EM4921 Getting Started in Food Preservation Leader’s Guide Compiled and written by: Michael Wallace, 4-H Youth Development Excerpts from the EM4895 Food Safety Advisor Handbook by Val Hillers, Washington State University Extension Design Team: Nancy Mordhorst, Jan Klein, Sally Everson, Sharon Campbell, Michelle Morrisey, Anne Cox Edited by: Kate Painter Designer: Ianna Woltering Getting Started in Food Preservation: A 4-H activity-based approach How to Use this Manual & the Youth Materials This food preservation manual is written to assist the parent or club leader in teaching young people about food safety and preservation through hands-on activities. If you are introducing yourself or youth to the world of food preservation, this is a fun place to begin! As a leader you will need this manual, which includes lists of materi- als and handouts to be copied. Each youth should have the “Getting Started in Food Preservation” Youth Kit (EM4920). The kit contains four divider pages for their notebooks, four pages of flashcards, and any additional material you may choose to give them. UNITS There are five units in this leader’s manual: Unit 1: Playing It Safe: Food Safety Unit 2: The Delights of Drying: Drying Foods Unit 3: South Pole Strategies: Freezing Foods Unit 4: Boil Buddies: Jar Your Foods Using the “Boiling Bath” Method Unit 5: Out of the Frying Pan...More Activities Each unit contains • Activity Objectives: Describes purposes of each activity. • Unit Shopping List: Contains a complete list of supplies for each lesson. • Food Preserver’s Information: Provides more in-depth informa- tion about the activity and methods. • Youth Handouts: The instructions for many of the activities in this book are printed as instructions on the youth handouts. Please copy as many youth handouts as your group needs. • Additional Activity Information: These will provide leaders with additional tips and information (storage, safety, etc.) to accompany specific activities. YOUTH A divider page is provided for each of the first four units. They include: MATERIALS • Definitions for Key Words • Food Handling Safety Tips • Historical Footnotes • Important Charts & Diagrams • Food Riddles Quiz Cards: A sheet of flash cards to cut out and use for quizzing one another is provided for the first four units. Getting Started Page 1 Using Life Skills and Experiential Learning Questions provided in many of these activities will help guide you in structuring an inquiry-based approach to learning, encouraging thought and reflection. Rather than just providing information, we are attempting to ignite curiosity, helping youth formulate their own questions and make their own discoveries. However, rules of safety should be taught rather than discovered. Food poisoning, for example, is not something we want youth to learn through personal experience. Guiding youth in an experiential process requires that you continually make risk assessments. Mistakes are an expected part of learning, but not at the expense of personal safety. Experiential learning coaches clearly define for youth the difference between issues of scientific fact versus personal opinion, between the desire for exploration and the need for safety. As a leader, you may feel you are expected to “have all the answers,” and might feel uncomfortable if you come upon a question for which you don’t have a “real” answer. You are not expected to know every- thing. Keep in mind that the model we instill with our attitude toward learning may be more important than the material we are teaching. The widely adopted Iowa State Life Skills Model helps identify the special skills that youth attain through the experiential process. The Life Skills used in this manual include: • Head: Wise Use of Resources • Heart: Cooperation • Hands: Useful/Marketable Skills • Health: Disease Prevention In addition, the curriculum can be used to help address these Wash- ington State Essential Academic Learning Requirements: READING: 1.2 build vocabulary through reading, 1.5 use features of non- fiction text and computer software, 2.1 comprehend important ideas and details, 3.1 read to learn new information, 3.2 read to perform a task. MATHEMATICS: 1.1 understand and apply concepts and procedures from number sense, 1.2 understand and apply concepts from measurement, 5.3 understand the connections between mathematics and problem solving skills used everyday at work and at home. HEALTH: 2.2 understand the transmission and control of communicable and non-communicable diseases, 2.3 acquire skills to live safely, 3.1 understand how environmental factors affect one’s health. Page 2 Getting Started The Tradition of Food Preservation As you know from visits to the grocery store, healthy and delicious foods come in many different kinds of packages and containers that protect the food and make it safe to eat. This wasn’t always true, of course. Because food is so important to survival, food preservation is one of the oldest sciences used by human beings. The astonishing fact about food preservation is that it has been a part of every culture at nearly every stage. In the past few decades, food preservation has become somewhat of a lost art. As supermarkets have replaced the root cellars and gardens, chemicals and preservatives have replaced the natural, fresh vitamins and minerals in our foods. Are you interested in preserving your own foods from your garden? Concerned about health issues of eating processed food? Are you looking for gift-giving ideas from your kitchen? Or do you just love spending time making “home-made” products? Then this 4-H project is the place for you to start. Historical Origins of Food Preservation Brian A. Nummer, Ph.D. National Center for Home Food Preservation May 2002 INTRODUCTION The astonishing fact about food preservation is that it permeated every culture at nearly every moment in time. Ancient people had to harness nature to survive. In very cold climates they froze seal meat on the ice. In tropical climates they dried foods in the sun. Food naturally begins to spoil the moment it is harvested. Food preservation enabled early humans to put down roots and live in one place to form a community. They no longer had to consume the kill or harvest immediately, but could preserve some for later use. Each culture preserved their local food using the same basic methods of food preservation. Drying Sun and wind naturally dry foods. Evidence shows that ancient Middle Eastern and Oriental cultures actively dried foods in the hot sun. Later cultures left more evidence, and each would have methods and materi- als to reflect their food supplies—fish, wild game, domestic animals, etc. Vegetables and fruits were also dried from the earliest times. The Romans were particularly fond of any dried fruit they could make. In the Middle Ages “still houses” were purposely built to dry fruits, vegetables, and herbs in areas that did not have enough strong sun- light for drying. A fire was used to create the heat needed to dry foods. In some cases, foods were smoked as well. Getting Started Page 3 Freezing Freezing was an obvious preservation method in appropriate climates. Any geographic area that had freezing temperatures for even part of a year made use of the temperature to preserve foods. Cold tempera- tures were also used to prolong storage times. Cellars, caves, and cool streams were put to good use for that purpose. In America, estates had icehouses built to store ice and food on ice. Soon the “icehouse” became an “icebox.” In the 1800s, mechanical refrigeration was invented and quickly put to use. Also in the late 1800s, Clarence Birdseye discovered that quick freezing at very low temperatures made for better tasting meats and vegetables. After some time he perfected his “quick freeze” process and revolutionized this method of food preservation. Fermenting Fermentation was a chance discovery rather than an invention. No doubt the first beer was discovered when a few grains of barley were left in the rain. Opportunistic microorganisms fermented the starch- derived sugars into alcohols. This also occurred as fruits fermented into wine, cabbage into kimchi or sauerkraut, and so on. The skill of ancient people to observe, harness, and encourage these fermenta- tions is admirable. Some anthropologists believe that early mankind settled down from nomadic wanderers into farmers so they could grow barley to make beer. Beer was nutritious and the alcohol was considered divine. It was treated as a gift from the gods. Fermentation was a valuable food preservation method. It not only preserved foods—it created more nutritious foods and was used to make palatable foods from less than desirable ingredients. Microor- ganisms responsible for fermentation can produce vitamins as they ferment, enhancing the nutrition in the end product. Pickling Pickling is preserving foods in vinegar (or another acid). Vinegar is produced from starches or sugars that have been fermented into alco- hol. The alcohol is then oxidized to acetic acid by certain bacteria. Wines, beers, and ciders are all routinely transformed into vinegars. Pickling may have originated when food was placed in wine or beer to preserve it, since both have a low pH. Perhaps the wine or beer went sour and the taste of the food in it was appealing. Containers had to be made of stoneware or glass, since vinegar would dissolve the metal from pots. Many uses were found for the leftover pickling brine. The Romans made a concentrated fish pickle sauce called “garum.” It was powerful stuff, packing a lot of fish taste in a few drops. There was a spectacular increase in food preservation in the 16th century due to the arrival of new foods in Europe. Ketchup was an oriental fish brine that traveled the spice route to Europe and eventu- ally to America, where someone finally added sugar to it.