If you're one of those people who cares about being green and doing your part to protect the environment, you know that one of the most important elements of green living is eliminating waste. While most of us have good intentions for what we buy when we go to the market, it's all too easy to pick up more items than you can really use. Fruit and vegetables get slimy, cheese grows a toupee of blue mold, and eggs sit in the fridge until they're too old to use. It happens all the time.
But it doesn't have to. If you take the right steps when you bring your perishable foods home from the store, the things you buy can last a heck of a lot longer. If you follow some of the storage suggestions here, not only will you be saving money every week, you'll also be making the world a cleaner and less polluted place.
Call yourself "more green than bowl of peas" in you internet dating profile? Then read on to learn some neat storage tricks for keeping your produce and perishables fresher longer. And reducing waste in your household.
Flour.
Ever open up a bag of flour to make, say, a big batch of muffins, only to find it swimming with nasty little worms? Unless you like worm-flavored muffins, your flour will be ruined. To prevent this from happening, pop your flour in the freezer for 2 days after you bring it home. This kills any bug eggs that may be lying in wait in your flour. Then simply seal the bag up in a reusable container to keep it fresh and bug-free.
Onions.
Onions can be sneaky! On the outside, they'll look great. Then you'll cut them open to find they're half rotten, soggy, and stinky as could be. Not nice. To keep onions fresh longer, store them in a cool, dark, and dry place. Have a lot of onions and want to keep them from going bad? Store them one-by-one in the leg of a pair of discarded panty hose, tying off the hose between each onion. Also, be sure to store your onions away from your potatoes, as potatoes exude something which actually causes onions to rot faster.
Apples.
Apples keep for a long time when they're stored away from other kinds of fruits and vegetables. Simply store them on the counter on their own. Want to keep your apples even longer (or have apple trees and need to store a large harvest)? Store them wrapped individually in paper (any paper you have lying around will do-- this is a great way to recycle) in any place that is cool, dark, and dry. Or slice them up, freeze them on a tray, and then pop them into a bag and keep them in the freezer.
Bananas.
Until they're perfectly ripe, you want to be sure to store bananas at room temperature. The moment they're ripe, though, be sure to pop them in the fridge. The peels will turn black, but the bananas will stop ripening and still taste perfectly good. Have a big bunch of bananas and know you won't be able to eat them in time? Simply pop them in the freezer in their peels. Thaw them out for cooking or eating, or use them frozen in smoothies and shakes.
Lettuce.
Lettuce is a pain to clean, and it also goes bad very quickly. To keep your lettuce fresh, take care of it the moment you bring it home. Wash it and dry it well, then store it wrapped in paper towels (or, to reduce waste, regular towels) and plastic. Then keep the lettuce in the crisper drawer of your fridge.
Can't decide between two types of lettuce? Grab the romaine. It lasts the longest in your refrigerator, and has a heck of a lot more nutrients than iceberg.
Eggs.
You know that little egg holder thingy at the top of your refrigerator door? It's sort of useless. The best place to store your eggs is inside the refrigerator itself (not in the door) and in the same carton you bought them in.
Cheese.
If you're anything like me, you never have to worry about cheese getting moldy before you can eat it-- because you eat it way too fast. But if you're a better behaved cheese-eater than I am, use this trick: remove the cheese from its wrapping and wrap it in a cloth lightly moistened with vinegar. Then wrap it in plastic or put it in a plastic bag (be sure to re-use!). The vinegar keeps mold from forming.
