Week 1

This part of the project is all about analysing and observing how the preserved foods have changed. This will be our first post! Pictures will be included with the observations so you can all understand it better. The foods are hopefully still edible, and have stayed the same thanks to the preservation methods. Hopefully none will be spoiled or contaminated, but be careful! We checked our fruit, meat and vegetable for any changes in texture, flavor, color, odor, or appearance that may have occurred, so keep your eyes wide open! The objective of this part is to see if the preserved foods are able to last more than one month preserved, and if they are edible after this. This updates will be done for some weeks more to show at the end which foods or food is still edible, and if the preservation methods we used worked. So keep yourself posted, and stick to our blog!!

Let's start with the pineapple!! After one week of preserving the pineapple in the process of candying, the changes were not major. The pineapple is still hard, and not easily broken, meaning that the fruit’s composition has not changed, it is still rough and hard. Therefore the candied layer is falling a little bit. The color is still the same, it is yellowish-brownish, it has not gotten any darker nor lighter. The odor has not changed because it still smells like pineapple and like sugar because of the candying process. This is good for the preserved pineapple because it is still eatable. We believe that it should last the whole month. By now it is digestible, and the same as the day it was preserved. Check weekly to show you how the preserved pineapple has changed. 

Next is the meat! The preservation method used for the meat was salting. The meat was put into the refrigerator and left there for a little more than a week. We have been checking it constantly, turning the bag to the other side on occasions. We have taken it out a few times and removed some of the meat's juice that was released after the meat was put into the bag. Right now, the meat has less spices covering it than before, and the color is a little bit darker, it lost some of its redish tint. Also, it has  a strong spicy odor (from the spices that have been covering it), and although it is not completely frozen it is a little bit hard, it doesn't has the same lumpy texture as before. Starting this friday we will take out the meat and continue with the smoking process. Hopefully by next week's post the meat will have gone through the process of smoking!!! (And not with a cigarette, mind you).

Finally, the mushrooms!! For the vegetable, or the mushrooms, whatever, we used the preservation method called submersion in oil and vinegar. It has been a week since we finished preserving the mushrooms, and guess what?! They have changed a lot!! At the beginning they smelled horrible, but right now they smell twice as bad. Mushrooms are terrible! Now they are smaller, more wrinkled, a little bit darker, and yes, they smell BAD folks, capital letter BAD. Believe us, if you smelled this you'd probably throw up. They are so disgusting that we actually advise you to try preserving another vegetable. Anyways, in resume the mushrooms are now mush dryer than they were before (remember all the water we were talking about in one of our earlier posts? Disgusting!) and are probably very tasty. Keep in touch, we will be doing more posts!

In resume, the fruit, vegetable and meat we preserved have changed somewhat during the last week. The pineapple had no major changes, it was still hard, and not easily broken, meaning that the fruit’s composition has not changed. The meat changed a little bit, now it has less spices covering it than before, and the color is a little bit darker, it also lost some of its redish tint. At last the mushrooms had a lot of changes, at the beginning they smelled horrible, but now they smell twice as bad. Also now they are smaller, more wrinkled, and darker. This is only our fist week checking out our preserved foods, but we will be posting new observations in the following days! Don't forget to keep in touch, and maybe try some of our amazing recipes!