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Old 02-02-2007, 02:17 AM   #4 (permalink)
Jessica Adlin
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Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: Beautiful Pacific Northwest
Posts: 37
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Default Cleaning veggies

Good for you for increasing your consumption of fresh vegetables.

If you use your vegetables in a few days or less, it is a good time-saving idea to wash them ahead of time...like you are already doing. If they are going to stay in the fridge longer than a few days, I recommend that you wash them as you use them...they will stay fresher longer.

Vegetables, especially the green leafy ones, are living...they need oxygen to stay alive. Putting them in a plastic bag, in essence, suffocates them. You can tell this is happening because they get all gooey and mucky. Also, without a bit of moisture, they will wilt...each cell in the vegetable gets dehydrated so they lose the structure the water provides and, well, they wilt. So...I recommend, whether you wash them ahead of time or when you use them, to wrap them loosely in a paper towel and them putting them loosly in a plastic bag. The paper towel soaks up and retain the extra moisture from the vegetable and it also gives the vegetable some "breathing room" in the plastic bag. The breathable bags you purchased are a good idea as well for the same reasons mentioned above.

Some vegetables, like carrots or celery do well in a container of purified water. I wash a bunch of celery so it is ready to eat, put it in a container and add water to barely cover all the stalks. It lasts a long time like that and it is always ready to grab and eat!

Hope this helps!

Seek health-

Jess
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