Save on produce
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Produce is wonderful and lovely, but I lose a fair amount of money on it because it goes bad relatively quickly. Part of this is bad planning on my part (buying more than we’ll reasonably eat in a given time period) but I recently found out that some of it has to do with how I’m handling and storing it. What follows is an explanation and an interview with a veritable guru of produce.
Last week, I got a great comment from “baselle” on my post about grocery shopping less often. This was the comment:
I shop on the weekend, use a list, but shop mostly for produce. You’ve got to know how to store produce.
Eliminate as much air as possible, keep away from light, get rid of excess water, don’t grab produce by your bare hands if you can help it, and use a clean knife if you cut into it and save the other half.
You also got to know how to pick produce, especially the stuff to be eaten fresh. Everybody goes and tries to buy the ripest that they can, but I try to stagger it a bit - pick out some ripe, some that will take a day or two to ripen, some thats even under ripe.
That caught my eye… this sounded like someone who knows produce. So I wrote back:
Do you store produce in sealable bags or just get as much air out as you can and twist the store bags?
After the next reply (”I use the same bag I bought the produce in. Twist at the top or if you can tie a loose knot at the top of the bag, I do that. If you see a puddle of water in the corner of the bag - drain it. I also use the vegetable bin in refrigerator, although you have to be committed to looking in it.”) I asked for an interview. I hope you all learn as much as I did.
How often do you shop for produce? What do you typically buy?
Usually once a week. I work near the Pike Market in Seattle so if something looks good in season, I’ll buy it. My sweetie and I sometimes consider going to some of the North Seattle produce stands a real treat field trip. What I buy: Salad fixings—romaine lettuce, tomatoes; Fruit—anything in season. Apples and peanut butter; fresh sliced peach or nectarine over cottage cheese; near pantry basics—carrots, celery, cabbage, onions, potatoes.
What’s the best way to keep produce fresh?
Okay, I want you all to rethink what a plant is and does. A plant in the ground quietly sucks up water from the ground through its roots and passively sucks it up through the stem up to the leaves. The leaves use the water, but when a leaf has to get carbon dioxide for photosynthesis, it opens up little pores (stomates) and the water escapes into the air. Water moves through a plant a bit like water moves through a pipe—in one end (roots) and out the other (leaves).
So produce that you buy is a cut up/picked piece of plant, and conceptually it’s a chopped up bit of pipe. Keeping produce fresh is all about equilibrium. Your job is to keep enough water in the plant (in the pipe) to keep it from wilting, but not have too much standing water in the bag because is what mold and bacteria need to grow and spread. A lot of free space in a bag is very drying—leaves, for instance, have a lot of surface area and can really pump a lot of water through its little pores, and once it’s pumped out it’s not coming back to the leaf. The leaf wilts and it’s a short trip to the wastebasket.
Plants also really move a lot of water during the day as they photosynthesize. They should be stored in the dark to slow that. So the vegetable drawer in your refrigerator does triple duty. It’s a small enclosed space, it’s cool (but not freezing), and it’s dark.
Why does handling produce with your bare hands shorten its usability?
Gentle handling of produce that has a skin or a rind is fine. And by gentle handling, I mean no squeezing, no digging in with the fingernail. I see a little old lady doing that with a pile of fruit and I’m on the other side, biting my tongue, and wanting to slap her hand!
Basically, your hands have germs. If you wash them frequently, like you’re supposed to :), you’ll have much fewer germs, but have some and as you handle something, you’ll transfer them to the produce you leave behind. A little water, a little bit of mechanical damage (caused by gramma’s fingernail) on the produce exposes the sugars and good stuff and poof—slimy lettuce. If you buy that bag of salad, snip the bag and shake out what you need. Don’t dig your hand in and grab a handful. What’s left won’t last as long.
Same principle with the dirty knife. Clean your knives carefully before you start chopping away, especially if you are cutting things in half to use for later.
And you know that you can do a lot of figuring whether you want to buy something or not using non-invasive methods. Give fruit the sniff test. Sniff the stem end, then the blossom end. Quality ripe fruit should smell terrific, like what you expect. Tomatoes will have that semi-cigarette smell (tomatoes and tobacco are in the same family - Solanaceae). Grab a fruit and hold it up in your hand. How heavy is it? Fruit that’s heavier than you expect as you grab is great—it means it’s juicy and has a lot of water. Leaves should be fresh and bright and not wilted. Carrots and beans shouldn’t flop and should have good color. Peer at the bottom of those green plastic fruit baskets/flats—the berries at the bottom will tell you just how badly the whole basket/flat was treated. Produce in general shouldn’t have a lot of deep mechanical damage. Keep an eye out for gramma fingernail wounds.
Why does most produce go bad (moisture, contamination, etc.)?
For a thousand different items of produce, a thousand and one ways. 
Too much moisture and contamination work together in the refrigerator; they’re almost the same. A lot of produce out in the counter goes bad due to crowding. You know the adage—one bad apple spoils the barrel? Well the apple produces ethylene, a gas that’s also a plant hormone that causes ripening, and the barrel (fruit bowl) keeps the gas from dissipating. I tend to space my fruit a bit if it’s ripe and I’m trying to make it last a bit longer.
What common vegetables keep the best? Fruits?
Vegetables and fruits that are firm and robust will always last longer than ones that are more delicate. Butter lettuce with its soft, delicate leaves will never last as long as romaine, collards, or kale. Apples will last longer than peaches.
So it’s the usual suspects that last—cabbage, carrots, celery, potatoes, apples. And of course, to a kid, the big irony is that the ickier the vegetable the longer it lasts. Rutabaga (which is one of my favorite vegetables), turnips, beets, kohlrabi, cabbage, parsnips, celery root, jicama—all can last many weeks in the refrigerator.
Most fruit and tomatoes really shouldn’t be kept in the refrigerator, unless its been cut for fruit salad, say, and lemon juiced to prevent browning. Sugars in the fruit turn mealy and starchy in a cold refrigerator. Some stuff never keeps, really—strawberries, for instance, unless you give them a bit of a bleach dip (couple of drops in a sinkful of clean water, dip and let dry—the bleach evaporates), will never last more than two days in my hands.
Have you ever been surprised at how long something lasted?
I?m surprised that lettuce can last longer than two weeks. Romaine easily lasted three weeks. Carrots and celery can last at least three months, carefully handled. Cabbage—cut with the clean knife, a couple of months. I’m sometimes surprised at how something can very quickly go downhill due to poor treatment. I think that groceries bind leaves and items in bunches with wire ties and rubber bands (causing tremendous mechanical damage) just so your stuff will go bad and you have to buy more. I’m still surprised that I have trouble keeping onions; they always keep getting moldy. What’s with onions nowadays?
I’m impressed with how much you know about keeping produce fresh. How did you become so knowledgable on the topic?
Well, let’s see. I grew up on a dairy farm and we had a garden (brutal to weed as a little kid!) with a strawberry patch, raspberry canes, a couple of current bushes, and a mom that said to go outside and play. You learn by trial and error, but pretty quickly when stuff is ripe and tasty. Summers during college (got a degree in biology with a lot of botany classes), I worked in a Green Giant canning factory, first on the line in final inspection (picking out the crud before it gets in the can), and then in a little lab where I tested the amount of sodium in the low sodium corn. During that time, I also relieved the corn taster on her lunch break, so I learned a little there.
I learned most of what I know about plants while I was working on my botany doctorate. My dissertation is on the biochemistry of plant cell elongation, not really on produce :), but my advisor was a consummate teacher and taught me a lot of whole plant physiology. That first paragraph about what a plant does could have come out of his mouth.
Anything else you’d like to add?
I’m not a scientist anymore. Whenever a co-worker asks me, “Ain’t it a shame that you never used your degree?”, I always shoot back that I use my degree every day I visit the grocery store.
Want the ultimate freshness with the ultimate frugal purchase price? Plant a garden! Even container gardens work well in apartments and condos, serving as food resource AND houseplant.