Can anyone tell me if and how long food stored the following way will keep. I used new food grade 2 gal pails with liners.. I placed oxygen absorbers on top of the food, inside the liners, folded (did not seal) the liners and hammered the lids on. My Indian ancestors did not teach me about this. Am I in trouble.

Thanks, Bridget

-- Bridget Works (sworks@internetpro.net), November 15, 1998

Answers

Bridget, your food will last as long, stored that way, as any other way, assuming that the lids are the sealing variety. You've used the liner to buffer the food from the plastic in the pails, and the 02 absorbers should do their job.

-- rocky (rknolls@hotmail.com), November 15, 1998.

Why do we need a buffer between the food and the plastic? The hard red wheat we just got from Lehi Mills is just in buckets, no liners. Should I fret? Should I repack?

-- Arewyn (nordic@northnet.net), November 15, 1998.

No need to fret....No need to repack.....Its when we do it ourselves that we sometimes add the liner esp if it was a dill pickle bucket!

-- tcman (trashcan-man@webtv.net), November 15, 1998.

Where are you people getting the liners? I asked at my local grocery store and they don't have large ones. I've seen warnings several places against using regular plastic garbage bags for food.

Rosie

-- Rosie (rh@fone.net), November 16, 1998.

For Rosie and others, We bought pails, mylar liners, O2 absorbers from a company called Cover Yur Basic at the Y2K Expo in Spokane, WA. Don't know if they have a website but maybe you can find them through www.y2kexpos.com. Has anyone heard of using dry ice to eliminate oxygen from buckets?

Kristi

-- Kristi Snyder (bksnyder@gorge.net), November 22, 1998.

Rosie,

A good place is through Glitchproof,

http://www.glitchproof.com/

They provide a non-mylar liner, which is all that you need in a small bucket.

My grains (also Lehi Mills) don't have liners, nor do some of the buckets I've gotten from Waltons. I do use the liners when I use buckets that have been used for other purposes. Example: I poured the honey from a 5 gallon bucket into smaller servings (1 quart canning jars). Should I throw out that bucket? No way. Line it and use it.

Also, the liners are useful if you want to pack several items in one bucket. Example -- I have 5 different pasta packed into buckets. Rather than put all the spaghetti into one bucket, macaroni in another, etc., I put smaller packages of each pasta into each bucket. That way when I open a bucket I don't open all the spaghetti at one time. Pack the pasta in, add oxygen absorbers [several extra because there's a lot of air when you pack this way] hammer on the lid, and it's set.

-- rocky (rknolls@hotmail.com), November 22, 1998.

Info from the food storage faq...

One concern with plastic buckets is that they're somewhat porous to oxygen. This is a concern for foods like soybeans that are especially oxygen sensitive. Using O2 absorbers instead of gas replacement (dry ice or nitrogen) exacerbates the problem by creating a partial vacuum inside, thus drawing more gas through bucket walls. Also, if your buckets aren't heavy enough and you stack them high they can buckle, and the partial vacuum gives them greater tendency to do this. One solution, O2 absorbers inside *sealed* airtight liners.

-- Shimrod (shimrod@lycosmail.com), December 19, 1998.