My science project.
Mar 9th, 2006 by Jason
One of the cool things about stuff from Trader Joes is that they almost without exception taste leaps and bounds better than stuff purchased from our regular grocery store.
One of the not-so-cool things about foods from Trader Joes is that they typically don’t have preservatives, which means if you don’t finish eating them in 3-4 days, they turn into mold bombs.
How people ate before the glorious invention of preservatives is beyond me. 
So what exactly turned into a mold bomb?
A few things that have always been available to prevent food spoilage are putting in acid (Vinegar), acidifying through direct fermentation like sauerkraut, (either is known as pickling ) salting, drying, drying & smoking. Think wagon train food - virginia ham, salt pork, salt code, dried beans, cabbage, potatoes, flour for bread - biscuits.
Food was cooked for every meal, nothing was prepared ahead unless it could last. You ate eggs the day you collected them. You ate the chicken the day you killed it. Milk was drank the day you milked it (unless it was in a place that got cold/wintery) and then you turned it into cheese, or buttermilk. (You can’t really do that we our homogonized, pasturized stuff that easily anymore.)
If you’re finding that things are turning in to big mold bombs that fast in your fridge, I’d 1. check the temperature of your fridge. It needs to be between 34 and 40 degrees at the highest. If that’s not it, then I’d wonder about the temp that Trader Joe’s is holding it’s food at. A single day of being held at a higher temp can really shorten the life of foods that normally need refrigeration.
And of course, Napolean used food ‘canned’ in bottles in the 1800’s.
Scott, the garlic twists and hummus so far. ack
Canned bottles? Eh?
I can’t imagine having to use fresh food for every meal. Good lord. But I guess those folks didn’t have huge commutes either.
Have you ever heard of NOMADS? They had the biggest commute of all.
Here’s some interesting tid-bits of historical information . . .
http://www.foodtimeline.org/index.html