Tips For Buying Fresh Produce

There’s nothing I love more than buying fresh produce from the store – and there’s nothing I hate more than seeing it spoil and letting it go to waste before I get around to eating it. Here are some tips for what to buy in the produce section, and some hacks for preserving your fruits and veggies longer so you can avoid waste and enjoy them!

Strawberries

First, a quick note about what organic means. When you look at a container of organic strawberries, you might think organic means they weren’t sprayed with pesticides, right? Wrong. 

Many people think that when a label has "USDA Organic" that it's not sprayed; but it is sprayed - they're always sprayed! If you don't spray a crop it's going to die; and farmers are going to lose their livelihood. USDA Organic means that it was sprayed with USDA approved pesticides or herbicides. Don’t get me wrong; that’s still better for you than nasty Roundup from Monsanto(glyphosate-based herbicide) which you absolutely do NOT want in your body. Nonetheless, you still want to wash these strawberries well before consuming.

Parsley

Here’s the coolest hack ever when it comes to cleaning and preserving the shelf life of parsley as soon as you get home:

  • Cut a half an inch off the bottom of the stems
  • Wash the parsley, shake it really well, and pat dry with a towel
  • Fill up a Mason jar with about 2-3 inches of cold water and place the parsley inside
  • Place the bag (the bag you took the parsley home in) over the top of the Mason jar
  • Store it in your fridge and change the water every 3-4 days

No joke: this will keep your parsley preserved fresh for up to 14 days! This hack works just as well with cilantro too!

“When you look at a container of organic strawberries, you might think organic means they weren’t sprayed with pesticides, right? Wrong.”

Kale

Let’s move on to kale: I love kale, and not because it’s a hipster ingredient - but because it’s a superfood. It’s high in Vitamin A, C, and K, and it’s delicious!

With that said, there are a few options to kale so you really want to be careful with which one you choose. The kale I always buy for myself is called Lacinato kale - it’s also known as Tuscan kale, Italian kale, dinosaur kale and black kale, but they’re all the same thing. Lacinato kale has softer, more supple leaves which are way more tender and will make a much better salad than the curly green kale you often see in restaurants. 

Not only is kale on the dirty dozen, it’s at the top of the list (with spinach) so you absolutely need to buy organic here. Avoid bags that come pre-packed with a bunch of stalks inside: you can’t eat the stalks of the kale because they’re fibrous and tough. Instead, buy kale by the bunch - it’s more economical, and you’ll get more of what you really want.