer than six months. 

During each year of the pandemic, I dehydrated about 40 pounds of organic apples, some with the skin on and some with the skin peeled off. That is another way to create a sugar-free snack with a very long shelf life. I would recommend that you eat these dehydrated apple rings before the following year; but the apple rings are still edible, they're not as tasty as when they came out of the dehydrator.

Is that too long? Hahaha. By then, the apples, if you got them on sale and have not done anything with them, you could still chop them up and cut off the bad parts and use the fruit in a pie or bread or make applesauce.

Fresh lemons and limes can be stored in lidded Cambro containers (food-safe plastic). Costco now carries the 2-quart Cambro containers ($15/4 containers) which is a great price; considering that I used to buy these containers from a restaurant supply store. I generally put as many as the container can hold, up to three lemons and/or limes a quart-sized container. If you want, you can also add a clean folded paper towel at the bottom to absorb any condensation. Stored in the refrigerator, these fresh fruits can keep for about a month without wrinkling or drying out.

Fresh eggs:

Always refrigerated. I reorganized the shelves in my refrigerator so that these egg flats can fit on the top shelf. However, I also buy 4 dozen organic eggs at a time (from Costco) and for me, it's about a month's worth of eggs.

Butter/Ghee:

I typically store 4-8 pounds of butter; half in the freezer and half in the refrigerator. And generally, one stick of butter sits on a dish in my cupboards at room temperature regardless of the season we're in. Except for summer when the cupboard temperature rises above 80 F, then it gets stored in the refrigerator.

I keep ghee in a mason jar at room temp.

Washington State's apple season

This would likely explain why my franken apple tree (has 5 varieties of apples grafted to its trunk) only produces 1-2 apple varieties per growing season. Each major branch represents a type of apple. Though, the identification tags have fallen off the tree. At least one of the varieties is golden delicious.

Washington State's apple season typically runs from August to November, with the peak harvest occurring in September and October. The harvest dates vary depending on the apple variety, with some varieties ripening earlier or later than others.

By apple variety:

• August: Gala, Fuji, Honeycrisp, and Pink Lady

• September: Granny Smith, Golden Delicious, and Jonathan

• October: Braeburn, Cripps Pink, and Mutsu

• November: Empire, Rome, and Stayman Winesap

Post-Pandemic Pantry Management, pt 1

The pandemic and risk of COVID-19 certainly changed how I shopped for groceries and how often I shopped at which stores for particular food items: 

• seasonal organic fruits and vegetables (Chuck's produce)

• organic dairy and snacks (Trader Joe's)

• bulk pantry items such as rolled oats, toilet paper, fresh eggs, fish, or rice (Costco)

• meat, packaged food, canned goods (Fred Meyers)

Pre-pandemic (2019 and earlier) Chuck's, Trader Joe's, and Fred Meyers' groceries were purchased on an as-needed basis, mostly weekly visits. Costco purchases are at most once per month, or less. During the pandemic where protective masks were mandatory for retail stores, Chuck's, Trader Joe's, and Costco stores were visted once per month or less; and Fred Meyers became my go-to store for every day fresh produce and groceries. 

Today in 2023, with inflation and supply chain issues affecting food prices, I am visiting Fred Meyers less than once per month, but about once per month for the other stores. Primarily, this is because Fred Meyers does not carry a decent selection of organic anything (meat, eggs, fruits, or vegetables) at a reasonable price.

The quality of fresh items such as fruit, vegetables, and dairy became an issue during and immediately after the pandemic from both Chuck's Produce and Trader Joe's. Refrigerated dairy spoiled faster than the "use by" date and fresh vegetables rotted quicker. Don't even get me started on apples. The apples from Chuck's Produce, especially when purchased off-season, were all rotten inside. The apples certainly still looked pretty on the outside, but once you cut into the apple, the apple flesh looked as though it had been in cold storage for a year. It was awful.

New rules to prevent food waste:

• purchase enough fresh fruit or vegetable for a week

• eat or cook the recently purchased vegetables within a week of purchase

• always check expiration dates on packaged dairy (milk, cottage cheese, yogurt)

• seasonal produce from farmed produce (e.g., apples from WA state, pears from OR state, oranges from CA, grapefruit from TX/FL) - only buy these fruits when in the producing state's season

• you'll get mixed results between sweet and terrible when buying "seasonal" fruit that comes from outside the US (e.g., grapes/peaches/nectarines/plums from Mexico; kiwi fruit from Australia/New Zealand)

• bananas are an exception since they ripen after harvest

Almond Pulau Rice

This takes ordinary steamed (baked or pressure cooked) rice up to the next level. I used 1/2 jasmine rice and 1/2 basmati rice; only because I am eating through the jasmine rice faster than the basmati. I subbed raw almonds for raw cashews because that's what I had on hand. Also, Indian pulau and rice pilaf are essentially the same thing, except with regional aromatic differences.

Aromatics

1 bay leaf

1/2 c fresh mint leaves (can also use a few dried mint leaves)

1 slice of fresh ginger

2 whole cloves

2 green cardamom pods

1/2 tsp cumin seeds (or 1/4 tsp ground cumin)

20 raw cashews or raw almonds

1/2 tsp turmeric powder

Rice

1 c (200 gm) basmati or jasmine rice, washed and drained

1 c water

Directions

For a rice cooker:

In a separate frying pan, toast the spices (cloves, cumin, ginger, bay leaf) and raw almonds in 1 tbsp of olive oil or butter. Add rice and water to rice cooker, add aromatics. 

For a Ninja Foodi:

Add oil to insert bowl and select the sauté function. Add aromatics and almonds. Toast for a couple minutes before adding the rice and water. Set NF "high" pressure and the timer for 2 minutes. Natural release for 10 minutes.

Note: Placing the whole aromatics in the center on top of the rice will make it easier to remove the spices before serving the rice.

This recipe is adapted from the book Vegetarian Indian Cooking with your Instant Pot.

Homemade Buckwheat Noodles

How to make soba noodles from scratch. I looked on YouTube for the buckwheat to flour ratio, and the first recommended video was on Japanese 101 cooking. In the video, the demonstrator cooks up a package of soba noodles and proceeds to plate it with other ingredients. This is not what homemade noodles means! So anyways. This recipe ratio is from Food52, and I must say, if you sub the spelt flour for all purpose flour, the taste is.. hideous. I mean, it doesn't taste like any commercially made soba noodle I ever ate at home or at a restaurant. I don't quite know what spelt flour tastes like; though I've heard it is a healthier alternative to all purpose white flour; even though spelt is just hulled wheat berries. It makes me wonder what the actual difference is between "white" unbromated/unbleached flour and spelt flour since both are using hulled wheat. Maybe it's a marketing thing. It simply boggles the mind how we lie to ourselves about what is and isn't healthy for food ingredients. Though, I've read that while spelt is a wheat, it's a cousin of modern wheat and more nutritious. I digress. This post isn't about the nuances of wheat plants.

For the noodles...

1 c buckwheat flour + more for rolling
1/2 c kamut or white spelt flour (can substitute AP flour)

up to 150 ml hot water

For my climate (Pacific Northwest) and season (late summer), there is some humidity in the air and I used 120 ml of water in this batch which made 10.78 oz of fresh noodles.

Directions

In a bowl, mix the two flours together and gradually add hot water until a shaggy/rough dough forms. Sprinkle buckwheat flour onto your work surface and knead the dough until all the flour is combined (no dry spots remain) and the dough ball is smooth.

Once you have rolled the dough out into a big rectangle. Sprinkle the dough with buckwheat flour, then fold the top third down and the bottom third up, like you are folding a 3-page brochure. You can trim the edges if straight edges are important to your noodle making but it is not necessary since they come out terribly shaped no matter how you cut these with a chef knife. 

With your hands, shape it into a rectangular blob and start rolling it out until it is 1/4 a centimeter thick. Tessie Woo cuts her noodles thicker for her dish on Food52, but I'm sure you've had noodles that you've either bought at the store or had at a restaurant. Cut the noodles to that imaginary width. For me, I aimed for 1/4 to 1/2 centimeter wide, which is still pretty wide for a soba noodle.

Toss the cut noodles in buckwheat flour to prevent the noodles from sticking to each other.

Bring a pot of water to a boil. Add a large handful of noodles to the water. Boil for 1-2 minutes, then drain and rinse in cold water or let drain/cool in an ice water bath.

End notes:

I think I'll stick to making ramen noodles from scratch. While they take longer to prep, they don't have the grainy "I'm eating sand" texture that buckwheat noodles have.