Emergency Food Storage - Freeze-dried Fruit

Fruit is an important component of a good emergency food storage program. Fruit is a good source of Vitamin C and also provides some variety for menus created from stored foods. And, believe me, a little variety can make a big difference.

Some folks grow their own strawberries, blueberries, or other fruit. Some people have a root cellar where they can store fruit like apples and pears.

For long-term storage, freeze-dried fruit is a good alternative if you don't grow your own. You can buy it at various online stores and vacuum-pack it yourself, as I did with the blueberries and strawberries in the above photo. I try to buy it in bulk in order to get a better price.

I use my freeze-dried fruit on a regular basis. I find that I actually spend less this way than if I were to buy it fresh from the market.

When I buy a fresh pint of blueberries, for example, there always a few that are bad from the start. Then, if they aren't all eaten pretty quickly, more go bad. With the freeze-dried berries, they're always available and don't go bad for a long time - if stored properly.

I store my freeze-dried fruit in the pantry in the basement, which is very cool and reasonably dry. I've put the jars in a cupboard that has a door. That way the light, which can change the color and degrade the food quality, does not affect them. I cover the jars that I'm not using in the near future with black garbage bags, so the light doesn't get to them when I open the door. Not pretty, but it does the job.

Another option is to buy freeze-dried fruit in #10 cans (about the size of large coffee cans). This tends to be a little more expensive, but you save the cost of buying the mason jars and the energy it would take to vacuum-pack the fruit. The #10 cans of fruit are also available from many online sources.

Yet another option is to dehydrate fruit yourself and vacuum-pack that. Dehydrating is different from freeze-drying. See Wikipedia's article on freeze drying. Here's our blog entry on dehydrating fruit.


See also:
Storing Grains and Beans
Types of Grains to Store
Storing Canned Food
Electric Grain Mill
Manual Grain Mill

Posted by Beth on Tuesday, November 18, 2008