Thursday, April 19, 2012

Real Food Rots

I had a conversation with my stepmom a while back. She was telling me about someone she knew who had kept a potato that had pesticide on it for over a year and a half - it didn't go bad.
I have my own experiment going, I have a bag of snow peas that I've had since the beginning of February. They have not turned one bit brown, moldy or even curled or become limp. Because of this, I will never, ever buy produce in a bag again. Everyday I look at them in my frig and am more and more blown away that we as consumers are being sold food like this - it seems like it's wax! I'm keeping them to see just how long they will last.

I've bought bread, too, that has stayed much longer than it's supposed to. An artisan bread with very few ingredients will go hard as a rock in about 24 hours. A loaf of  so-called French or Italian bread that is common at the checkouts of large grocery chains has a long list of ingredients and will still be soft in a week. Remember, the fewer the ingredients, the better the quality of the food.

Real, fresh produce is supposed to rot. Fresh produce is supposed to mean what it says - freshly produced, which means it needs to be consumed. Ready to eat. It's not supposed to have a shelf life.

If you shop at the market once a week, you should be able to have enough produce to last for the week, either by keeping it in the frig or in a cool dark place. And over-ripe fruits can be made into breads or frozen to make smoothies. Veggies can be cut up and frozen or made into soups.

Pay attention, don't let anything go to waste. It will go to waste, it's supposed to.

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