Selfsufficientish.com

Hello folks

I've had a look round and found a few tips but I wonder if others could advise us on setting up a larder to use rather than having a fridge.

We have a downstairs loo (on an outside brick wall and with a smallish window) which we hope to convert to use to store everyday food - some dairy, open jars of jam, etc., mainly vegetables, no meat. There's a hand basin in there as well.

We've put a board up at the window and put foil on the outside. There's an opening section of the window which we will leave open but which needs to be covered in some way. We found some marble tiles to put on the floor and a slab of marble to create a cold shelf. All the veg is in various baskets and brown paper bags. I thought we'd do the double terracotta pot trick for beer or wine, if needed (who am I kidding?).

We'd love some advice about this.

regards

Sharon

Wombat wrote an article a while back that uses the pot in pot method it looks pretty easy to set up http://www.selfsufficientish.com/fridge.htm#pot he also wrote an article about a food storage system which might come in handy. http://www.selfsufficientish.com/foodstorage.htm

I started to write something about this, but it rapidly got out of control! (We preserve, pickle, freeze, clamp and store so that our veg last a year.)

So, instead of reinventing the wheel, I thought I'd suggest two books that back up what I picked up from my grandparents and various other people.

They're both US publications, so need a bit of interpretation and adjustment, but are very good.

You want:

Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits and Vegetables; Mike and Nancy Bubel, 1991

Keeping Food Fresh: Old World Techniques & Recipes, Claude Aubert, 1999

Many thanks, Andy & Stonehead. I will follow up the links that you've given. The older (pre-fridge) sources will be a good read.

We do freeze or pickle all the veg we can, but are looking for the best ways to keep fresh vegetables, cheese, milk, etc.

Fridge shut off very ceremoniously yesterday!

regards

Sharon

Make sure you have a thermometer in your larder and check it at least twice a day. You'll want to keep the temperature above 0C and below 5C if you're keeping milk and the like in it. Not impossible, but not easy.

Hi Stonehead

Yes, it isn't easy, is it? We're using a cool box with frozen packs for cheese and milk but can't keep the temperature consistent. Monitoring it for a while just to see if it can work.

I've read on another site about someone converting their garage into a store and using a meat safe for cheese. The only "meat safes" I've been able to track down seem to be purely decorative.

May have to give up cheese and milk or just buy very small quantities.

regards

Sharon

One trick is similar to the "pot in pot" one Wombat wrote about.

You need a high vent and a low vent on opposite sides of the room. You hang hessian over the low vent, with the bottom in a trough of water. The hessian draws the water up, cooling the inflow of air while the warmer air flows out the top vent. This works best with a wind-powered ventilator on the outlet vent to create a good air flow.

The only problem with this is that you then have a high level of humidity in your larder, and some things need dry conditions to last.

Ideally, you'd have two larders. One cool-ish but fairly dry, and the other cold but damp.

I grew up in a house with a larder, but I'm damned if I can remember why it was cooler than the rest of the house. Two outside walls on the north side of the house would have helped. It had a small window, meat safe, and possibly some marble surfaces which I guess would have helped stabalise the temperature, but no more than that.

Milk and the like went in a wet cooler in the cellar.

Then we got a fridge, and everything changed, and the larder just became a store room, though the meat safe was still used to keep the Sunday joint in.

I remember my granny's larder! It had a perforated zinc window, and a large marble slab on which she'd store "perishables" - she'd keep milk in a jug with a sort of doily afair on the top, weighted with beads - she had loads to keep flies off things - you just got used to "floaters" in the tea. I think the secret of it was that she'd shop every day for things like milk, meat and fish, so it just didn't hang about for long enough to go off!
At that time, I'd often pop in to granny's and the smell of really ripe mutton stewing would nearly knock you over - but she lived to 95, thanks to fags, guinness, and meat and 2 veg every day!

If my house was oriented correctly (ie facing North) I would install a couple of large pot-in-pot things next to the back door, which would get plenty of breeze, but be in the shade all day.

You lot over there would only need a fridge for one or two months a year wouldn't you?

Nev

But seriously folks.....

If you have floorboards and drill some holes in the floor and ceiling, then build a cabinet around the airflow thus created, the cool air coming up form underneath will keep the food cool too....

Nev

Wombat wrote:You lot over there would only need a fridge for one or two months a year wouldn't you?

Nev

When we were students we used to keep our milk etc. fresh (and out of reach of thieving arts students) by keeping it on our window ledges. As long as you weren't on the ground floor, obviously. A friend of mine once accidentally dropped her margarine and it splatted all over someone's bicycle chained up below.

Old larders were generally sunk down a few feet and paved with porous tiles like terracotta. Ground moisture and trick ventilation did the rest, but I think we get a bit nostalgic about how well they worked. I can remember my gran cutting the green bits off the end of the meat...

hedgewizard wrote:Old larders were generally sunk down a few feet and paved with porous tiles like terracotta. Ground moisture and trick ventilation did the rest, but I think we get a bit nostalgic about how well they worked. I can remember my gran cutting the green bits off the end of the meat...

Not me. I think a good larder or cellar is a very practical solution for storing vegetables, fruit, booze, some cheeses and possibly bacon/hams/cured sausages depending on their cure and exact conditions in the larder.

However, I'll stick to my refrigerator and freezers for milk, butter, cream, raw meat, modern cured meats, soft cheeses and all the other perishables that could be a serious health risk.

You'd have loved my gran (I hate your new avatar btw - you look like you might have a shotgun hidden in your coat and someone has just told you they can't serve you breakfast because it's 11.01am) - she was very fond of pig's trotters and never, ever, threw anything away.