I hear and report on "forever chemicals" quite a bit and am trying to find less negative things to think about or at least OTHER things to think about.
Also, this year I am tracking my UPF (ultra-processed foods) intake for the year. Being conscious of it makes me a bit more aware of my food. I still eat some UPF. The point isn't to avoid it more than usual but to see what I'm actually eating.
ANYWAY, UPF has forever-chemicals (let's shorten that to fc's) in it and is one of the vectors of exposure for humans (rumor has it I am one of those). So, lots of thinking about that.
And of course, I like to cook and am thinking about shelf stable foods, food preservation, and generally things I can in the future produce, store, find, grow, whatever that doesn't include forever chemicals.
Hence...forever foods stored in things that aren't plastic.
Vinegar...I buy LOTS of it and often in gallon plastic jugs (heh heh....jugs). Acid liquids in plastic take on fc's. Especially from soft/flexible plastics according to some research I've been reading at various nerd links to scientific journals. The vinegar in glass is freaking expensive. And I do brew my own, or have in the past. Especially when I'm trying to brew kombucha and then it goes to far and is vinegar. Cool.
Vinegar, once fully brewed is shelf stable until it basically evaporates away. It is a forever food (ff....?).
Pineapples were CHEAP at a discount grocery store. 1$ for an entire pineapple. So, I got 2. Which is a boatload of pineapple for one person with no space. I cut one up and ate part last night, rest with breakfast. I kept the scraps from cleaning it like the skin and core nubbins. Those are in a jar now (glass...not plastic) with some non-chlorine water and vinegar mother from the jar of vinegar I brewed in the office pantry cupboard from some sparkling apple juice no one was drinking. It ended up filling a quart jar and over the past few months it has pretty well filled the jar with layers of vinegar mother.
So, pineapple scraps, non-chlorine water, scraps from fresh ginger I was cutting up for other stuff, bit of vinegar from the jar with the mothers in it. And a chunk of mother. Yes, I am doing this at the office. The temperature at home fluctuates too much to ferment very well.
Once this ferments fully, it should be shelf stable. I like shelf stable.
It cost me 1$ for the pineapple. The water is from the well so whatever the cost of that was (maybe 20000ish) split across every time I use water. I know I am more than 20k gallons in to the use of the well for 10 years...per gallon....um,. 50cents?
The jar was 1$ about 100 uses ago so 1cent?
This is the "waste" from the pineapple (which I would normally have composted and will in fact compost after this and I mainly bought it as food so....15cents in lost nutrients to the compost though fermenting actually ADDS nutrients so I'm going to call it a wash and say 0cents for the pineapple scraps).
The start from the other vinegar and mother is from free juice (it was at work and was about to go off and get thrown out), another used jar and the mother grew from the dregs of kombucha I'd had for a while so...10cents?
And of course, this new vinegar will start more vinegar if it works and recoup some of the "cost".
If it fails and I throw it, but of course not the jar out, it might be costing me 76cents.
Given that I will get a pint of live vinegar from this if I don't add sugar and it works, and given that live apple cider vinegar (the closest parallel I think in retail because it is in glass and "live") is going at the lowest at $4.99 a quart. That's $2.495 per pint minus .76. I am saving $1.735 over having bought it and had a bottle I don't need and would need to recycle. Nice. Frugal.
More on forever foods to follow.
No comments:
Post a Comment