JohnGaltfla said:I can only give you the hurricane preppers guide to fridges and shelf life.
1. 72 hours before a storm, take Rubbermaid containers, fill them with water and put them in the freezer to make solid blocks of ice. Turn your freezer and fridge to their maximum coldness.
2. Rotate dairy and meat items to the back of the fridge, drinks and condiments to the front.
3. When the storm approaches, wrap bungee cord around the refridgerator and freezer doors to prevent them from popping open during the storm (in case you suffer roof or window damage).
After the storm:
4. Move one block of ice to the fridge portion every 8-14 hours depending on how fast they are melting. Eat all perishables first. Leave the canned goods for the next week.
5. Open the doors no more that 3-5 times per day. Keep it air tight as mold will be a problem if the humid air seeps inside.
6. Once all pershibles are exhausted, being your dry goods rotation. Conserve fuel when cooking as it could be 4-6 weeks before power is restored in some areas.
There ya gots it. The sniff and appearance tests are good indicators, but I keep a thermometer in my fridge and freezer during a hurricane. Once it cracks 50 plus for sustained periods, if it's not consumed, it's pretty much tossed.
summerthyme said:Guys... PLEASE be careful about some of the suggestions here. Most are fine.. some, like sealing meat in a mason jar after brushing it with oil and then using dry ice to create the vacuum... scares me to death.
You're courting all sorts of really nasty food poisoning with something like that.
Vinegar MIGHT help prevent botulism if it permeates through all the meat tissues... but I sure wouldn't want to count on it.
Butter and cheese can be stored for a time in cool temps, but not at warm room temps (80 and above) for long before you notice some serious deterioration in quality.
I've waxed large chunks of cheese and wheels of cheese and stored them in the root cellar... and they definitely "age" faster in the summer months- and that cellar never gets above 60 degrees.
The local Amish don't have refrigeration, they know all the "tricks" - and they suffer from a LOT of "stomach flu" in the warm months.
Summerthyme
John H said:LoupGarou,
They sell an inexpensive pitcher to put the Canadian bags of milk in before you cut the corner of the bag off.
No need for a separate container, although a closed pitcher would keep it fresh a bit longer.
John H
SmartAZ said:The Mother Earth News looked into egg storage, and the first thing they learned was that they could not find ANYBODY who had ever actually tried any of the storage methods. So they did their own tests from scratch. The bottom line is that two out of three eggs were still good after six months no matter how you store them (without refrigeration) except that unwashed eggs fared noticeably better than washed eggs.
Butter: It's oxygen that makes butter go bad. The butter bell only keeps oxygen out. If you can find any other way to keep out the oxygen it will work as well as a fifty buck butter bell. I use a plastic cup with a tight fitting lid -- it came from the store with mixed fruit in it. I don't use butter very often, so it sometimes doesn't get refilled for a month or so. It tastes exactly as good after a month as when I put it in. Of course, I keep the rest of my butter frozen in the original wrapper until time to refill the cup.
Cheese: The natural food stores carry real cheese untainted by antibiotics. It is always covered with blue mold no matter what they do. Customers just slice the mold off before they serve it.