Food Keeper app

Greetings, Conscientious Food Consumers!

With the colors of fall brightening our dwindling hours of daylight, the harvest scramble is underway, along with a new season of eating.

Colorful outdoor displays of pumpkins, varieties of apples, corn and squashes of every shape announce the season at the grocery stores and the farmers’ markets. Neighbors are sharing/offloading zucchini and other overflow garden items.

Following the autumnal equinox, the race is on to get it all prepped and into our fall menus, our freezers, fridges and pantries. Speaking of menus — check out our “Budget Bites” page featuring delicious ideas for meal planning on a budget from NFLB/Sustainability Coalition partner, First Alternative Co-op. We love the Co-op’s recipe blog! Even more inspiration for eating seasonally is available with recipes from the Food Action Team of the Sustainability Coalition.

This year, along with COVID-19, interest is surging in old-fashioned food preservation practices like pickling, freezing, dehydrating and canning. If you’ve shopped at Bi-Mart lately, you may have noticed posters in the aisles with food preservation safety tips for everything from making jelly to jerky, courtesy of OSU Extension Service’s Home Food Safety and Preservation Program.

In the following sections, we will also make use of that expertise to help you make the most of your autumn abundance. You can also get your questions answered by a Master Food Preserver volunteer by calling the toll-free hotline at 800-354-7319 from 9 am to 4 pm, Monday-Friday, through October 9th.

DRY OR DEHYDRATE IT
Skip the snack aisle at the grocery store and bake your own crispy, healthy chips from apples, beets, kale, sweet potatoes and even sliced zukes! It’s not hard to find recipes online, but “Downshiftology” has a million fans (literally) for good reason.

For longer-term preservation of a variety of fruits and veggies using your oven or a food dehydrator, check out this how-to booklet.\

TIP: Use extra caution regarding food safety by following the pre-treatment instructions for destroying bacteria on food items prior to drying.

Beyond trail mix — how to use and enjoy fruits and veggies after drying.

FREEZE IT
– First prep, blanch, and package your future winter meal ingredients, just as for summer fruits and veggies (see our “summertime chillin'” blog).

– Use our Smart Strategies: Storage guide for Freezing Fruits and Vegetables for specific treatments.

– Download the FoodKeeper Food Safety app from the link on our website. It’s a mini-reference guide from the USDA on safe food storage and freshness guidelines for hundreds of food items.

– Don’t forget to make notes on your Freezer Inventory List!

PICKLE IT
For no ‘cukes left behind — nor mushrooms, peppers, corn onions, beans, beets, cabbage, zucchini or what have you! (Can you recite that old tongue-twister about Peter Piper and the pickled peppers?)

Pickling — using vinegar or fermentation — is one of the oldest methods of food preservation. The process has been improved through research and the evolution of food science during the last century, and now there are also resources for those with low-salt or other special dietary requirements. For the safest results, the experts at OSU Extension Service recommend using “up to date recipes from reliable sources.”

No offense to your great-aunt and her recipe!

CAN IT
Whether you’re experienced or a novice, OSU Extension Service has the detailed information you need for successful pressure cooking and/or canning, including checklists for steam- versus pressure-canning methods. It also lists publications on how to care for your home canning equipment.

Veteran canners will also appreciate the new Canning Timer and Checklist App!

In this week’s Kitchen Confessions:

Jeanette Confesses:
These two remnants of artisan cheese were bagged and buried in the meat/cheese drawer of our fridge. By the time we discovered them, they were definitely over-aged!

$$ WASTED: $3-4

LESSON LEARNED: Place on “Eat First” shelf next time.

Karen Confesses:

These pears from a neighbor’s no-spray tree were almost ripe when they were given to me, so they wouldn’t end up rotting on the ground! I put them in a clear plastic clamshell in the upper area of my refrigerator compartment, since my “Eat First” area was already crowded. They degenerated into this state while I was temporarily absent from home during the worst of the wildfire smoke.

$$ WASTED: None (gift); Cost: guilty conscience

LESSON LEARNED: Prepare and eat them right away! Make note of/rotate items in my “Eat First” area.

Wildfires Update: A month ahead of Thanksgiving, we are immensely grateful for the return of breathable air and for the heroic efforts of those working to contain the massive wildfires here in Oregon.

Greetings, Conscientious Food Consumers!

Now that we’ve all had a number of weeks of staying home and doing our part to fight the spread of the coronavirus, how’s the “new normal” at your house? Besides keeping ourselves and our loved ones safe, healthy and constructively occupied, it’s been a lot about food, hasn’t it?

We’ve gotten a horrific reality check about the pandemic’s disruption of national food production and delivery systems — via news of catastrophic waste from unharvested produce rotting in farm fields, dairies dumping milk and slaughtered animals going into landfills, due to reduced work forces and virus outbreaks at meat packing plants.

As we are part of the EPA’s “Food Too Good To Waste” program, No Food Left Behind-Corvallis received news of efforts to mitigate this disaster such as the USDA’s Coronavirus Food Assistance Program and Feeding America, a national food bank network. But these efforts are just ramping up.

Rising to the challenge, here in our own backyard, is one of Oregon’s largest food rescue, gleaning and distribution organizations: Linn Benton Food Share. This non-profit food sourcing and distribution “hub” — and a Sustainability Coalition partner — has served food pantries, soup kitchens and housing shelters in Linn and Benton Counties since 1981!

The COVID-19 crisis has brought increased food insecurity to our region, and not only among the most vulnerable populations. With the goal of 2500 meals delivered per week, Food Share is mobilizing volunteers to help prepare food boxes at their warehouse. They’re pros at training volunteer food handlers and ensuring their safety. If you or someone you know can help, just scroll down their home page and fill out the short form.

Hooray for “the helpers”! (Hat tip to Mr. Rogers!)

Grocery shopping sure looks a lot different now. We’re reducing our trips to the store, trying to keep the proper distance from other shoppers, or just skipping it and ordering groceries online! Why not supplement your next online grocery order with fresh, locally-sourced food products from the Corvallis-Albany Farmer’s Markets? You can do that with the CAFM’s new online pre-order and pick up system. Hooray again, for the helpers who are supporting the GoFundMe campaign that supports that effort!

“Eating out” is also pretty different now — more like “taking out” then “eating in” at home. A number of local establishments have switched to the take out and/or delivery business model, but with the phased re-opening of some restaurants, be sure and check the latest updates from Coalition partner Visit Corvallis.

Back at home, the “new normal” means we’re planning and preparing most (if not all) of our own meals, being more conscious with the food we have, and stretching our grocery budgets as far as possible. Some “Smart Strategies” to help you in those endeavors were highlighted in our previous installment of “Kitchen Confessions.”

In my kitchen, I’m juggling four “Eat First” areas in my fridge/cupboard — which means I’m Loving My Leftovers more than ever. Hey — there’s an app for that! Check the “Apps!” area of our website for a wonderful tool called “Big Oven” for thousands of recipes to help you invent new meals from the smorgasbord of your leftovers or least-fresh foods.

Simply start with just three ingredients and a button labeled “Big Oven, what can I make?” Your kids will love getting creative with it, too!

Now for this week’s Kitchen Confessions from our staff:

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Karen Confesses:

I put off inventorying my cupboard pantry for, like, forever! Now there’s no excuse, and I found this package of seasonal baking mix that had been colonized by pantry moths.

$$$ Wasted: $2.99

Lessons Learned: Meal planner to include more pantry checks each week; reorganize pantry with visible “best by” and “use by” date tags with more perishable food items/packages in the front.

Jeanette Confesses:
I didn’t need the whole can for my meal, so I covered it to use it in the next day or two – and forgot it!

$$ Wasted: about $2

Lessons Learned: Once opened, avoid storing acidic foods in metal container. Move remainder into a clear glass jar as a visual reminder.

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This “lesson” also highlights the critical issue of food safety. Avoiding foodborne pathogens is right up there with not contracting the virus! Guess what — there’s an app for that too!

Downloadable from NFLB’s “Apps” page is the “Food Keeper” tool, developed by the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, Cornell University and the Food Marketing Institute. It’s an authoritative source for how to preserve the freshness and quality of all those precious groceries.

As we head into the next phase of “new normal” in the COVID-19 era, we hope you and yours will stay well, stay connected and stay tuned!