Kumusta? The enhanced community quarantine posed a problem to us in terms of food storage. I know some of you can relate to the question of “How you can store food to make it last you longer than usual?” or “what is the best Food Storage Solution During Quarantine?”  We can’t go out as much as we want to right? So, we try to buy as much as we can when we have the chance – without panic buying either. The problem is, how can we store them properly? How about the vegetables? How can we preserve them? How about meat and other food that needs to be frozen? Paano eh ang liit ng freezer mo?

So, I am sharing with you our tried and tested food storage solutions sa panahon ng quarantine. This is what we have been doing for the past few days. As you all know, we are 8 in the family, kaya malaki talaga ang food consumption namin.

3 Tried And Tested Food Storage Solution During Quarantine

List the dry goods that you can buy in bulk. Here are some of the things that can really last long even if you just leave them in a corner:

• rice
• onion and garlic
• monggo
• sardines
• misua
• salt and pepper
• sugar and coffee
• flour
• other canned goods such as mushroom, corn
• gata in packs
• pasta and spaghetti sauce
• packaged cookies
• bottled bread spreads
• powdered beverages

Storage solution for your vegetables: pickle them or blanch them. For us, the best option for vegetables like kangkong or talbos ng kamote and other leafy vegetables is to blanch them. Blanching also works for vegetables like cauliflower and broccoli. For vegetables like carrots, potatoes, and bell pepper, it is ok to leave them inside the vegetable chiller for a week or more.

Pickling is best for leafy vegetables like mustasa. We bought 5 kg mustasa and pickled them. In 3 days, the mustasa is good to cook with tomato. Pickled mustasa can last for a long period of time.

Use a sealable plastic bag for your frozen meat. Honestly, this is the most challenging part for me. Imagine, having to store 10 or more kilos of meat in our freezer. Malaki naman yung freezer pero hindi talaga kasya if I use yung mga plastic containers namin. Then I remembered how it was noong maliit pa yung ref namin. I used sealable plastic bags for our frozen meats back then!

The photo above is how our ref looked back then! Medyo malaki na din pamilya namin nyan pero hindi pa malakas kumain ang mga bata noon. And this is how our freezer looks now with the same sealable plastic bag:

That’s a lot of meat in one photo. Akalain mong nagkasya yan sa isang compartment lang ng freezer. Each sealable plastic bag contains 1 kg of meat, except for those folded in half, which I think is only half a kilo of meat.

I think this is the best storage solution for meat in our freezer. Sealable plastic bags are easy to use, space savers, and most of all reusable.

In the weeks leading up to the quarantine, there were a lot of discussions about banning plastic. That maybe we don’t need plastic in our lives. Pero you know what I realized, there are some plastic I can live without – like ung mga single use items like coffee stirrers (kutsarita na lang!), plastic cups, and plastic spoons and forks (Maghuhugas na lang ako). This quarantine has shown me as well na maganda ding nakabalot sa plastic packaging ang food kasi it stays fresher, longer. Just when I thought hindi na ako gagamit ng plastic, plastic actually saved our food storage problem.

Kayo ba mommies? Kumusta ang mga ref nyo and pantry?