Best Bulk Foods in Fall
“Are YOU Ready?”
I love filling my shelves and cabinets with fresh harvest produce. Sure, MRE’s are a valid way to prep, but give me gallon buckets of green beans and bushel baskets of apples, if it’s all the same to the powers that be.
Some bulk foods end up in my kitchen purely by chance. Gleaning an unexpected fruit tree, or a box labeled FREE stacked full of cucumbers, I rarely turn such things down. Some fall harvests are so well liked, or so vital to my cooking style, that I search them out and make arrangements to ensure that I have enough. (Is there ever really enough? 
)
Peaches – If your grocery store is like mine, buying peaches from that pretty looking display in the fruit aisle is a risky gamble, usually ending in disappointment at that first bite. I have just stopped trying, no matter how tempting the price is. I buy a lug from the local fruit buying co-op. They wait for specific crops, from specific orchards, then send a truck to pick up the number of units that are on pre-order. For peaches, I like to get in on the Colorado free-stone buy that usually lands around labor day weekend. Most of the time these sales are for lugs of peaches, which is 25 pounds. 1 lug is enough for me to get 7 quarts of peach halves and a small batch of Peach Vanilla Jam. When my two boys get their big boy appetites in, I imagine I’ll have to go to 2 lugs to get all of us through winter in a tasty fashion.
Apples – One thing I’ve found is that all apples are not created equal. We have an orchard not far from us, but it’s a small one, and suffers from the same weather as every thing else around here, so when Old Man C has his bags of Honeycrisps out for sale, it’s first come, first served, and too bad, so sad. So I make it a habit to grab 2 or 3 bags if I catch that harvest. Otherwise, I stalk the ones at the grocery store until I judge it to be the tastiest and cheapest crop I’ll see, then I buy a few bags of that one. Everyone has their favorite apple, and I’m not here to argue that point, I’ll just say, don’t be afraid to strike while the iron’s hot, if ts a favorite variety at a price you can live with, buy enough for a month or so. Put them in a chilly basement or spare bedroom, and most will hold for a month or so.
Potatoes (White, Red and Sweet) - The white and red potatoes I mostly grow myself. You should try some potato growing! I make special arrangement for the sweet potatoes though. I have a favorite farm just north of town, and they grow a big crop of them every year. My boys love them, I love them, hubby likes them. They store for months in the bottom of my cabinet. I make arrangements to go out to the farm and pick out my 20 pounds. Its a win-win because I get to pick the cream of the crop and that’s 20 pounds that they don’t have to lift into their farmer’s market stand Saturday morning.
Garlic - This is another one that I search out locally from favorite farmers. Garlic is so good for cooking, it’s so good for health, and it stores so long, that it’s worth the effort to find.
The plusses of getting the bulk food from places other than the grocery store, is the price, the quality and the OPSEC. My arrangements are between me and the farmer which is far more discrete. I kid you not, I bought 10 Videlia onions this past weekend, at the store, and the guy behind me in line couldn’t help himself from making a comment about my unusually large onion purchase.
Now’s the time of year to stock up on favorites, but keep it quiet y’all.
- Calamity Jane
Source: http://www.shtfblog.com/best-bulk-foods-in-fall/
