How long is food safe during a power outage?

“I like these cold, gray winter days. Days like these let you savor a bad mood.”
-Bill Watterson (author of Calvin & Hobbes)

My wife & I recently spent several winter days without power due to the Oct 29 snow storm which dropped 4 inches of heavy wet snow on trees still covered with autumn leaves. This causes massive amounts of broken limbs, fallen trees, and power lines knocked down. The damage to power lines was greater than tropical storm Irene a few months back.

When the power went out on Saturday we knew it would be gone for awhile - this was a major storm. So our first thought was the fridge. We discussed what to pull from the fridge (before opening it) and then quickly removed items we wanted to use and put them in an insulated cooler. The fridge and freezer were not opened again until power was restored. The cooler was placed outside in the snow to help keep it cold. If we had been more clever we might have emptied the fridge and put everything in the snow. This would have been great overnight but perhaps still unsafe during the heat of day. We also could have used dry ice in the fridge but no one was distributing it locally to us.

The magic temperature with refrigerated food is 40°. The USDA says,

"Always keep meat, poultry, fish, and eggs refrigerated at or below 40°F and frozen food at or below 0°F." ... "The refrigerator will keep food safely cold for about 4 hours if it is unopened. A full freezer will hold the temperature for approximately 48 hours (24 hours if it is half full) if the door remains closed."

The USDA website has a table listing when foods are no longer safe. Discard any potentially hazardous food that has been above 41°F for four hours or more, reached a temperature of 45°F or higher for any length of time, or has an unusual color, odor, or texture.

VERY IMPORTANT: More than 250 diseases can be caused by bacteria found in contaminated food. Many bacteria can grow above 40°F and not produce a funny smell or taste. Never taste food to determine if it’s safe.

The following items can tolerate room temperatures for a few days and DO NOT need to be tossed out:

• Butter or margarine
• Hard and processed cheeses
• Fresh uncut fruits and vegetables, Fruit juices
• Dried fruits and coconut
• Opened jars of vinegar-based salad dressings, jelly, relish, taco sauce, barbecue sauce, mustard, ketchup, olives and peanut butter
• Fresh herbs and spices
• Fruit pies, breads, rolls, and muffins. Cakes, except cream cheese frosted or cream-filled
• Flour and nuts

Fortunately the list above describes most of our fridge content.  We should toss our raw eggs and our yogurt. I always thought yogurt would last longer than regular milk but even yogurt has a short shelf life; see http://www.ehow.com/facts_7382133_long-yogurt-stay-good-unrefrigerated_.html

Bottom Line
Perishable food such as meat, poultry, seafood, milk, and eggs that are not kept adequately refrigerated or frozen may cause illness if consumed, even when they are thoroughly cooked.

For a list of foods and which are "safe" or not when warm, check out http://www.fsis.usda.gov/factsheets/keeping_food_Safe_during_an_emergency/index.asp
Another good site is http://www.uri.edu/ce/ceec/food/factsheets/powerout.html

See also my blog post:  Living without power

Lost Skills

“Surely the churning of milk bringeth forth butter,” – Bible, Proverbs 30:33

If you’ve been reading this blog the past few days, you may be tired of rhetoric and politics and the economy. When will Gary ever go back to traditional preparedness advice? How about now?

I was looking at the blog article Storing Food Without Refrigeration and noticing the many items that could be kept for weeks or months at room temperature if you lose power: Condiments & Spreads, some Dairy products, some meat & eggs, bread & yeast. I had to do a double take - Dairy, meat? What gives here? Even inside my fridge I’ve had milk spoil.

Taking a closer look at the products I noticed the dairy items were cheese, butter and yogurt; the meat products were mostly salami and other dried meats. Then a light bulb lit over my head. Ah ha! Our medieval and pioneer ancestors invented these very products because they lacked refrigerators. Cheese, butter, salami, etc, (in addition to being tasty) were invented to extend the life of milk & meat.

Today we take these room-temperature products for granted and sometimes abuse them (hmm…yummy). Cheese & butter are concentrated milk fat. Many sausages are packed with salt or other preservatives that should not be overindulged in. However if you treat them as treats, part of food storage to treasure and dole out in limited quantities, your body will be thankful.

Speaking of food storage, would you know how to preserve meat and milk if faced with a long-term power outage? You could be like friends of ours who, after a hurricane in Puerto Rico, hosted a giant BBQ for the neighborhood; sharing their frozen steaks before they went bad. Or you could practice pioneer recipes.

Let’s start with butter. Nothing is easier.

1. Put heavy cream inside a clean jar. (Sorry skim milk won’t do. You need the milk fats)
2. Close the lid tightly.
3. Shake.

That’s it. Now you may get sore arms (or a great workout) before all the milk converts to butter but it will happen. Keep shaking, rolling, etc. An alternative to shaking is using a butter churn. These devices use a paddle with fins to agitate the milk as you move the handle up and down.

If you’d like to try something more ambitious, here is a site for making yogurt:
http://hubpages.com/hub/How_to_make_your_own_yogurt_-_An_illustrated_guide

Bottom Line

Most of us were never taught the many skills that kept our ancestors alive.
In Why a Depression Today Would be worse than in the 1930s, the author, a museum curator, notes that rural Depression era families could make butter, smoke meat, grow a garden, raise chickens, pull a tooth, draw well water, do basic medicine, ride a horse or bike, etc. They had the skills to survive independently with little to no money. Today we are like the fat space-cruiser passengers in the movie Wall*E. Totally dependent on others (like technology or government) to fulfill our basic needs.

Where does cooking oil come from?

“If toast always lands butter-side down, and cats always land on their feet, what happens if you strap toast on the back of a cat and drop it?” - Stephen Wright

I'm amazed that there are people who do not realize that hamburgers and steaks come from cattle. Perhaps they think it was created in a laboratory or grew on a tree? Although a city-boy through and through, my grandfather was an Idaho dairyman so I did get to visit working farms as a child. I also learned just how much meat a steer can provide when grandpa give my mother a half side of beef as a Christmas gift. My parents paid for the butchering and rented a storage freezer. It took awhile to eat that much beef!

So although I'd like to think I know where food comes from, I did learn a few things in a recent blog, Cooking Oil or Butter. The authors researched what it would take to create new cooking oil (olive, canola, corn, etc.) should they run out.

• Corn oil takes 56 lbs (1 bushel) to make about 1.2 lbs of corn oil.
• Almond oil, Soybean oil and Sunflower oil like take a lot of product and some serious pressing and processing for not much output.

My wife & I experienced the same problem when we decide to make apple cider. We got a great deal on a half-bushel of apples and the nature center where she worked had a cider press. For all our effort we got perhaps a quart of cider.

Bottom Line

Some foods are NOT easy to make at home. Include LOTS of cooking oil in your food storage. When it's gone you're not likely to make more. Also be sure to use the oil and replace it since it will go rancid over time.

What alternative do you have for oil? Butter & lard. I know of two long term storage techniques for butter:

1. Butter powder - we have it but haven't tried it yet (not desperate enough :-)
www.usaemergencysupply.com/information_center/butter_powder.htm

2. Raise a goat, sheep or cow and make your own butter from milk. (the city-boy part of me says "no-way") www.geocities.com/zambo_da9/tip_goat_raising.html

Food Safety During Power Outages

Keep cool and you command everybody.- Louis de Saint-Just (1767 - 1794)
One danger easily overlooked during a power outage is food contamination. According to the USDA, Keeping Food Safe During an Emergency,

"Always keep meat, poultry, fish, and eggs refrigerated at or below 40°F and frozen food at or below 0°F." ... "The refrigerator will keep food safely cold for about 4 hours if it is unopened. A full freezer will hold the temperature for approximately 48 hours (24 hours if it is half full) if the door remains closed."

The USDA recommends keeping a thermometer in the fridge and freezer so you'll know the temperature. Because of bacteria growth, most fridge food should be thrown out if kept above 40°F for more than two hours. The USDA website has a table listing when foods are no longer safe. The site also advises what to do with canned foods after floods and fire.

The Minnesota Dept of Health is slightly more tolerant than the USDA with 4 hrs at 40°F:

Discard any potentially hazardous food that has been above 41°F for four hours or more, reached a temperature of 45°F or higher for any length of time, or has an unusual color, odor, or texture.

The following items can tolerate room temperatures for a few days and DO NOT need to be tossed out:

• Butter or margarine
• Hard and processed cheeses
• Fresh uncut fruits and vegetables, Fruit juices
• Dried fruits and coconut
• Opened jars of vinegar-based salad dressings, jelly, relish, taco sauce, barbecue sauce, mustard, ketchup, olives and peanut butter
• Fresh herbs and spices
• Fruit pies, breads, rolls, and muffins. Cakes, except cream cheese frosted or cream-filled
• Flour and nuts

Bottom Line
Perishable food such as meat, poultry, seafood, milk, and eggs that are not kept adequately refrigerated or frozen may cause illness if consumed, even when they are thoroughly cooked.