by SA Professional

Created on: August 12, 2009

Tips For Cooling Food Without Electricity

Electricity is the most valuable gift to man, blessed is the man that invented electricity. In today's fast developing world we can't survive without electricity. Everything that we touch requires a bit of electricity to allow it to function. Even a battery, if it is a rechargeable one, needs electricity to give it the required energy.

Similarly we use electricity to cool ourselves and to warm ourselves as well. We cook our food with the help of electricity. We heat the food and cool the food too with the help of electricity. Since electricity plays a major role in our lives how can we survive without it? We just can't imagine the days when people lived without electricity. Yet they lived happily and had hot as well as cold food. How was this possible?

Even today we still have a few methods of keeping food cool without the refrigerator or without electricity. One such invention is the simple Zeer Pot invented in 1995. This is a simple method where two clay pots are used, one bigger than the other. One pot is filled with wet sand and the smaller pot is placed into this wet sand. The food item is kept in the smaller pot and covered with a wet cloth. The combination of the wet cloth and the wet sand will keep the food fresh like the refrigerator. Weird isn't it? But it is the fact.

This Zeer pot is the best equivalent to a refrigerator especially when you are out camping and would like to keep some fruits or vegetables or even meat fresh. It has been tested and tried and its results are amazing.

The method is purely evaporation method. Simply wet a piece of cloth and place some fruit or green leaves in it and keep it aside, continue to wet the cloth with water as it gets dry. Why is it drying? It is because the water is evaporating and the fruit that is in the cloth is absorbing the water to keep it fresh.

Similarly the Zeer pot functions with the same principle. The sand in the outer pot should be kept moist all the time and the cloth that covers the top of the pots should also be wet. It will keep getting dry depending on the humidity of the place. One has to continue to keep the sand moist and there is no better fridge than the Zeer pot.

The Zeer pot could be considered as the poor man's refrigerator. Actually it can be practiced by all; it is safer and does not cost much. It can be used even when there is water scarcity because initially it takes a bit of water. Once the sand is totally moist, the amount of water is less and there is no dripping or seepage, so the place where it is kept is very neat and tidy.

The next time you are camping just keep that food of yours cool without electricity. Make use of the Zeer pot and have a wonderful picnic or a camp away from home and still have cooled food still cool.

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