There are many ways to get back to your roots. Take the root cellar. It is both traditional and trendy, thanks to the locavore movement.

“The next logical step after local food is some kind of at-home facility for storing that food, especially if you want to make use of the local harvest at this time of the year,” explains Steve Maxwell, co-author with Jennifer MacKenzie of The Complete Root Cellar Book: Building Plans, Uses and 100 Recipes.

RECIPES: BRAISED KALE AND EGGS ON TOAST

SWEET POTATO SOUP WITH COCONUT AND LIME

“It’s quite fascinating how all of these old ideas are new to a whole new generation,” MacKenzie adds.

A cold cellar is ideal for storing root vegetables, as well as produce such as apples, cabbage and onions. Depending on the conditions, it could be fine for preserves and wines, meats and cheeses, and nuts. And it’s a handy place to stash cases of bottled water and pop.

The sight of a hanging salami rod or haunch of prosciutto, and shelves groaning with his mom’s bottled tomato sauces and his uncle’s olives are part of fond family memories for GTA real estate agent Robert Paluzzi.

“It was a big part of the Italian way,” Paluzzi says of the basement cold rooms he calls “cantinas.”

Paluzzi, who tours many houses as part of his job, says cold rooms are most common in Italian, Portuguese and even Eastern European neighbourhoods. But they are also a vital part of new home construction.

“It’s interesting because there’s been a real resurgence of them of late, even in new home construction,” he says.

Paluzzi estimates that about 80 percent of all new homes built in the last decade include cold rooms. His own new home in Maple has an as yet unstocked cold room in the basement under the porch — the most common location.

However, Paluzzi rarely comes across root cellars dug out in a backyard.

Alison Fryer, who runs Toronto’s Cookbook Store, has one. “Not a big one, but enough to keep us in carrots, parsnips and potatoes all winter,” she comments.

It’s not a walk-in affair, but it goes, in spirit, with her rain barrel, solar water heater, “green roof” shed and heritage apple trees.

The native Indian practice of storing food in underground pits was adopted by North American settlers as far back as the early 1600s.

The terms “root cellar,” “cold cellar” and “cold room” are often used interchangeably. “Root cellar,” however, evokes memories of the underground room great-grandpa dug in his yard before the days of refrigeration, while “cold cellar” tends to refer to an unfinished part of a basement.

MacKenzie, who lives in Buckhorn, Ont., is converting a dirt basement crawlspace into a cold cellar this winter. Maxwell has a limestone cold cellar in the basement of his farmhouse on Manitoulin Island.

“The whole basement is a root cellar,” he says. “It sits on limestone bedrock. It’s been a part of my life for a couple of decades.”

Least versatile is a finished “cold room” under the porch or steps, which can get too warm in summer if it faces west.

The Complete Root Cellar Book, a new Canadian release, includes a variety of options, even a free-standing cold room for condos. Maxwell says the ideal cold cellar is cool, humid and dark, with little temperature fluctuation. It should keep your goods cool in summer, frost-free in winter.

David Cohlmeyer of Cookstown Greens has two cold cellars that store, at peak capacity in early December, about 100,000 pounds of root vegetables and sturdy greens such as cabbages.

One is a basement room “as big as a small house,” about 2,000 square feet. The other is a 500-square-foot, underground, walk-in root cellar near his home — the type Dorothy and Toto should have taken shelter in during the tornado.

“I found that things kept better if they’re below ground,” Cohlmeyer says. “It’s cheaper, too.”

The higher the sugar, mineral and vitamin levels of the roots, the better they keep, he notes. “If they’re really healthy roots, they should keep all winter long. You need really good quality produce to last that long.”

Dirty vegetables keep better, too. “Washing them shortens the storage time,” Cohlmeyer adds.

He recommends separate rooms for root vegetables and apples, because the latter emit ethylene gas, a ripening hormone.

Maxwell praises the revival of root cellars, noting that they help consumers take advantage of harvest prices and bulk buys, properly store heirloom produce, remain kind to the environment and “connect personally with food.”

He writes: “Even the seemingly simple act of visiting your cellar regularly to examine your stores, remove droopy specimens and carry something delicious up to the kitchen affords simple satisfactions that can’t be sealed in cellophane.”

susansampson@rogers.com