Nic - It's hard to convince people otherwise, but you CAN microwave in stainless, I do it all the time. You have to be careful to avoid the bowl touching the sides of the oven (I just tend to stick to smaller containers), but otherwise it works fine!
Nik, you should read Viana La Place's "Unplugged Kitchen" (William Morrow, 1996) on fatigued salads. Building on the Simonetta's legenday cookbook "A Snob in the Kitchen," La Place recommends letting a salad rest (dressed) for an hour before serving. Building on that system, I have found that severely wilted greens serve as a good basis for dressing future salads. Banish the word "slimy"; substitute "fatigué."
I’ve been using these wet produce storage bag for a one year and I have unbelievable results storing vegetables. No paper towels required. https://swagoz.com/
I am quite evangelical about them and try to get my friends to try them, but it’s hard to commit to dedicating a crisper drawer (or two) to clean produce bags. But they really work! I tried them to move away from plastic and paper towels and I’m more than satisfied.
i learned from a friend that the salad spinner can be a great place to store greens too, especially when padded with a few paper towels. they keep there for a *shockingly* long time
I might be reading it wrong, but in the Q&A about storing chllis in the fridge, reply should be thin-skinned (air-tight container) and the other thick-skinned (paper bag)?
Thanks for the tips especially not submerging the avocado in water - oops I have been doing that from time to time! My mum taught me to rub the outside of the avo with lemon juice so it can stay fresh in the fridge longer. Wonderful recipe!!
Sorry for another lengthy comment. New subscriber; I'll get caught up. Let me also add that I have no affiliation with anyone other than my husband.
~6 years ago I learned about the BluApple. They are two blue plastic apples that hold little packets of chemicals that you change quarterly.
When you buy them, they come with a giant information sheet written in 4 pt font. Or here's a link: https://thebluapple.com/pages/science-of-bluapple The link also has a reference to at least one technical paper.
The bluapples make a huge difference in how long your produce lasts. You can subsequently purchase just the 8 packets for subsequent years. Interesting thing about the 'expired' packets. You can tear them open and sprinkle the little pellets as plant food for your house plants. So that's step one.
The second part of their line is thin sheets of foam to put inside of your produce bins to help protect delicate fruits from bruising. Great for pears, peaches, ... that you want to keep longer. My husband grumbled about not being able to find a piece of chilled fruit to eat w/out fighting through all the other produce. I ended up taking a plastic storage drawer that rests in a box and creating a third produce drawer w/one of the foam sheets & a bluapple in it on a shelf in the refrigerator. I try to avoid stuffing non-snack fruit in the space.
The third part of their line are a perforated plastic bag that you use a paper liner with (they call them hydroliners). These are brilliant. The paper liners are like heavyweight, oversized paper towels. In theory, they can be rinsed and reused. For years I complained because while I could reuse the plastic bags for years, I kept running out of their liners. Paper towels simply didn't work as well. My solution was to buy heavyweight bamboo paper towels. Not as good, but better than paper towels.
Some produce you wet and squeeze out the excess water; other you use a dry towel. They make it easier for you by having a page where you can look up specific info for your produce.
So what are we talking about timewise? 2-3 weeks for most produce. Some items (like carrots and broccoli) almost a month.
The company has finally started sellling just the hydroliners. Yea! So far, the liners are just sold through their site, but I suspect they'll eventually turn up on Amazon. In my case, I'll use up the remainder of my bamboo toweling, then buy the liners. For herbs, I use damp liners, remove wires from bunches of cilantro, and then spread out the handful over the width of the toweling, folding the toweling over the upper leaves. For almost everything, I put the towel-wrapped items into the plastic bags and then just roll the bags to reduce their bulk. I don't seal the bags.
Years ago Alton Brown did a show on green salads. Using the technique he talked about, I would lay out a long roll of continuous paper towel on my counter (6-7'). Take heads of lettuce, tear the leaves, wash them well, put them through a salad spinner, and sprinkle them down the length of toweling. Go ahead and use 4-5 different types of lettuce. He also recommended adding a bit of something w/a bit of bitterness (endive, radicchio). Then roll up the toweling jellyroll fashion and slide the whole thing on one of those oversized (2 gal?) Ziploc bags. When you seal the bag, remove as much air as you can. As you need salad, unroll a bit of towel and use what you want, reseal the bag until the next day. I used to regularly do this when I was working full-time, had a 1-hour commute, and a child at home. (This was before you could buy bags of salad mix in plastic bags.) The toweling collects the extra moisture off the surface of the lettuce but makes it available to keep the lettuce fresh subsequently. I could usually count on the salad mix lasting 5-6 days. It's just for lettuce, not green onions, cucumbers, ....
You can also line your salad spinner w/paper towels to gently dry your washed berries.
A trick I learned from a California master gardener. Take all of your veggie/fruit scraps and set them in a bowl. As you're cleaning up the kitchen, dump it and a bit of water into your food processor (or blender) with a bit of water and puree it. Just enough water so that it's a thick liquid. Keep a small shovel by the kitchen door. Go out to your yard, turn over a shovel-full of dirt in your flower bed, pour in the goop, cover with the dirt. Within days it will complete compost into your soil. Pick a different spot the next day. Don't add citrus or banana peels and nothing protein. If you have meat/dairy in the mix, it will be too attractive to opossums, racoons, ... Citurs/banana peels don't break down. Oh, and no avocado/peach pits. Seems obvious not to add, but just to be safe.
My mother used to rinse leftover salad and throw it into a pot of soup.
Years ago I went through a period of prepping a self-serve lunch for my husband's business meetings held at our home. I'd buy an assortment of deli meats/cheese, have an assortment of breads, and would make a couple of salads they could serve. And cookies. My husband is not a cook but could take stuff out of the refrigerator. I discovered the greatest trick for serving sliced avocado. Lay out the sliced avocado on a small plate (or guac in a bowl) and spray the surface with Pam. It's canola oil, doesn't affect the flavor of the avocado, but keeps it from oxidizing. I'd then wrap the plate in some plastic wrap and pop it in the refrigerator. Hours later, Lynn could pull out the avocado (along w/sliced onion, tomato, ...) and everything was fine. After people had served themselves, he'd respray the surface, cover w/the same plastic, and we'd have leftovers for dinner. Since I was prepping the food before I left the house at 5:30 am for gym/commute/work I can attest that it works.
Alright, I'm off. Truly, I don't always go on this long.
People actually have leftover avocados?! Joking aside, thank you very much for these useful tips and reminders.
Right!? They probably have leftover wine too 🙄
😂
HAHA stranger things have happened!
Nic - It's hard to convince people otherwise, but you CAN microwave in stainless, I do it all the time. You have to be careful to avoid the bowl touching the sides of the oven (I just tend to stick to smaller containers), but otherwise it works fine!
I definitely don't need the liability 🤣
lol, that's what everyone always said at ATK when I tried to get them to publish it too
Nik, you should read Viana La Place's "Unplugged Kitchen" (William Morrow, 1996) on fatigued salads. Building on the Simonetta's legenday cookbook "A Snob in the Kitchen," La Place recommends letting a salad rest (dressed) for an hour before serving. Building on that system, I have found that severely wilted greens serve as a good basis for dressing future salads. Banish the word "slimy"; substitute "fatigué."
thank you for the recommendation! I absolutely must read the book
I’ve been using these wet produce storage bag for a one year and I have unbelievable results storing vegetables. No paper towels required. https://swagoz.com/
I am quite evangelical about them and try to get my friends to try them, but it’s hard to commit to dedicating a crisper drawer (or two) to clean produce bags. But they really work! I tried them to move away from plastic and paper towels and I’m more than satisfied.
I must try this sometime, thank you for sharing it with us!
This is a goldmine of storage tips. Clearly, paper towels are our friends!
i learned from a friend that the salad spinner can be a great place to store greens too, especially when padded with a few paper towels. they keep there for a *shockingly* long time
Oh yes. It acts as the "crisper drawer" because of its design.
I might be reading it wrong, but in the Q&A about storing chllis in the fridge, reply should be thin-skinned (air-tight container) and the other thick-skinned (paper bag)?
You're correct! Thanks.
Great info - thanks! One thing - it's a silica gel packet, not silicone. They can be reused too, which is great! Here's how to; scroll all the way to the bottom. https://www.thepackagingcompany.us/knowledge-sharing/9-unusual-ways-for-using-silica-gel-packets/
That was my bad! Thank you for letting me know.
Thanks for the tips especially not submerging the avocado in water - oops I have been doing that from time to time! My mum taught me to rub the outside of the avo with lemon juice so it can stay fresh in the fridge longer. Wonderful recipe!!
Sorry for another lengthy comment. New subscriber; I'll get caught up. Let me also add that I have no affiliation with anyone other than my husband.
~6 years ago I learned about the BluApple. They are two blue plastic apples that hold little packets of chemicals that you change quarterly.
When you buy them, they come with a giant information sheet written in 4 pt font. Or here's a link: https://thebluapple.com/pages/science-of-bluapple The link also has a reference to at least one technical paper.
The bluapples make a huge difference in how long your produce lasts. You can subsequently purchase just the 8 packets for subsequent years. Interesting thing about the 'expired' packets. You can tear them open and sprinkle the little pellets as plant food for your house plants. So that's step one.
The second part of their line is thin sheets of foam to put inside of your produce bins to help protect delicate fruits from bruising. Great for pears, peaches, ... that you want to keep longer. My husband grumbled about not being able to find a piece of chilled fruit to eat w/out fighting through all the other produce. I ended up taking a plastic storage drawer that rests in a box and creating a third produce drawer w/one of the foam sheets & a bluapple in it on a shelf in the refrigerator. I try to avoid stuffing non-snack fruit in the space.
The third part of their line are a perforated plastic bag that you use a paper liner with (they call them hydroliners). These are brilliant. The paper liners are like heavyweight, oversized paper towels. In theory, they can be rinsed and reused. For years I complained because while I could reuse the plastic bags for years, I kept running out of their liners. Paper towels simply didn't work as well. My solution was to buy heavyweight bamboo paper towels. Not as good, but better than paper towels.
Some produce you wet and squeeze out the excess water; other you use a dry towel. They make it easier for you by having a page where you can look up specific info for your produce.
https://thebluapple.com/pages/produce-storage-tips
So what are we talking about timewise? 2-3 weeks for most produce. Some items (like carrots and broccoli) almost a month.
The company has finally started sellling just the hydroliners. Yea! So far, the liners are just sold through their site, but I suspect they'll eventually turn up on Amazon. In my case, I'll use up the remainder of my bamboo toweling, then buy the liners. For herbs, I use damp liners, remove wires from bunches of cilantro, and then spread out the handful over the width of the toweling, folding the toweling over the upper leaves. For almost everything, I put the towel-wrapped items into the plastic bags and then just roll the bags to reduce their bulk. I don't seal the bags.
Years ago Alton Brown did a show on green salads. Using the technique he talked about, I would lay out a long roll of continuous paper towel on my counter (6-7'). Take heads of lettuce, tear the leaves, wash them well, put them through a salad spinner, and sprinkle them down the length of toweling. Go ahead and use 4-5 different types of lettuce. He also recommended adding a bit of something w/a bit of bitterness (endive, radicchio). Then roll up the toweling jellyroll fashion and slide the whole thing on one of those oversized (2 gal?) Ziploc bags. When you seal the bag, remove as much air as you can. As you need salad, unroll a bit of towel and use what you want, reseal the bag until the next day. I used to regularly do this when I was working full-time, had a 1-hour commute, and a child at home. (This was before you could buy bags of salad mix in plastic bags.) The toweling collects the extra moisture off the surface of the lettuce but makes it available to keep the lettuce fresh subsequently. I could usually count on the salad mix lasting 5-6 days. It's just for lettuce, not green onions, cucumbers, ....
You can also line your salad spinner w/paper towels to gently dry your washed berries.
A trick I learned from a California master gardener. Take all of your veggie/fruit scraps and set them in a bowl. As you're cleaning up the kitchen, dump it and a bit of water into your food processor (or blender) with a bit of water and puree it. Just enough water so that it's a thick liquid. Keep a small shovel by the kitchen door. Go out to your yard, turn over a shovel-full of dirt in your flower bed, pour in the goop, cover with the dirt. Within days it will complete compost into your soil. Pick a different spot the next day. Don't add citrus or banana peels and nothing protein. If you have meat/dairy in the mix, it will be too attractive to opossums, racoons, ... Citurs/banana peels don't break down. Oh, and no avocado/peach pits. Seems obvious not to add, but just to be safe.
My mother used to rinse leftover salad and throw it into a pot of soup.
Years ago I went through a period of prepping a self-serve lunch for my husband's business meetings held at our home. I'd buy an assortment of deli meats/cheese, have an assortment of breads, and would make a couple of salads they could serve. And cookies. My husband is not a cook but could take stuff out of the refrigerator. I discovered the greatest trick for serving sliced avocado. Lay out the sliced avocado on a small plate (or guac in a bowl) and spray the surface with Pam. It's canola oil, doesn't affect the flavor of the avocado, but keeps it from oxidizing. I'd then wrap the plate in some plastic wrap and pop it in the refrigerator. Hours later, Lynn could pull out the avocado (along w/sliced onion, tomato, ...) and everything was fine. After people had served themselves, he'd respray the surface, cover w/the same plastic, and we'd have leftovers for dinner. Since I was prepping the food before I left the house at 5:30 am for gym/commute/work I can attest that it works.
Alright, I'm off. Truly, I don't always go on this long.