My favourite breakfast on the picture is seasonal, no chance of having it fresh in the winter here in Europe. If you’d like to enjoy them in the cold months, jamming is a good idea. For many years I’ve been experimenting with it, now I can tell you that it’s not a big deal at all. No reason to be afraid of it :).

After washing, remove the pits, cook them on low fire adding as little sugar as possible, boil the bottles in vinegar water, fill the bottles with the hot jam, turn them upside down and let them cool down slowly in a warm place. Without any preservative they stay good for more than a year.

In such a long, dry hot summer as this one, it would be absolutely silly not to stock up food for the winter. No money is no excuse. Just one extra kilo of something each time when you do shopping will make a huge difference.

It’s worthwhile to keep a list with expiry dates though, so you can rotate before anything expires.

What type of food is hormonally supportive, important and can be stored for long? Keeping in mind that in the past decades we’ve been used to eat much more than we need, it’s a mission possible to make a hormone friendly selection. You need dry carbs like rice, millet, pasta, raisins, and dry protein sources like beans, quinoa and lentils. With time they all grow pantry moths, so you need to be ready to rotate your stock unless you eat it anyways. Some people swear on putting grains to the deep freezer for 2-3 days would kill the eggs of pantry moths. This is not confirmed by biologists, who explain that eggs get preserved in low temperature. If you keep them well packed in a dark, cool place, 1 year they stay good usually.

It’s not wise to invest into lined cans (I never eat them because of the carcinogenic BPA’s and BPB’s), but canned sardines are not lined normally, it’s an absolute go.

Honey, coconut oil, ghee stay good for long.

Bottled tomato cans have long life and offer you variability in your meals when cooking. For similar reasons dried herbs and salt can be useful, too.

Seeds to sprout can provide fresh greens at any time.

If top politicians are mistaken, and we will have enough supply for next year, all above ingredients you can use in any case. Nothing will be wasted. You’ll get them simply cheaper now and you won’t need to do that much of shopping in the winter.

Anecdotal evidence show that investment in yourself has the safest return in difficult times. Keep yourself fresh and happy with hormon balancing exercises! Here you can see more on how: what is Endocrine Gymnastics?