Notes from two years without a fridge
A small, practical response to energy poverty and our suffering guts
Note: For subscribers of Steven’s newsletter this might seem familiar. We are sharing selections of his writing related to our upcoming community workshop. Linked at the end is a digital download for the English language PDF version of our workshop zine.
Sun dried foods
In drier parts of the world this may be a no brainer, but up in the mountains, with 80+ inches of rain annually, dehydration is complicated by nearly daily rain, fog, and/or dew. In short, things mold quickly here. But the sun is fierce and powerful at dehydration. So having a place that can take advantage of the sun, yet keep the water out, is crucial in keeping food year round.
The above photo are the drying racks we use. We sun dry as much of the harvest as we can - fruits, teas, beans, peppers, herbs and spices - sometimes keeping them whole for later use, sometimes turning them to flours or powders, and we store them in airtight containers for the rainy season. Surprisingly enough, this small triangle, open on two sides, gets the job done. And there’s something to this shape. We called on the knowledge of caribeños long before our time who use the triangle shape as hurricane shelter and have learned that it is incredible at keeping things dry. A tarp in this shape, with the sides open, will keep paper crisp in a tropical storm. With the transparent material as the sides this zaps whatever we put in there, and just requires occasional stirring to dry evenly. This way we can leave anything out for days or weeks, in sun and storms, and it will dehydrate without us worrying about.
As so many ideas and methods are unfortunately imported from afuera, we know farmers who struggle to dry harvests in dehumidifiers, dependent on electricity and generators when that electricity goes out. They run all night and barely get the job done. But with the spicy caribe sun, we have to remember that we have all that we need.
Flour:
Slice breadfruit, green bananas, or green plantains, potatoes (any firm starch) thin and dry them until they crumble in your hand. Crush into flour. Same idea for powdered seasonings.
Sun dried tomatoes:
Dry sliced tomatoes on expanded metal for maximum airflow. We use a pizza tray. Then store in a bottle, covered in olive oil, with garlic and herbs added.
Dried fruits:
Any kind of fruit that can hold its shape when you slice it has potential as a dried fruit. Pineapples, mangoes, dried even ripe bananas make great snacks and store way longer than the fresh without the need of sugar to preserve them.
Teas and herbs:
Once the leaves or flowers have dried, move them to a clear, airtight jar, and watch them for a few days. If there are any signs of moisture inside the jar, continue drying.
Countertop Sofrito
As the most important cooking base in criollo cooking, it can be tragic to come home and find out the electricity has been out and all your sofrito has gone bad. My mom’s recipe is heavy on the sweet peppers, garlic, and recao, with a little cilantro and onion, but popular brands fill most of theirs with onion and cilantro and a bit of the rest. The idea is to precut and preserve fresh herbs and spices you use all the time, making cooking daily meals faster and healthier. A few hours on one Sunday cuts cooking time in half for months. Ours is kept in used peanut butter, mayo, salsa, and olive jars, preferably glass, and they do not require sealing or temperature control. Nowadays, everyone makes their sofrito with a blender and stores most of it in the freezer and only a small portion in the fridge. Outside of the fridge it would begin to spoil immediately. The trick to storage is preparation method. Air is the enemy of preservation and we keep air out in three steps.
Prep:
First we decrease the surface area by ditching the blender. Instead, we tediously dice up all the veggies and herbs real small, but still much larger than spinning blender blades. Then, once everything is diced, we add salt and pepper and stuff everything in clean jars. The second way to keep out air is to use a spoon to press everything firmly into the jar, packing it tight while leaving a half inch of space in the jar. To each jar we add a couple tablespoons of vinegar, the acidity also helps in preservation. Finally, the last step in keeping air out is to add enough olive oil to the jar to submerge the sofrito. As long as the ingredients stay below the oil, they will be air free and stay good. Clean the lip of the jar with a paper towel, close it, and you’re done. Keep it out of direct sunlight, use clean utensils when scooping out sofrito, and always push the sofrito back under the oil and vinegar, and add more oil and vinegar when necessary. With this method, sofrito last months without refrigeration. Trade out the herbs and veggies for whatever you have around or prefer and the oil preservation method becomes pretty universal.
Green Papaya Salad
As a super fast growing tree which can produce dozens of pounds of food with very little work, anyone with a little space to grow has a papaya tree. We, of course, know the classic, fresh papaya that is fruity, soft, sweet, and orangish red. Problem is that the tree sits full of dozens of green papaya for many months before a single fruit ripens, during which a hurricane could take the whole thing away. Solution is that we can also enjoy the green papaya, unripe, and crisp, using it more like a vegetable and it comes with a bunch of healthy benefits too. Similar to green unripe bananas, unripe papaya is full of insoluble fibers, the type that pass through the gut less digested, but that have a tendency to take bad things with it along the way, cleansing the body. The extra fiber of the unripe fruit encourages the flourishing of three times as many strains of gut microorganism as the ripe fruit1 and it has anti-ulcer potential for the stomach and and small intestine2, while the antioxidant properties of the unripe fruit can prevent cell death.3
Prep:
A tiny green papaya the size of a pear is enough for a papaya salad for two. To prep the salad we pick, peel, seed, and grate the papaya into a bowl. Add sticks of carrot, chopped greens, diced sweet peppers, garlic, and onion, soy sauce/amino acids, and pique (vinegar based hot sauce). Also great with toasted sunflower, pumpkin, or sesame seeds.
Sauerkraut
I don’t remember when I first tried sauerkraut but I know I hated, and still do hate, what is for sale at the supermarket. However, since the very first time making it myself I’ve been hooked. We add this probiotic flavor bomb to everything - pizza, arepas, rice, soup, sometimes just on top of crackers with some mustard on top. Alex’s Polish ancestors would be proud. The purpose is obvious, a head of cabbage will only last a couple weeks outside in this heat, yet we can preserve it for months or even years by just adding salt. The combination causes a chemical reaction called lacto-fermentation which both preserves the food and makes it more digestible.
We prefer red cabbage for the extra health and we add a ton of garlic as well as whatever herbs and spices are fresh on the farm - oregano, recao, green onion, ginger, turmeric, etc. - but the only necessary ingredients are cabbage and salt. It’s not so different from salting meat, fish, or olives, and the only tools needed are a grater and some cleaned used food jars.
Prep:
Simply grate the cabbage into a large bowl and add a hefty amount of salt. My personal rule of thumb is “until it tastes just a bit too salty”but start with something like a tablespoon of salt for every two pounds of cabbage. The kraut should ferment in a few days, if after a week it just gets soft and mushy, use more salt on the next batch. If it stays super crunchy and fresh after a week, it is not fermenting completely, use less salt next time. Once salted, add herbs, or not. Then stuff into jars, packing tightly and leaving a half inch for it to expand. Keep the jars in sight for a few days, they may need to have gases released periodically until they finish fermenting. After the first week, if no more pressure is building up while it sits, the jars can be moved to long term storage for upwards of four to six months or more. Keep in mind this is fermentation, not canning. The flavor will continue to change as the kraut sits and ferments.
Fermented greens (collards, kale, broccoli, sweet potato, etc)
The principles of salting foods spans a wide range and can be done a variety of ways. A little bit of salt seasons, a lot of salt preserves, and a medium amount of salt ferments. Greens can be fermented similarly to cabbage, preserving the fragile harvest and create a living food. We harvest all our greens before big storms, a single harvest providing months of probiotic greens in storage.
Prep:
The key here is to chop up all your greens, salt them similarly to sauerkraut, and let them sit to bring out the juices. If they are very dry, like sweet potato greens, add a bit of water to help keep them moist. The salty brine is what will keep away rot. Chili powder can stand in for a bit of the salt, allowing for lower sodium recipes. Then flavor with fresh garlic and whatever herbs you got, we use soy sauce/amino acids, though it is not necessary for preservation. Pack the jar, burp as necessary for a week. and then store just like sauerkraut.
Kombucha
Another fermented probiotic that we keep in our daily diet is fermented tea, or kombucha. Puerto Rico has its own tradition of a very similar drink, mavi, which is made in a similar way with tree bark of the Mavi tree, but kombucha is lighter in taste and more easily able to be made. First off, tea refers to green tea, black tea, oolong tea, and white tea, which are all the same leaf from the same tree, just picked and stored in different ways for different flavors. However, you can use any of the above. Kombucha is regular brewed tea, with all its anti inflammatory benefits, mixed with sugar to encourage fermentation. The end result harbors millions of strains of healthy yeast and bacteria that can improve the environment in the gut. These living organisms consume the sugar, and by the time the drink is fermented, the sugar content is nearly zero.
The process is much faster if you start with someone else’s fully formed mother, or atleast some of their raw kombucha. We purchased a bottle of raw kombucha to start ours. Now, for the $5 price tag of a single bottle of kombucha, we are able to make 30 ourselves.
Prep: Mother
The living microorganisms form a mass of floating cellulose nicknamed the mother. A healthy mother easily ferments fresh tea into kombucha in a few days. To quickly develop your own, start with a few cups of raw kombucha, mixed with twice the amount of fresh tea and sugar. For every gallon of tea, use a half cup of sugar. Let sit for 2-3 weeks until a healthy mother emerges and becomes atleast 1/4 inch thick.
Prep: Brew
We use gallon and half gallon sized glass jars with paper towels and rubber bands as breathing lids. Empty the kombucha vessel of all but a cup or two of liquid plus the mother. Everything you took out is drinkable kombucha. Now brew fresh tea with the same sugar ratio, let it cool, and add it to the vessel. Cover the top with a cloth or paper towel to keep out bugs but let in air. In a week the fresh tea will be transformed into kombucha. Move kombucha into sealed bottles to slow fermentation. The bottles can be kept for two weeks without a fridge. The mother can be kept for months or years as long as it is kept hydrated with fresh tea and sugar and occasionally used for brewing. We make 2 gallons of kombucha weekly, enough for ourselves and to share with a bunch of neighbors and their parents.
Notes Without a Fridge:
After fermentation is complete and the kombucha has been bottled, it is on its way to being vinegar. Fill bottles as much as possible to keep out air.
We only do a first fermentation, which is described above. Second fermentation is the step of making the brew flavored and fizzy. After first fermentation is complete, juice, sweetened tea, or sugar water can be added, the brew left in a sealed bottle, and gases will build up, making it bubbly. This can be done without refrigeration, but it’s much harder to store this way, as the cold temp of the fridge is what slows fermentation and prevents the bottles from exploding under pressure.
3 ingredient Sourdough Bread, No Oven
8 years ago I began searching for the simplest, most natural way to make bread and I’ve finally come up with this. Sourdough bread is more digestible because it has been completely fermented by a collection of wild yeasts. This chemical reaction reduces the inflammation that results in the body and can be easier to eat for people with mild reactions to gluten. Three ingredients, four steps, yet versatile enough to be made into loafs, rolls, flat bread, and pita bread. Once you have the basic recipe, you can add potato, banana, olives, spices, herbs, etc. We make it 100% whole wheat, although whole wheat flour can be hard to find in Puerto Rico. And we make ours without a fridge, packaged yeast, added sugars, nor even an oven.
Part 1: Natural yeast (the starter)
Bread is cooked fermented dough. Most breads today use dried isolated yeast strains which are very affective at quickly creating bubbles in the starch - hence “instant yeast” - but are inefficient at breaking down the complete complex structure of wheat. Instead, we keep and care for natural yeast in the form of a simple living mixture of fermented flour and water. We use it just like instant yeast, adding a couple spoons of starter to bread dough to ferment it, creating bubbles and making it rise. The process of natural fermentation, however, is slower, but it is cheaper, healthier, and much more flavorful, and requires no fridge. A starter that is cultivated with care becomes stronger and more resilient. Strong starters have been cultivated and passed down for generations since wheat was first cultivated in fields of Asia and Africa. As you practice you will notice that the starter develops a rhythm. If you make bread daily, like the community bakers before us, the starter becomes lively, in its raw form, and begins to smell like fresh baked bread.
The goal is to create an environment suitable for the growth of good yeast and bacteria. Clean jars, utensils, and environments recommended. Yeasts naturally occur in the air and on surfaces as do bacteria, viruses, and fungi, but what humans discovered over time was that by performing a simple, repetitive task of stirring and refreshing hydrated wheat flour with more hydrated wheat flour, an environment develops that is perfect for the yeasts to be cultivated while harmful viruses and bacteria are kept at bay.
Just as with kombucha, starting with a pre-made starter speeds up the process.
Prep:
Day 1: mix 50:50 water and flour in a pint or quart sized jar. You don’t need more than 5 tbsp of each. The consistency should be like a thick oatmeal.
Day 2: remove half, and add fresh flour and water at the same ratio. Add more or less water to maintain the same oatmeal consistency. This is “feeding” the yeasts.
Day 3: repeat. Feed 12 hours apart.
Day 4-7: repeat. In warmer climates the starter will be ready in 3-4 days, in cooler climates a week is needed.
Test: the starter should be bubbly. If a spoonful floats in a bowl of water, it is ready.
Good signs:
Bubbly, cream colored, slight sour or even baked bread scent, well hydrated, small amounts of clear liquid
Bad signs:
Many colors, foul smells, a lot of dark liquid, no bubbles
Notes Without a Fridge:
Keep your jar in the darkest, coolest place to slow fermentation. For us, that is on a ladder Alex turned into a shelf which is just sitting in the shade of a tarp. The temperature is constantly between 65 and 85. We’ve found that in those conditions, starter will retain its potency for 3 days before it begins to wane. Refresh starter atleast 8 hours before using it and you’re good to go. The mixture will likely rot if left out for more than 2 weeks unattended. Cooler situations extend these time intervals.
If you had a fridge, this can be kept in the fridge for weeks until it’s time to bake. Our current starter is 7 months old, zero days in a fridge, and starter gets more resilient and tastier with time. If you know someone else making sourdough bread, you can take a few spoons of their starter skip the first week of starter development.
Part 2: Bread
The entire prep takes 30 minutes. Our routine goes like this: first thing in the morning I make the dough. Dump everything except one tablespoon of the starter into a large bowl. You need minimum 3 tablespoons to make bread. Keep one tablespoon left in the jar, feed it, and return it to the shelf to ferment the next bread.
To the bowl add 1/2 a teaspoon of salt, a tablespoon of oil, and 2 cups of water and stir. This is the point to also add cooked mashed potatoes or sweet potatoes, mashed bananas, or herbs/spices. Then add the flour, 1/4 cup at a time, and mix with a spoon until the dough comes together. As it dries out, add the flour more slowly and begin to knead in the flour. The goal is to gradually get the dough to the point it is no longer sticky to the touch of a clean finger, and stop there. If the bread is too dry it will come out hard and chewy. If it is too wet it may not rise well and become a sticky mess. When the proportions are right,knead for a few minutes to develop the gluten that makes a fluffy bread. Sprinkle flour on a clean flat surface and put the bread there to rest for atleast 10 minutes while cleaning up. The rest allows the gluten strands to relax so that the bread can be shaped. Shape the bread. It could be one big loaf or separated into many smaller breads.
Without an oven, we make flatbread. Cut the loaf into 8 equal pieces and stretch each chunk out by hand, making 6 to 8 inch rounds, spreading them out to rest on the floured surface to rise for three to four hours. At lunch time they are ready to cook. Here Alex usually takes over. Get the cast iron pan nice and hot and then drop the burner to low. One at a time cook the breads on a very lightly oiled pan. Maybe five minutes on each side, til lightly toasted and fully cooked in the center.
We eat them with freshly crushed garlic and olive oil, but also might pair them with soup or salad for dinner, and save a few for the next day’s breakfast. The cooked rounds can also be cut in half and cut open to be stuffed, or they can be fried instead of toasted. To this same recipe we add sweetener (honey) and fry for sourdough donuts, or add eggs, fat, and sweetener and less flour to make sourdough pancakes. It’s all a balance to match dough consistency with cooking style.
THE ZINE
Firstly, we are not luddites who gave up refrigeration so we could flex about our carbon footprint. Secondly, we don’t have some gadget or new technology we use as a fridge substitute so this is not about survival skills. The situation is much less flashy - we happen to be houseless because of many events detailed here, and what we have is some practical knowledge, pulled together through trial and error, informed by the know-how of people who’ve lived millennia without Freon.