Freeze Drying Goals

This comment was left yesterday and I figured there may be others wondering the same thing so I decided to do a blog post about it.

Comment:  I know you’re trying new things right now but I’m curious what your goals are.  Do you want to get enough food freeze dried that would cover a certain period of time?  Where are you storing everything?

First, I’ve read and been told that properly freeze dried and stored foods will last up to 25 years.

I’m not concerned about what I’ll be eating 25 years from now. As my dad would say . . I’ll probably be pushing up daisies in 25 years.

I have several reasons for freeze drying and I started to say “my first reason is . . ” but all of my reasons are about equal.

(1) Cost Savings. I want to be able to take advantage of bargains. Aldi had raspberries on sale a few weeks ago for $1.49 per package. United had them on sale for $2.50 per carton last week. I’ll take $1.49 over $2.50 any day. This week Aldo has 20 ounce packages of zucchini for 79¢ per package. The lowest price I found it anywhere else was $1.29/pound. I bought six packages, which was all they had. Corn was on sale this week – 5 ears for $1. I bought 5 ears and tried it and learned that by double layering, I could get 20 ears (at least) worth of cut corn into one load so we bought 25 ears yesterday.

(2) Convenience. I’m not a fan of freezing anything . . though some things just have to be frozen. Meals are great to freeze dry. If we’re traveling and staying in hotels, we can bring mylar bags of food (lasagna, casseroles, crack chicken, etc.) We can heat water in the microwaves in the room, pour it over the freeze dried food and have dinner. We could pick up a salad kit at a grocery store, or bake potatoes in the microwave and have a meal in the room. When traveling with Rita, it’s hard to get in the room, stick her in the crate in a strange place and leave her so we can go eat. Eating in the room would be perfect and not much trouble at all.

Also, eating in the car is another option when traveling. The freeze dried foods like meatloaf, pizza casserole, crack chicken and probably lots of other things, are great to eat just out of the bag. I wouldn’t mind having dried meatloaf that you can eat just holding the chunk in your hand, along with a bit of freeze dried corn, along with a few freeze dried apples or zucchini slices.

In the event the power is off here, all it takes is a bit of hot water to reconstitute foods. I can boil water on my gas stove, on a gas burner or on our little backpacking stoves.

(3) Chad goes out to eat too much when he’s working and he said if I’d make him some “rehydrate” and eat meals, he’d eat those instead of going out to eat. Also, they go camping as much as they can so if they had things like eggs or healthy snacks, that would be fun for them while camping.

(4) I don’t anticipate, nor do I worry that there will be a time when food is in short supply but you never know. For people who have gone through hurricanes, tornadoes, snow/ice storms, not having food that’s easy to get to is always a big problem. I don’t want to be the person waiting in line for a FEMA truck or other meal service. Having plenty of food that’s easy to fix makes me sleep better.

As far as storing, I’ve always had hundreds and hundreds of jars of canned food. With a horrible garden here, most of those jars are empty and being stored upstairs in the shop. My food shelves aren’t nearly as full as they once were.

Freeze dried food that is intended to last for years and years should be stored in mylar bags with oxygen absorbers and sealed tightly. For foods that we will eat within a year or two, I’m fine with storing it jars in my air conditioned closets that have no windows. I put an oxygen absorber in the jars, though some say it isn’t necessary, and vacuum seal the jars.

I don’t worry about having food for a certain amount of time . . like 5 years or 10 years. I just want to have a good variety and I want to be able to buy it when it’s on sale and save it for using when it isn’t on sale.

Hope this gives a bit of insight into why I do what I do.