[TheForge] dutch oven OT:

[Peter Fels & Phoebe Palmer]

Thanks for the warning Bruce.
I was a biology major, long ago.
The main drawback was that the perennial soup tasted pretty..well, brown.
I did that perennial soup thing  most winters for a span of around 20 years in
the very dutch oven given to me by the extraordinary Art Beal (RIP),Dr Tinkerpaw,
who demonstrated the technique for around 40 years and lived to be 96 years old.
He fed himself, his animals and many guests on very little income and many terraced gardens on a very steep hillside.
As i noted..the dutch oven would pull a solid vacuum as it cooled. Happened over too many years to be dumb luck.
Perhaps pertinent , is the fact that right by the ocean in the winter it seldom topped 60F.
He taught me to pick wild mushrooms too....grin...
Though his mycological precision later turned out to be a bit too loose for my liking.


On Nov 28, 2012, at 6:16 AM, Bruce . wrote:

Keeping soup going for 9 mos. might be safe if you run a wood stove
HOT all the time, but please be careful otherwise.

Someone I knew once told me her "trick" of cooking something up in a
pressure cooker, then leaving it on the stove -- cold -- all night
because it "was almost like canning."  I immediately replied that it
differed from canning in that when it cooled, air -- and bacteria --
leaked in and started going to work on the contents.  She's lucky she
never got food poisoning from this "trick"!

You can get away with stuff like this through dumb luck.  Rather like
you frequently can get away with speeding down a highway w/o killing
yourself.  But your luck can run out.

I suggest everybody read up on canning, JUST to learn about how food
can spoil.  I expect those of you who cook are aware of the 40F-140F
rule:  "Keep food below 40F or above 140F -- lest it spoil."  But are
you aware of thermophillic bacteria that THRIVE between 113F and 252F?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermophilic_bacteria

From what I've read, most of these are irrelevant to our foods, but
SOME of them can "spoil" canned foods kept too long at intermediate
(>140F) temperatures during canning. Fortunately, these apparently
don't produce food toxins, nor are they pathogenic, but they can
degrade the quality of the food.

I bring up thermophiles mainly to point out that there's lots you
might not know.  People DO die of food poisoning.

On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 1:04 AM, Peter Fels & Phoebe Palmer
<artgawk at thegrid.net> wrote:
> Sigh.
> As a bachelor, i kept a continuous soup going all winter..9 months sometimes.
> Heat it up at night and the old dutch oven would actually pull a pretty good vacuum .
> 


-- 
Bruce
NJ
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