Food safety has become much less of an issue now that we have the benefit of advanced technology that provides us with the ideal temperatures and the best environments for extending the storage life of practically everything we eat. Why, just the introduction of home refrigeration and freezing technology has enabled us to be able to enjoy many foods that were previously beyond our scope, as many of them were so delicate that they wouldn’t hold up to the impossible to control elements of home storage. And to this, add the unabashedly huge proliferation of all kinds of chemicals that our beloved USDA has benevolently allowed to be added to all the foods we eat during processing. So we now can leave most foods out for three and four times longer than any previous times…those times when preservatives and mysterious additives were not yet even discovered.
Many Reasons Why Having a Good Food Storage Method is Important
Frozen foods like vegetables and casseroles are superior in their ability to retain nutrients and vitamins, as unlike their canned counterparts, they are not typically cooked as much during the process of preparing them for storage. It’s true that the majority of the lost nutrients in the canning process occur to the water soluble vitamins, but the water soluble vitamins are frequently the ones we find being added back into foods because they are lost in the processing. And so, even though the majority of folks tend to think about avoiding spoilage, preserving the integrity and nutrient value of food is just as important, if we are truly eating in order to live well.
A while ago, I picked up a half-size bottle of Mathilde brand cassis (black currant) liqueur. Often referred to with some pretension as “creme de cassis” in recipes, the distinction between creme de cassis and just plain cassis seems vague at best. Anyhow, though extremely sweet, my plain old cassis had a nice flavor and I decided it was time to give it a whirl in an appropriate cocktail setting.
