Shelf life of dried fruit

I just got 5lbs of dried sour cherries and 5 lbs of dried dates. They came in two large plastic bags. My question is, how long will they be good to eat, if I leave them in the bags? Should I repack them in vacuum seal a meal bags? Could I make a sugar syrup, and pressure can them? Or should I get busy and eat them up?

If you keep them someplace cool and dry (the "gold standard" for storage of almost any foods), they'll easily keep a year or two without losing any quality. For anything longer than 12 months, I vacuum seal all of mine. We've eaten 10 year old vacuum sealed dried fruit and you couldn't tell any difference from fresh.

Summerthyme

And if you keep the buggies away the most likely "deterioration" will be that it will get drier and maybe darker and may "sugar" on the outside, esp the dates. Rehydration will take care of these issues just fine.

LC

LC... yep. Home dried stuff (no sulfuring or other anti-oxidant treatments) tends to darken or change a bit more than the commercially dried fruit or veggies. But it's still great.

Interesting story from quite a few years back... (might have even been from WWII, IIRC). There was a food collection taken in the US for residents of some war-torn country (Europe, again if memory serves... been a long time since I read this). People collected and sent all sorts of items. One woman came up with a bag of OLD dried fruit... and the church group in charge was very reluctant to even include it. It was almost black, obviously had been stored for years... but for whatever reason, (didn't want to insult her, or whatever) they did include it in the shipment.

When they got thank yous from the recipients, the ONLY item which was mentioned- with obviously sincere, heartfelt gratitude- was that horrible, old, black dried fruit!

The people were SO hungry for fruit- or sweets of any kind, I suspect- it was very, very valuable to them.

Summerthyme

Thanks for the input. That's the reason I'm starting to collect some sweets. I figure if I have to get into my long term preps, some sweets might be welcome. I don't have a big sweet tooth, but if we go to a bland diet, I might change my cravings.
These dried fruits have the consistencies of raisins. They seem kind of moist to store long term and not spoil. Two years would be nice, I could rotate them at that rate. These came from http://www.bulkfoods.com
They got lots of neat long term stuff, and no waiting for shipment, real fast turn around, and free shipping for orders over $75.
I need to spend more time in these sub forums with you guys.

My dehyrated cherries and tomatoes from 5 years ago sealed up in recycled pasta sauce jars look and taste the same as when I sealed them up. I vacuum sealed a couple jars in the interim but it's hard for me to see any difference. Those tomatoes that I sun dried were darker in color and had a different taste but still were good.
I have also never had any noticeable change in the raisins/plums/apricots that I got from Bj's in those heavy resealable plastic sacks that they came in even though some of those are going on over 5 years old. I keep adding to my inventory of these fruits ..items like the cranraisins ( cranberries ), dates, prunes, fruit medley as it seems such a relatively nexpensive and convenient way to add fruit to one's long term preps. I can still get the 3 lb plastic sacks for $ 6 and change. One time I had a couple of those cylindrical boxes of raisins you get in the grocery store get infested with some little critters. They were only two years old and ever since I don't leave any fruit in cardboard.
Para.

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