55 // Two Simple Tips to Keep Produce From Spoiling Too Quickly
Hate when produce spoils too quickly?
Remember these TWO SIMPLE TIPS to fix moldy fruit, dried out veggies, and groceries going down the drain
In this episode, I give you two tips that will keep your fruits and veggies from going bad before you eat them. Even if your weekly meal prep is less than 15 minutes, keeping this simple mantra in mind with transform how you prep your produce.
Make it so your kids are no longer turning their noses up to moldy berries, dried out veggies, or groceries that go bad before they're even offered. Instead, tune in for these simple tips and start saving money, enjoying more fresh and healthy foods, and wasting less each and every week.
Listen to this episode of The Veggies & Virtue Podcast now!
Full Episode Transcription
Please note this a raw transcription. If something doesn’t read correctly, toggle to that timestamp in the show so that you can listen in on what was actually being said!
[00:00:00] Hey there and welcome to today's episode. I'm excited to give you guys two tips that are gonna help keep your fruits and veggies from going bad before you eat them. If you're like me and you're already into packing school lunches again and needing things ready to grab for after school snacks or just snacks to send us school.
[00:00:17] It is really handy to have all these fruits and veggies on hand prepped and ready, and the kids can either help themself or you can easily just grab them, pack them to sin. And I know that with inflation and food cost being obnoxiously high right now, none of us want food waste, especially with fruits and vegetables, because it's just like that added dagger.
[00:00:35] That maybe our kids aren't eating quite as many of them as we would like. So in today's episode, I want to tease out the top two things that you need to keep in mind when you want to lessen food waste and ensure that your fruits and veggies are getting eaten before they go bad. Mom, are you struggling with how to feed your kids?
[00:00:54] Right? Do you wish that there was a way to help your child try new foods? Do you look at a pantry cluttered with pirate, booty and a fridge full of the same foods every week and wonder how you're gonna get your family's meals off the hot mess express. I know what it feels like to scroll through all the feeding accounts on Instagram and to see a bunch of bougie food.
[00:01:11] That my family would never eat. And I too have pinned all the healthy recipes with good intentions, but zero execution. I understand as a busy mom of three, that it can feel really unattainable, especially on the days when I'm exhausted. I have a short fuse and I really just want an easy wind. And the day went well.
[00:01:29] That's where these meals made easy episode ideas come from with everyday ingredients that you already have on hand, I give you one meal or snack idea a week that's dietician mom approved and is gonna fit. Or family's busy life. So get ready to press, add to cart and to make meals and snacks easy. Again, if you were on my email list and got my newsletter last week, you saw that.
[00:01:54] Not only did I update you about the episodes from last week, but I also told you about the exciting new thing that I'm gonna be offering in two weeks. The back to school bootcamp, something that continues to come up with parents is what do we send our kids for lunch and snacks, and each of these eating opportunities that they now have away from home.
[00:02:12] And I can't tell you the number of texts and conversations I've had with people in my immediate circle and on the local level, just this past week, since my kids have started back at school. And I know from the conversations that I have. Each of you online or through Instagram or in response to my email newsletter last week that a lot of us are sharing the same struggles.
[00:02:31] And so I'm gonna go through what I think are three of the best strategies you can use to get ready for back to school, whether you've already started and already realized you need a system so that this is a more functional process, the whole school year long, or whether you're still kind of in that gearing up mode.
[00:02:47] And you just wanna do that little extra step to set your family up for success. I invite you. Join us at www.veggiesandvirtue.com/bootcamp. You can also access it on my Instagram and I have a private Facebook group set up for everyone. Who's gonna join the bootcamp and I'm super excited to see how many hundreds of families have already flooded in to join for the event because it's free.
[00:03:09] It's three days. If you can't join in live, that's totally fine. You can just show up and watch the replay, whatever it works for you, but you'll only get access to the replay if you're signed up. So make sure to sign up@veggiesandhertu.com slash bootcamp. But the other thing I wanted to mention, because, you know, back to school, I feel like everyone's calendars get flooded with all the different dates.
[00:03:30] So while I don't necessarily wanna bombard you with dates, I do wanna make you aware of what's. One of which being the bootcamp, which will happen September 12th, 13th, and 14th. But also if you do not yet have access to my combination cards, whether you want the digital deck that you wanna just keep on your phone or you want to download it to your desktop, you can save them both places.
[00:03:50] You can share it with family and your husband or grandparents or whomever might benefit. Or if you want the physical copies, this is your time. This is the last week you will ever have access outside of my mealtime's made easy method. So I just wanna make sure, because back to school, time is always the busiest season for people.
[00:04:07] I've been filling orders for these every single day. And I know that some of you probably still don't have them. And so if you want them. the digital downloads are on an awesome sale. Right now you can get all three sets for $20, which is the lowest I've ever offered them for. Or you can get free shipping.
[00:04:23] If you wanna order all three decks, whatever you wanna do, just make sure that you get your orders in by this coming weekend because come labor day. They're gone. They're reserved exclusively for members of my mealtime's made easy method. So just wanna put that plug out there because in the combination cards and within the back to school bootcamp, something that I talk about a lot is the different foods that we obviously can be sending for our kids.
[00:04:49] And one of the most common ones that I'm hearing from parents is a struggle to send are fruits and veggies. Understandably they're perishable. They're not always kids' favorite. And so they're kind of that the section of filling a lunch box or a veto box that we as parents stall at. And it, one of the biggest reasons I see families stall is because they're not readily available.
[00:05:11] So it's just, we have to take one extra step to prepare them, to send them, or our kids have to ask us or on their own independently, take that extra step to eat them. So something like a package, processed food that's already ready to go. Even if it's something that's perishable, like say a string cheese or a yogurt, if it's already ready to.
[00:05:28] There's one less barrier to eating it, then say something like a fruit or veggie that may need to be washed or cut or prepped. And so what I want this episode to do is I want to give you two very, very, very simple tips that will help you get set. And I wanna say for the week, because it could last you that long, but even just for a few days, because even if you just spend a couple minutes, twice a week, you will have fresh fruits and veggies on hand at any point in time.
[00:05:57] And yet you won't be having the issue of them going bad and kind of that fear of, I don't wanna prep a minute advance and then us not eat them because if you have them readily available, I encourage. To make sure they get eaten. If they don't get eaten in the breakfasts that you're having before school or in the lunches and snacks that you're sending to school, throw those kind of pruny berries or, you know, brown bananas in a smoothie or bake with them and do some muffins.
[00:06:20] Or if it's leftover veggies, you can throw it in a stir fry for kind of your catch all dinner one night. There's so many ways that you can still use them up. So don't let the barrier that you don't want them to go bad, be their reason that you don't have them readily available, because that is a limiting belief for you.
[00:06:37] You are talking yourself out of it before you've even given your family an opportunity to be successful with it. So in this episode, I really want you to get outta your own head, stop using those excuses of it might go bad and start finding ways to keep these foods fresh. Another episode for another day on frozen and dried and canned produce and all the benefits that are packed into other forms of produce.
[00:07:02] This is not a, you should only eat fresh produce because one that's not true. And two with back to school, there's so many great options that you can do. And just last night I emailed a mom about my. My blog post 25 ways to include vegetables in your kids' lunchbox that are kind of innovative different ways that don't just include fresh veggies.
[00:07:18] So there's that too. But my point being, this is not a play or a plug for just fresh produce. This is to help give you ideas on how you can keep them one readily available so that they're ready to eat, ready to include in lunches and snacks. But also less likely to spoil even as a home that burns through, especially fruit, more so fruit than vegetables, but in my house, I know how frustrating it is when you buy that Costco pack of strawberries and you have to throw half of them out.
[00:07:48] Like, even if you get something on sale, that's gonna bug anyone who spends their hard, earned money on something, on a food that they want to offer their family that they physically can't because it's already molded or spoiled or got funky, especially if it's a food that your child's still learning to, like, or kind of on the fence about it makes it particularly hard because now we have to go to that extra.
[00:08:05] Effort of also convincing them that it's okay, it's not gross. It's not mushy. It's not weird looking. It's not, you know, bruised, molded, whatever. So we don't want any of that. So what I want you to hear me say today are these two things you don't even have to take notes. It should be very, very, very straightforward.
[00:08:22] And to the point, and hopefully easy for you to remember moving forward. When you think about what your meal prep step is gonna be for the week, and that is for fruit, when you are prepping and storing fresh fruit. Remove moisture for fresh vegetables. You want to add moisture. So I'm gonna go through that in a lot more depth, but if baby's crying and you gotta go walk away with that, win that you know, for fruit, you want to remove moisture for veggies.
[00:08:52] You want to add moisture, and I'm gonna walk you through the applications of that. When I prep my kid friendly snack drawer and some of the tips I, I have outlined to share in the back to school bootcamp. I walk you through how to prepare these zones of your refrigerator, like a kid friendly snack drawer and how you can set your family up for success and have that kitchen as functional as possible.
[00:09:13] It doesn't of course just include your fridge and meal. Times's made easy method. I cover fridge pantry and freezer, but. In the back to school bootcamp, I talk about, you know, how are we organizing these, what kind of containers are we using? And what's the method that we're using to get set up. And one of the biggest struggles that I see families have is they don't know how to store fresh fruits and veggies.
[00:09:33] And so if it's like a sat Suma or an apple, it's a little more obvious, like you can just set it there, less likely to spoil many of us know if an avocado is already ripe, we can put it in the fridge. It'll slow down the, you know ripening process, but when it comes to things like the berries or getting veggies cut and ready to eat so that you could just dip it in some ranch dip or some hummus or smear some peanut butter on celery or things like that, those are the things that I see families stumble a little bit more on, and it's not because the intent isn't there.
[00:10:04] It's just because these obvious little action steps that we need to. Don't feel very obvious. And so it's something as simple as how do I store this celery? Can I wash the strawberries before I put 'em in the drawer that as busy moms, if we don't have that extra second to research it, we may not want to even attempt it because we'd rather err on the side of caution and just leave it, not prepped and not ready and create inadvertently and unintentionally added work for ourself down the road, rather than get these things fresh and ready.
[00:10:38] get them ready to grab and go with spending 10 minutes on prepping them and saving ourselves tons of time as the week goes on. So what I want you to think about here is whether you put these options in a kid friendly snack drawer, or whether you're just having them out in, you know, maybe they're already prepped and ready for a DOI dinner bin.
[00:10:56] Maybe you just have them on a shelf or in the door of your fridge, which I'll talk about more in a second, how to do that. These are things that you can literally, as you're like having you. Stirring pasta at dinner, or, you know, setting the table with the kids and just doing other things and already in the kitchen and have things out you can very quickly and easily execute these processes.
[00:11:18] As I mentioned, your two key takeaways are fruit. you want to remove moisture from and veggies. You want to add moisture too? I know. I know all moms hate the word moist. So moisture just sounds better to me. So moisture we're looking at like water. There's a million like bougie mixes and fruit sprays and all that stuff out on the market.
[00:11:38] I don't think they're necessary. You can use a vinegar or an apple CI or vinegar if you want for like a fruit and veggie. Produce wash. You do not have to do this. The tips I want you to walk away with here today are strictly with the water that you already drink and have available in your house. What you're gonna be looking to do is when you go to take this prep step of getting fruits and veggies ready, and you know, that say you're gonna eat the fruits, particularly within, you know, that.
[00:12:06] You want to go ahead and wash them. And then I often use like a reusable drying mat. It's like one of those like ones that we can put under the drying rack itself. It's like a padded fabric. It's not like a rubber, silicone type one kind of thing. So it does absorb moisture. So we have plenty of 'em like clean.
[00:12:27] You know, fold it up with the kitchen towels and things like that. So what I often do, because they are a little bit thicker than say, like a kitchen towel and definitely thicker than like a paper towel is often what I'll do is I'll wash the fruit. You know, again, just water is totally fine. You can use the calendars that these berries already come in, for example, or that grapes already come in, it's kind of like a built in calendar.
[00:12:48] You just open it up. You can wash 'em all out. If you prefer to do like a quick soak in a vinegar and water mixture, you can totally do that too. The point is, is that you're gonna wash this produce to get it as ready to eat as. The next step that you're going to do is you're going to take this pro this, this fruit that has been washed and you're going to transfer it to where it can dry.
[00:13:09] Like I said, I like using these more absorbent drying wraps because I can just like spread out all the fruit on it. It gets a lot of the moisture away. It also gives it a good chance of like big surface area for it to all air dry. And then I just let it sit there. Mind you that max doesn't like come up.
[00:13:26] Count maxes my dog counter surfing, you know, to eat the fruit or God forbid like the grapes or something like that as I let it dry. But then while it's drying, I transition to the veggies and, you know, veggies often are gonna have a lot more of that prep. And so fruit is washed. Then I'm prepping the veggies.
[00:13:44] This could be things like cucumber slices. It could be baby bell peppers or big bell peppers and slices. It could be celery sticks. It could. Cut carrots. It could be baby carrots, any of these types of things, what you're or broccoli cauliflower, any of these options, what you're good water do is also give them a good wash, but here we're not looking for them to air dry or for the moisture to come off of them.
[00:14:07] We want to keep the moisture on them. So once we've washed them, we're gonna chop them in whatever, you know, shape or form we feel like is most functional, whether we're including 'em in snacks or lunches, or gonna have 'em for dinner later in the week, but then you can put them in a contain. With water.
[00:14:22] So if you wanna use something like say a Mason jar, they fit great in the door of your fridge. You can put a Mason jar, put the veggies that you have. You know, I separate 'em by veggie typically, but, you know, put those cucumbers, put those. Celery sticks, put the carrots in that Mason jar and then just top it off with water, screw the lid on, and then you can put it in your fridge.
[00:14:41] You can, you know, twist it on that side because it does have the lid in the seal to put it in a snack drawer or they fit great right in the door where, you know, they're easy grab and go for everyone. And then they're prepped and ready, but they're gonna stay good. They're not gonna get all weird and funky that way.
[00:14:56] And when they have that added moisture. So by the time that you've finished that prep step. Then you're gonna go back to the fruit and it's dried as much as you know, time is allowing in that moment. If you wanna leave it out for longer more power to you, let them air dry as much as possible before you transition them to a container.
[00:15:15] What I often do just because of time constraints. Once I've done the veggie prep step or done the whole rest of the snack drawer and kind of given the fruit as much time as I can to let it air dry, then what I do is I line the containers again. You can put it right back in the Berry container, right back in the grape container, if you want, because it's already kind of a built in calendar.
[00:15:33] It already has some holes to allow airflow and circulation in it. But as many of you know, in my snack door, I have some containers that I found that I. I also use like just pyres glass squares and rectangles and things like that from our dish cabinet, but I just line them in a paper towel and then I leave them open because the Pyrex containers or the other containers I use in the snack drawer, do not have the holes in the ability for airflow that say like the plastic calendar of a grape container or a blueberry container would have, I do leave these uncovered.
[00:16:04] So what I want you to remember here is a key difference between vegetables and. The fruit, we are allowing as much airflow and trying to remove as much moisture as possible because that's, what's gonna turn your fruit funky, whether it's grapes, whether it's cherries, whether it's, you know, blueberries or raspberries or strawberries, whatever fruit that you have washed and prepped.
[00:16:25] It's gonna go spoil faster if you allow moisture on it, especially if you're like washing these things in advance, I wash it in advance. So it is ready. Be some people say don't wash it until the moment of, I think you should cut it. Like don't hold the strawberries in advance. You know, you're gonna notice things like grapes and cherries, the stems kind of start to dry out.
[00:16:44] You know, within, in my house we eat a lot of fruit and we eat it really quickly. So this is not a problem. If you know, that say you're trying to space out a week's worth of groceries over the course of a week and your kids and your family doesn't eat fruit as fast then by all means, you know, do this prep step, split it up and do it two different times during the week.
[00:17:03] That's not normally something we run into here with a family of five who does eat a lot of fruit, but just know that, you know, I would try and do it within two to three days of when I think I'm gonna. For some things like berries, you can, if you don't wanna put it in, you know, one of these open air containers, so kids can just come grab in the snack drawer or something like that.
[00:17:23] You can also put these items in a Mason jar, however, make sure that they are completely dry before. Like I said, for me, it works better to just put a paper towel down, line the container, put the berries in, put 'em in the drawer, close the drawer. Good. However, if you know that one, you don't have a snack drawer or two, it's just awkward and difficult to have an open container in the fridge of something like berries that you can't put something on top of.
[00:17:48] Then what I would suggest you do is again, the Mason jar method. And that's where you can just have completely dry fruit. Make sure it's completely air-dried before you transfer it into the Mason jar. But then once you do that, do not add water. You know, if I said with vegetables, you're adding water with the fruit, you are not, you wanna remove all moisture and then you can put the top on it.
[00:18:06] You don't have to worry about them spilling about the fridge. You can put 'em in the door or on a shelf. They're good to go. Just like the veggies would be. I hope that's helpful. I hope that took out one of the. Maybe kind of hindrances that you're feeling towards prepping fresh fruits and vegetables for back to school and for just having 'em readily available for your family, because it's so often why we gravitate towards the pantry instead of the fridge, when it comes to finding healthy snacks, which is why this is something that we are going to definitely cover and dive into in the back to school bootcamp.
[00:18:37] So make sure to sign up for my back to school bootcamp@veggiesandvirtue.com slash boot. Otherwise for the context of today's episode, I would love to hear from you. I would love to hear this was helpful to you and how you implement this step. So show me a picture of you doing this prep step and tag me on social app, veggies and virtue, or leave me a review.
[00:18:57] I love, love, love hearing from you. And it is. So special to me. And I wanna say a special, thanks on today's episode two boy, mom, 4 28, who left me this review on podcast. I've been following Ashley on Instagram for several years. I love this podcast for a deeper dive into her, always encourage and practical messages for parents about how to feed their children.
[00:19:18] I so appreciate this. I love. Hearing from each one of you. I love hearing what you love about the show. I also love hearing what you would like to hear from this show. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for taking the time. VO 4, 2 8, for me a your reviews, truly so much to.
