The Weekly Digs #224
Onion Failure
Early in the week, Amy and I worked on preserving onions. So what happened was an onion storage disaster. I started smelling stinky onions a couple of weeks ago and removed a few but knew they needed to be chopped and preserved since they were going bad.
The stinky, going bad onions happened because I decided to try a new method of storing the onions.
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After many years of pantry tours, I had lots of people tell me in the comments that onions, apples, and potatoes shouldn’t be stored together because they will make each other go bad.
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So instead of storing the onions in the cold room like I usually do, I put them in the dry pantry away from all the potatoes and apples. The dry pantry is room temperature and come to find out onions only last about two months at room temperature.
So the lesson learned here is that onions last much longer at about 47ºF (our cold room temperature), even if they are stored next to apples and potatoes.
I usually have bulb onions lasting until March. A few here and there will go bad, but overall they are in so much better shape than these were.
Book knowledge is a good starting point, and it probably is true that the apples, potatoes, and onions will last longer if stored separately at ideal conditions. But real life experience teaches that there are caveats, like in the case of the onions.
I have no other cool, dry space to store onions. So Amy chopped all the onions, and I sorted through them to find any firm onions left.
The still in good shape onions went back in the cold room (yes, with the potatoes), and the soft onions were salvaged as much as possible and chopped.
We freeze dried them, but onions are easily dehydrated too. Amy said that’s what she normally does.
Frost is Coming
Amy and family left mid week and we spent the next couple of days getting caught up on cleaning, homeschool, and laundry.
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At some point in those days we were playing catch up, I looked at the weather and realized we were only a few days away from a frost! It’s actually supposed to be 19ºF one of the nights so a hard frost is coming.
I paused all indoor chores and got going on the frenzy of collecting all the good veggies and herbs before it would freeze.
We spent a long time today picking, covering plants, and setting up low tunnels. Frost will come tomorrow night and we are as ready as we are going to be.
What I’m reading
While I was in the garden and driving around town over the last few weeks, I listened to the audio version of the book, Building a Non-Anxious Life by Dr. John Delony.
I’m always open to anything to help me feel less anxious on a daily basis. Overall, it was a good book. I will listen to it again, and take some notes next time.
There were some really good tidbits of information and help for anxiety that I’d never thought of or heard of before that I think would be very helpful to take action on.
One was that too much stuff causes anxiety. I totally believe this and that is why I’ve got decluttering as one of my goals for winter.
Another thing I felt helpful was the reminder to get enough sleep. I’m really terrible at this. Even now, I’m typing this post up at 11pm. I’ve always been more of a night owl but would love to change that.Â
There were definitely some other really good parts but I can’t remember them all! That is why I need to write some notes the next time I listen.
Even though it was overall really good, I think I’ll skip the first couple of chapters since they felt unnecessary and perhaps a little anxiety provoking, haha, the irony!