For those of us who have a significant amount of dried beans in long-term storage, remember to keep a good supply of baking soda on hand. Dried beans become significantly harder over time. The alkaline pH of baking soda helps break down the outer layer on the beans, softening them for cooking. It will come in mighty handy for beans stored for 5-10 years or longer.
It's handy for a lot of things besides just beans too. We have several really informational threads about it's uses. Baking soda, vinegar and diatomaceous earth are items that are too often overlooked in my opinion.
The LDS family home storage people recommend that you use 3 cups of water and 3/8 teaspoon of baking soda for each cup of dried beans. Dissolve the soda in the water, add the beans, and soak overnight.
Of course, the next morning, you need to discard the soda water and rinse the beans thoroughly.
You may also need to adjust the amount of soda upward if you have hard water or considerably older beans.
For long term storage, it need to be packed away from moisture. I don't know if O2 effect it. But I know that it slowly offgasses carbon dioxide and breaks down into sodium carbonate (washing soda). If it's kept dry, it should last for years though. I have 10 year old #10 cans of it that are not bulging yet, which means it hasn't offgasses in the can.
I use it to wash my hair now since my skin is so sensitive to chemicals. I just dump some in my hand and rub it in at the scalp (not through all of my hair). Seems to work just fine.
Baking soda and baking powder are that type of item with a expiration date, that I totally disregard (unless it gets wet, duh). I'm using Clabber Girl baking powder that's so old the label has turned yellow although it's never in the sunlight and it still works fine. I do have more in my storage, which I'll probably leave to my daughter in my will when I die of old age. As to the beans, that's not the only reason why the baking soda is recommended so it doesn't have to be rinsed that well. It helps you digest the beans with out the sound, oops I mean side, effects
I can get by with that a few years myself. I think they set the expiration date to cover the worst possible storage conditions. I can easily get 3-4 years on baking powder sitting opened in my cupboard. After that is starts to lose potency. Probably from the heat here. I don't use climate control. If I did, it would suffer from the humidity of a swamp cooler anyway.
Yeast is another one that I can get long life out of. I've used yeast that was 10 years old. Most of it was dead, but after I proofed it, I was able to breed enough of a colony for use.
I gotta share this,,,after reading this post, i researched Baking soda....it very interesting uses as with cancer...
about 6 months ago i noticed i could feel a little place on my nose that began to concern me, it was tinder, yet not visible. i used neosporin, peroxide etc on & off since no change...The same day, just before, i read this post i had made a DR appt to have this looked at, after reading about uses in cancer i went home that night, made a paste & applied just before bed, actually forgot about it until i got to work,,,i cannot find the same spot, as tinder as this place was it seem to have vanished over night..I m still gonna keep my appt but i thought this was little amazing. Thats all..
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