Welcome to DK Preppers: A place to discuss practical ways to get through emergencies, both short term and long. Topics may include skills for growing, storing and sharing food, lost and historical skill sets, sustainability issues, living and leaving safely, and growing community. Everyone is welcome, and the comments are open. We have open threads weekly.
I have never seen raisins or other dried fruit get moldy of spoiled in any way. And I’m old.
I may have seen raisins that got so dry they were hard to chew, but never moldy or rotten.
We currently have:
49 boxes of raisins, at 15 oz per box.
49 x 15 = 735 oz divided by 16 = 45.9375 pounds, or about 46 pounds of raisins.
3 bags of dried blueberries, 2 lbs each, or 6 pounds of blueberries.
4 bags of dried cherries, 4 lbs each, plus 2 more bags, 2 lbs each, for a total of 20 pounds of dried cherries.
7 bags of dried cranberries, 30 oz each: 30 x 7 = 210 oz divided by 16 = 13.125, or about 13 pounds of dried cranberries.
46 + 6 + 20 + 13 = 85
We have 85 pounds of dried fruit.
Now that I only work two days a week at Walmart, I can take the time to cook with some of this dried fruit.
Here is what I did, the last time I cooked with dried fruit:
I do not recall how many pounds I used, let’s say it was 2 pounds, one pound of dried cherries, and one pound of dried cranberries.
I put the dried fruit in a saucepan with about one liter or more of bottled water, and two tablespoons, or more, of sea salt. Brought it just to a boil, stirring often, then turned it down to a simmer, for about 20 minutes. Turned the burner off, and let it sit and cool slowly, still stirring occasionally.
The result is a tart and sweet and salty food that can be eaten as a treat, just the way it is, or used as a topping for pancakes or french toast, or as the sweetener when making veggie smoothie.
I used at least half of this last batch of fruit in my last one-and-a-half gallon batch of veggie smoothie.
You may or may not remember, my veggie smoothie has some kind of tomato sauce, lots of greens, such as kale and spinach, and plenty of salt, sweetener, vinegar, and spicy hot peppers.
Been making it that way for years.
Using the fruit as the sweetener makes it a little better than using brown sugar or molasses.
Maybe next time, I will use molasses and fruit, both.
I just shot video of myself adding up the many pounds of dried fruit.
Look for that video some time later, on YouTube.
Keep in mind, we got all this dried fruit for free, just for the effort of showing up at the free food pantries. And other members of my extended family did that work, not even me. (I went a few times, only).
And, keep in mind, this dried fruit seems to have a long shelf life. Many of these bags we have had for three years or more. And, did you ever notice, raisins are packed in thin cardboard boxes, not even sealed in plastic bags? Roaches don’t even invade the boxes? The raisins don’t dry out? Yes, they eventually dry out, but that makes me think, maybe we should put all our raisin boxes in plastic bags, maybe zip lock bags, and see how many years they last without even drying out.
As I always insist, we need fat in our food, so we cannot live on just canned veggies, dry pasta, and dried fruit, with no fat. They may have long shelf lives, but each dish we prepare needs some added fat. That’s why we bought a jar of ghee (specially processed butter), and a jar of red palm oil, to see if they have a truly long shelf life, and to see if my family likes what I cook with them. So far, the ghee has met resistance from my family. Of course, we can stock up on these shelf stable fats, even if my family rejects the flavor now, because my family is not stupid. They know that they can endure an odd taste, if we experience some kind of disaster, and there is nothing else to eat.
Tell me in the comments, if you ever have, or if you think you might soon, use reboiled dried fruit, such as raisins, on your pancakes and peanut butter, soon.
Thanks for reading.