We Are What We Preserve
By Annie Cheng
My parents are not exactly what I’d describe as “seasonally-conscious foodies” but growing up within Florida’s agricultural abundance, I ate tomatoes and blueberries all year round. On Christmas, we’d hack a watermelon in half and scoop out the flesh with a spoon. After eighteen years in the Sunshine State, I bought my first winter coat and moved to the Northeast. Winter tomatoes, artificially ripened along the food chain and shipped from South America, tasted like mouthfuls of sand. Papayas went from being hard as a rock to mush in the blink of an eye, never quite reaching the magic axis of sweetness like those from my dad’s backyard tree.
In my own silly, modern way, I adapted the way my ancestors did when introduced to a new climate. I bought heads of cabbage and apprehensively tasted homemade forays into fermentation. Cooking in restaurants, I processed late-summer stone fruits into vinegars and jams and sampled spring ramp pesto on winter tasting menus. I learned beyond my own geography. As a traveler, I observed preservation in all forms and climates. Mongolian families fermented hard cheeses on the canvas roof of yurts in the Gobi desert. Southern Chileans strung massive bunches of mussels and seaweed to dry.
In the bleakest chill of New York winter, I turn to my kitchen. In the humble three-ish square feet of freezer space are blueberry jams from a summer surplus; foil-wrapped Levain cookies mailed for my birthday months before; deli containers of vegetable stock, apple butter from autumn farmer’s markets, leftover turkey from a Friendsgiving where we drank and sang 2000s hits until our lungs gave out. Lining my pantry are jars of experiments in drying, fermenting, and other forms of food processing.
Through the enduring cultures of preservation, we can transcend time and space.
Freezers and refrigerators are the most commonplace form of food preservation in U.S. American homes these days—the last stop in a very complex journey of cold storage. In the mid-20th century, freezers emerged as part of a greater landscape of American cultural suburbia. Still, to this day, refrigeration is a daily resource that many of us take for granted. It’s not ubiquitous everywhere, and many rural places face unequal access to electricity and the digital world.
But natural cooling methods of refrigeration have existed for millennia. Snow and ice were harvested and stored in pits. The earliest forms of preservation were a means of pure evolutionary survival. Ice boxes or ice houses lined with materials like salt, grass, branches, and textiles became popular over time. In countries proximate to the poles, cellars became a commonplace practice to extend the shelf life of root vegetables, gourds, and fermented products.
Pickling and fermentation methods also emerged from pure necessity; the process helped produce survive hot summers when heat invites decay more quickly. People could eat through winters when nothing much could be grown outside.
In the process of transformation, fermented products take on the specific ‘micro-terroir,’ a term reflecting taste notes of the environment’s climate, temperature, and growing conditions. Every jar is a capsule. Fresh yogurt is a refraction of rennet, the sour of green tomatoes softened with time, wine acidity a glimpse of early harvest conditions.
As western interest in pickling and fermenting recipes experiences a resurgence, I too, am connecting my practices with ancestral roots. For decades, my ancestors in China experienced energy poverty. In Sichuan, they would have relied on the mala peppercorn and liberal application of chili peppers to sanitize food. They might have babied clay jars of preserved cabbage, carefully removing and replacing the lid allowing fresh oxygen to circulate. On the island of Hainan, with its abundance of seafood and tropical produce, they would’ve used banana leaves and stilted structures to protect their harvests—a tropical cellar of sorts.
All over the world, but especially on the islands and coastal nations most impacted by climate change, I observe preservation as a crucial means of survival.
According to researchers at Australian National University’s Crawford School of Public Policy, only 30 percent of Pacific Islander households are estimated to have access to electricity (compared to over 90 percent worldwide, according to the World Bank). The energy disparity is striking. In the 19th century, colonial plantations and later capitalist multinational corporations took over the land and farmed the islands to near extinction. When these human-impacted climate change disasters strike, they destroy the already limited arable land that has been shrinking due to salination. After major hurricanes, island nations are forced to rely on tinned and preserved overseas imports. It’s a tale as old as time, repeated with local nuances in places like Puerto Rico and Haiti.
I see cultural reclamation as part of the way forward, and learning from Indigenous practices of preservation can help us once again negotiate the urgent realities we face now—the ongoing symptoms of a capital world. I turn towards examples like the Australian Center for International Agricultural Research, which channels resources towards advanced research and workshops to promote pre-colonial ways of preservation—practices that have been around for millennia. Through pit fermentation techniques commonly used on islands such as Fiji and Vanuatu for breadfruit preservation, anaerobic lactic bacteria flourishes and further enhance the already nutritious and versatile breadfruit. Protecting local food economies is pivotal for reducing reliance on import crops, improving public health, and protecting cultural gastronomies.
The geography of preservation practices and how we continue to engage with those practices tells us who we are. Hold up a mirror to the way we interact with food and land, and we will see how we interact with one another reflected back.
I'm obsessed with cabbage and ate it a lot growing up—I even have a napa cabbage tattooed on my arm. It was a mainstay in my household of two working parents: sauteed with ground pork on a school night, chopped finely for freezer-friendly batches of dumplings, and boiled in soups.
Nowadays, my refrigerator is full of sauerkraut jars, evidence of last-ditch efforts as I noted decay spreading around the outer leaves. I probably don’t appreciate them enough. But when I’ve forgotten to do the shopping or I’m coming home from a weekend away, I dig into the back of my fridge. Tucked away, nothing but a few lonely jars. I always forget how good sauerkraut is.
A single head of cabbage can produce impressive quantities of food—for this reason, it's been a cornerstone of common diets. Many food historians trace sauerkraut back to the workers behind the construction of the Great Wall of China. The workers subsisted on rice and fermented cabbage (using rice wine, as opposed to salt-generated lactic acid bacteria). The resurgence of cabbage is part of a long-time pattern of 'peasant diets' gaining appeal with the masses.
Consider kimchi, sauerkraut, cabbage rolls, slaw, curtido, suan cai—cabbage is the original survival tool. It’s exceptionally nutrient-dense (especially when fermented), stores well for months, and produces a more reliable harvest than many other crops. Entire economies were built around it. On the other hand, processing cabbage has long been one of the many tasks within an invisible labor market—the gendered domestic sphere.
In 2019, English teacher and Catapult columnist Noah Cho wrote: "At its root, kimchi has largely, historically been the product of women’s labor. The story of kimchi is a story of preservation—not just of food, but of spirit and family and community in the face of hardship, a product of women coming together for the good of each other and their larger communities... I think of the generations of Korean women who toiled over their onggi pots, burning their skin on the salty fish and peppers, all to make sure there was kimchi for their families even when winter grew long and other food proved scarce."
On January 18th, 2021, Wujiang sold its 15 billionth packet of Chinese pickles. Preserved vegetables were a huge part of my diet growing up, and still are. For 30 to 50 cents a packet, you get a perfect serving size of salty and sour mustard greens, radishes, and bamboo shoots. Spicy pickles have medicinal qualities too—it's believed that the heat will help sweat out sickness (similar to other strong flavor agents like ginger). I eat them straight out of the packet, or with noodle soups, rice, or other proteins. When I was in elementary school, one of my favorite afternoon snacks was leftover cold rice and chili bamboo shoots.
These are processed foods—a term with a very bad rap in the 'clean eating' world that dominates today's food culture. In the public discourse of ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ food, the virtues of artisan cornichons vs. foil pickle packets are often considered in isolation. Salt and fat, long cast as demons of diet, are critical preservatives along with a myriad of multi-syllabic food chemicals.
In many cases, processed food that stays edible without cold storage is the only option (or the best option) for winter dining. It's the cheapest and the most accessible; and, like the chemical additives, the comparatively low prices are themselves artificial, too. Farmworkers, factory workers, and land eat the true costs. The individual choice to eat processed foods happens at the intersection of many dynamics, none of which are accidental: In the United States, we rely on a complex cold chain system that requires electricity to keep trucks refrigerated and freezers cold. In many cases, energy poverty remains a serious issue, disproportionately impacting Indigenous populations. The Navajo Nation makes up 75% of all unelectrified households nationwide. Our preservation techniques then, too, reflect political decision-making around class disparity.
Winter is a shared and collective lens through which we can see the history and values of preservation. And through this web of preservation knowledge, we contextualize the sociocultural realities that shapeshift through time and season. My Ikea shelves are a 21st-century cellar with storage vegetables and pickle jars. Gas station jerky reminds me of Fulani kilishi. I babysit an ovenful of winter kale, envisioning vegetables lining Kashmiri attic window sills, drying slowly in the sun.
Annie Faye Cheng is a writer and cook based in Queens, New York City. In her work, she explores the intersection of food, culture, race, and power. Find her thoughts on Instagram.
Weathered is a recipient of a generous grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. Visit grahamfoundation.org to peruse current exhibitions, upcoming programs, and more.