The Great 'how do you stop fruit and veg rotting' Hunt

Sambucus_Nigra

Try buying less and eating it! If you have grown it, next time, succession sow to avoid gluts.

Butterfly_Brain

I store mushrooms in a colander lined with kitchen roll with a piece of kitchen roll between layers, they keep a lot longer this way, never keep them in the plastic punnet that they come in.
I also keep potatoes in the crisper drawer of the fridge layered with kitchen roll and they last for ages.
The greengrocer on my market always gives me fruit boxes if I ask him, so does my greengrocer at the corner shop.

Talent

1. Live near to 'local' shops.
2. Buy fresh every day.
3. Be smug with it ;-))

happyinflorida

Keep your fridge really cold and put all fruit and veggies in the veg drawer - mine keep for weeks.

You can also freeze veg to stop it from going off - blanche first by cutting it up and putting into boiling water for 2 minutes and then cool and put into bags, any bag will do, I use the cheapest sandwich bags.

aloiseb

The green bags from Lakeland are called Stayfresh Longer bags - see
http://www.lakeland.co.uk/search/stayfresh/q01.r16.1
or search under Stayfresh on their website.

They do work very well, especially for salads and greens. I normally expect to buy reduced veg and still use it a week later, as the bags somehow stops it going off.(They are probably impregnated with bicarb or something?)

Also you can wash them out and re-use them a few times - it seems to stop working in the end (much to my family's disgust - they don't like the look of them draped over milk bottles on the sink, but then they didn't pay for them and I did!)

I haven't tried the cheaper version as we don't seem to have them in our local 99p shop , but I would if I ever saw them.

Re Tupperware: you can still buy it via Ebay - there's a LOT of second hand relatively new stuff, and it does go in the dishwasher (except the seals, or they won't any more!)

I'm going to try the foil tip for cucumber, as it always seems to fall out of my Stayfresh bags. teenager action i expect....:cool:

Thrifty13

I keep bananas on a stand, away from other fruit. Interesting from a previous tip to separate the bananas! I will try it myself. Everything else goes into the salad drawers of the fridge in brown paper bags - usually the recycling ones. You can tell easily if you have left them in there for too long. In plastic bags, they go mouldy quickly and you end up with a mess! If you have to look in the multiple brown bags to see what's in it, you will know if any of the contents are on the point of / or are beyond the point of turn.

stingywitch

I freeze small amounts of surplus strawberries, currants etc from the allotment, then when I have accumulated enough in the freezer :TI make jam with it (or chutney, depends on what's knocking around)

Blackhill

Tupperware is now available in UK again. If you search Tupperware.ie into google you will come up with a company based in Dublin who are supplying to the UK Tupperware Agents and can also send out to public. They are really helpful. I have a couple of crispers, two new style and one old and they are fantastic for keeping all sort of fruit & veg fresh.

NeetaMD

Once harvested, fresh fruit, and especially veg' rapidly deteriorate and lose vitamins even if they still look and taste good. I find it best to eat fresh food whilst fresh then rely on frozen (which retain much better levels of vitamins) until next shopping trip. If growing your own and have surplus, once your needs are met, it's worth considering sharing with friends and neighbours. "What goes round, comes round!"

PasturesNew

I buy the 2.5Kg of cheapest spuds in any random supermarket/Lidl/Aldi I happen to be in when I need some. Once I get them home, I lob the bag into a drawer/kitchen cabinet and rip open the plastic so they're all exposed.

They will sprout a little bit, over time, but my current bag is still very usable (tiny sprouts, not spongey though) and the printed "best before" date on the bag says 14 December.... I think I need to use them up in the next 7-10 days, although I bet they'd still be good (although maybe a bit spongey and with big shoots) within 14 days.