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Termyn8or -> RE: Q: About food spoilage (12/12/2008 9:24:56 AM)
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From an education standpoint, that is a very good point HK. Alot of people find it hard to fathom for example, why you can suffocate on a garbage bag yet if you fill it with water it will ooze out.
Now they market bags for storage of fruits and vegetables in the refrigerator claiming that they will last longer. The premeability is controlled, it lets out just enough moisture to prevent rot. (or whatever)
Fancy that, they now market a plastic that has the "advantage" of being not quite airtight. Seems to me one would get similar results using paper bags.
This would be quite useless in a freezer, but nobody said this thread is only about freezing things.
Perhaps interesting - I have found that if you just leave a head of lettuce unwrapped in the refrigerator it lasts longer. Also a hearty bread, which I like, you know the kind that comes from a bakery, and I don't mean a pastry shop, if it comes in a paper bag leave it in the paper bag.
Also what may be of interest to those who grow their own herbs, a friends olady knows how to freeze fresh herbs. It might come in handy if you want fresh well after you have harvested and are waiting for the next yield. Wet paper towels. Put your fresh herbs between wet paper towels and freeze. Just thaw and use anytime. Comes out pretty much how it was when you put it in, or at least close enough.
She is from the south, really. She also has some interesting things to say about planting a garden, to plant certain things right in between certain things. More efficient use of the land as the different plants need different minerals. But that is a different subject. Perhaps I'll get a chance to talk to her in depth about it and then we can tear that apart, the spring would be a good time.
Back to the freezer burn issue. There has to be another factor. It seems like it's the atmosphere itself somehow. If you wrap something, and all the surfaces of it are touching some (at least relatively) airtight material, it is alot less susceptable to freezer burn.
This brings me back to the fact that your furnace does not really decrease the humidity of the air in your house directly. It does it indirectly, it's that as it heats the air it expands, and when the moisture content is not increased, that will naturally result in a lower relative humidity reading. (I could be wrong there if a correction factor is involved) At any rate many systems are sealed, so what else would account for that phenomenon ?
For example you freeze a couple stuffed peppers and when you use them, there are ice crystals on top, on top where the atmosphere was. It's there, you sealed it there when you put the lid on in the first place.
In the instace of canning, the idea is to have the absolute minimum of air in there. Sometimes wax was used. Maybe our friend the atmosphere is our enemy as well.
In other words nature intended us to eat fresh foods, but then nature made it get cold and snow. Just another condradiction of life. Should be used to it by now.
T
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