Brin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
brin_bellway) wrote2022-12-07 01:11 pm
brin_bellway) wrote2022-12-07 01:11 pm
Honour and glory to That Whose Name Cannot Be Perceived, part 3: Lessons learned
[cw: food, poison]
(part 2)
---
A little over a month ago, I threshed and winnowed the seeds, placed them in a small plastic container, and put them in the refrigerator.
(It was about three tablespoons, a bit less than one serving of pop-amaranth. Took maybe an hour, hour and a half to process. But it's early days: more skill and better tools will make future harvests more efficient.)
Last night I took a look at it and saw the inside of the container was covered in condensed water beads. Some of the seeds were clumped together with it.
I don't want to risk eating seeds that have been damp for potentially an entire month: I've already gotten food poisoning from dodgy amaranth once. (That's what this incident turned out to be: it transpires that you cannot store amaranth seed in an oxygenated bag at room temperature for ten months and expect it to be safe to eat at the end, even if it tastes the same. I ate some of that same bag of amaranth at six months in and was fine; the websites I was seeing when looking into this afterward recommend four months to be on the safe side. You get more wiggle room if you keep it cold, of course: that was why I put this container in the refrigerator.)
But that's alright. The point of this year's crop was to experiment, and I have gotten valuable lessons about proper storage out of the way in an environment where I'm *not* depending on it for calories. I have a bag of silica packets: I'll put some of those in with next year's harvest, plus being more careful to let it dry as much as possible before packing it away.
I'll plant the whole container in the backyard next year.
---
(part 4)
(part 2)
---
A little over a month ago, I threshed and winnowed the seeds, placed them in a small plastic container, and put them in the refrigerator.
(It was about three tablespoons, a bit less than one serving of pop-amaranth. Took maybe an hour, hour and a half to process. But it's early days: more skill and better tools will make future harvests more efficient.)
Last night I took a look at it and saw the inside of the container was covered in condensed water beads. Some of the seeds were clumped together with it.
I don't want to risk eating seeds that have been damp for potentially an entire month: I've already gotten food poisoning from dodgy amaranth once. (That's what this incident turned out to be: it transpires that you cannot store amaranth seed in an oxygenated bag at room temperature for ten months and expect it to be safe to eat at the end, even if it tastes the same. I ate some of that same bag of amaranth at six months in and was fine; the websites I was seeing when looking into this afterward recommend four months to be on the safe side. You get more wiggle room if you keep it cold, of course: that was why I put this container in the refrigerator.)
But that's alright. The point of this year's crop was to experiment, and I have gotten valuable lessons about proper storage out of the way in an environment where I'm *not* depending on it for calories. I have a bag of silica packets: I'll put some of those in with next year's harvest, plus being more careful to let it dry as much as possible before packing it away.
I'll plant the whole container in the backyard next year.
---
(part 4)