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ideas for how to streamline household responsibilities?
- This topic has 18 replies, 12 voices, and was last updated 11 years, 8 months ago by
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I have never had a problem with my chopped veggies going bad. I do use glass jars to store them, except for lettuce. For lettuce I use gallon-size Ziploc bags. The lettuce stays good and fresh for 5-7 days, which is plenty of time for us to use it up. I have also stored sliced and diced red peppers in a glass jar for almost a week without problems. We don’t like green peppers, so I can’t offer any help on that one.
You could try using a Food Saver if you have one. I like to store chopped apples in the fridge in a vacuum-sealed bag. You can also get the jar attachment for the Food Saver and use it to vacuum seal your jars. I saw a blog post once where a lady did this with her lettuce because she liked having a salad everyday, and hers stayed fresh for 2 weeks!
Maybe it really is ya’ll’s fridges! Mine’s not new, but five or six years old, and I have no problems except that I can’t put a bag of lettuce in the very back on the bottom shelf or it partially freezes.
The only veggies that I probably wouldn’t chop ahead of time would be potatoes (because they brown quickly, but maybe a FoodSaver would prevent that), zucchini and yellow squash, cucumbers, eggplant (because of oxidation), and maybe tomatoes (I’ve never tried because we’re not tomato lovers). I also would not try to pre-chop/slice fruits such as berries, oranges, or kiwi.
The veggies I have successfully pre-chopped/sliced and stored either in jars or bags include: lettuce (5 days), red bell peppers (4-5 days), onions (over a week), carrots (over a week), celery (5 days), winter squash such as butternut (5-6 days), garlic (over a week), broccoli (3-5 days, depending on the freshness), and beets (over a week). And fruits I regularly have ready in advance and usually store in a glass jars or bowls: all melons (5-7 days), apples (vacuum-sealed w/ Food Saver–2-3 days), grapes (5-7 days), cherries (5-6 days), pineapple (4-6 days).
I was going to say Sue that you might consider just freezing them as this would stop the process of spoilage and save the nutrtient value more. It is so easy to put them in a skillet for a few seconds in a bit of water to bring them back to room temp.
And depending on what you’re doing with the peppers or onions, you might just be able to throw them in still frozen, like in a casserole or soups.
I also cut up fruit and freeze it for smoothies, especially if it is starting to go bad and I know we won’t eat it fresh before it spoils. I can’t stand to throw food away!
I have found most any veggie, fruit, or meat will freeze well.
You could also use a food dehydrator to dry out those unused veggies and then put that in a food processor to make a wonderful veggie powder to use in smoothies. Smoothies are also a superb healthy time saver! I just bought a new vitamix blender, whoohoo!
I have a 6.5 YO and she is a huge help. Her chores are: folding & putting away her own clothes, emptying the dishwasher (she unloads it onto the counter except for the stuff she can reach easily to put away), rinsing lunch dishes & putting them in the dishwasher, getting the mail, picking up her room, making her bed, and (one per day) vacuuming the stairs, vacuuming the minivan, dusting, and just now starting to clean the bathroom sinks. Plus whatever little things I ask her to help with here and there like fetching things for me. She could do some meal prep too if I’d let her–my 3.5 YO can tear up lettuce for salads and cut veggies with a butter knife so I know she could do a lot more than that.
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