Keeping Your Food Fresh
Are you the organized type that makes up a menu for the week? Carefully plans out the grocery shopping to have all the ingredients you need to make each of the meals on that menu? So after a long day at work, you get home. The chicken for that Chinese chicken salad is thawed and waiting to go into the pan. You open the refrigerator to pull out the head of lettuce for the salad only to discover that it is no longer crisp, but rather a slimy, rotten ball of disgust. And there goes all our dinner plans out the window.
Then there’s the other side of things. The lettuce was still good. The chicken salad was perfect. And then the kids pitch a fit, only eat part of what you put on their plate, and end up in time-out. Beyond the frustration of dealing with finicky eaters, there’s now the added frustration of watching half the dinner you slaved over end up in the trash, because half of the Tupperware is in use and the other half is missing the lids.
The amount of food that ends up just getting chucked in the bin is staggering. And a lot of it never even made it to the pot. It went bad waiting to get used, because it never seems to last to the expiration date. It’s money just down the toilet. Gone.
So how do you remedy this? Live off frozen chicken nuggets? The kids will be happy anyway. Buy stock in Tupperware hoping that one of the perks of being a shareholder is a lifetime supply of extra lids? There are way to save your food before it ever starts down the road to ruin, simple tricks using items you probably already have in your house or something easily obtained like a hand sealer.
Store fruits and veggies separately. (But keep and apple with the potatoes. The apple releases ethylene which keeps potatoes from sprouting roots.)
Do not wash your fruit before you put it in the fridge. Except berries. If you wash them in a 3 to 1 water and vinegar bath, they won’t mold as quickly.
Celery wrapped in aluminum foil stays crisp and carrots that have been topped last longer. Put the lettuce in a container with a paper towel to ward off the rot.
Asparagus needs to stand up in a container with water to help it stay fresh. And mushrooms will keep better in a paper bag than the Styrofoam from the store.
Keep your milk off the door. Yes, there’s the special spot there the perfect size for a gallon of milk, but the steadiest temperatures are in the refrigerator proper. The temps on the door fluctuate with all the opening and closing and can make your milk sour more quickly.
Cheese needs air to keep from molding, so wrap it in something like cheesecloth or a paper towel dampened with vinegar and then put it in a plastic baggie. A hand sealer can come in handy for making sure the bag is securely closed.
Throw a couple of bay leaves in with your white flour. This help keeps the bugs away.
To keep brown sugar from becoming a block, store in an airtight container and throw a piece of bread on the top. The bread absorbs the moisture and keeps the sugar from clumping.
Freeze your extra butter.
Pure maple syrup can also go in the freezer after it’s been opened. The high sugar content keeps it from freezing and the cold keeps it fresh.
