Save Money While Reducing Food Waste

Keep Fruit & Vegetables Fresh Longer

Grocery prices have gone up a lot over the last few years. Most of us are trying to waste as little food as possible. Also, we would like to see less food waste and not add to landfill. We have shared some simple kitchen ideas that can reduce your family’s food bill while keeping your food fresh longer, saving you money. We hope these ideas provide some simple ways for you and your family to reduce food waste, reduce trips to the grocery store, and reduce your grocery bill at the same time.

Save Money by Keeping Onions Fresh for Months

If I hadn’t read this hint many places, I would think people were joking. But having tried this hint to keep yellow onions fresh longer I can say it does work. If you have a pair of worn thin tights that maybe have a run in them, cut off the foot and body so you have to separate leg portions, tie a knot at the bottom, insert an onion, tie a knot, and do this for each onion making sure there is a large knot between onions so they don’t touch, then hang your used tight legs with onions in your pantry. Your onions should keep fresh for months.

These onion keeping hint works for yellow onions, red onions, and shallots. If having your old tights hanging in your pantry doesn’t appeal to you, you can chop your onions, measure out half-cup and one-cup portions and freeze them. Freezing your onions doesn’t take away from flavor, they are easy to add to any dish you are cooking, plus no tearing up while cooking.

Tomatoes Keep Fresher on Your Countertop

First, tomatoes keep better unrefrigerated and their flavor is better too. A simple trick shared in many places is putting tape on the stem end of your tomato and then storing them stem down. If your tomatoes are nearing peak ripeness still keep the tape on the stem end and then storing them in the refrigerator. You’ll love the taste of your tomatoes that much more!

If all your tomatoes don’t ripen before the weather gets cold, pull the plants, shake off the dirt, and hang them upside down in your garage till the tomatoes ripen.

Save Money by Keeping Bananas for Fresh Longer

If you buy organic bananas, they aren’t treated with a ripening agent, but if you buy conventional bananas most banana have been treated with a ripening agent. If you buy organic bananas all you need to do to keep them fresh longer is keep them unrefrigerated, away from other fruit, and wrap the stem core with plastic cling wrap. If you buy conventional bananas first wipe down the bananas with a wet paper towel to remove the ripening agent and then follow the directions for organic banana care to keep your banana fresh much longer.

Foil Your Greens to Stay Fresh for Weeks

If you like having celery on hand for soups, stews, and an occasional appetizer but it tends to go bad so quickly, this hint is for you! If you wrap celery with foil very tightly it will stay crisp and delicious stored in the refrigerator for weeks. This tip also works for storing broccoli and keeps your broccoli fresh for up to four weeks or longer without losing its color or great taste!

It’s Berry Time-Keep Them Fresh

The blackberries are in their prime for picking in a lot of places, so its a wonderful time to learn a way to keep your berries whether hand-picked or store-bought fresh and delicious for weeks. Berries whether strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, or Marion berries tend to be our most expensive fruit to buy and they tend to mold or get ripe and spoil quickly.

There is a method to keep your berries fresh for a couple of weeks! Try washing your berries in an 8:1 solution of water to white vinegar, not apple cider vinegar or red vinegar. The solution would be 8 parts water to 1 part white vinegar. You won’t taste the vinegar but your precious berries will last much longer.

Extending Zucchini and Squash Freshness

Zucchini can be stored in the refrigerator successfully if you use a brown paper bag and then store your zucchini in a vegetable crisper with minimal humidity.  Winter squash is best stored like potatoes with lots of air circulation and a dry place in your pantry. Summer yellow squash can be stored like zucchini for best results.

Prevent Salad Green Wilt

Whether you buy loose greens, packaged greens, or greens in a plastic box, the next tip will help keep your salad greens fresher much longer. Putting a paper towel in with bagged loose greens or boxed greens will help them stay crisp and extend their storage life. Moisture is what makes greens wilt, so the paper towels soak up the moisture so that you have crisp greens to use for your salad.

Fragile Fruit Can Stay Fresh Longer

Peaches, Nectarines, and plums can be fragile fruit and prone to go bad quickly. Each of these fruits lasts longer if you put them in a brown paper bag with holes and keep the humidity low or store them in a green bag that controls off-gassing which depletes the usability of your fruit. Green bags are now available at many online stores.

Extend Asparagus Usability

Asparagus is a wonderful vegetable but can be prone to spoiling quickly. Make a fresh cut on the asparagus ends, much like you would with a bouquet of flowers, then stand the asparagus up in a glass or jar with about an inch or two of water, making sure all the ends are sitting in the water. A mason jar works well for this task. Cover the asparagus with a plastic bag and store it in the refrigerator for up to a week. If the water starts to look cloudy, just change as needed.

The Trick to Keeping Watermelon Fresh

Watermelon is wonderful to eat during the summer, but it can also spoil before it’s been completely eaten. To extend the life of your watermelon place a couple of cloves of garlic on top of the watermelon and then wrap the cut top with plastic wrap and store in the refrigerator. We have also found that cutting up watermelon and storing it in a BPA-free container also helps extend the usable life of watermelons.

Enjoy your last days of summer. we’ll be talking fall DIY projects next month. Take a look at the new Shed Windows and More products we have for your projects this fall.