A coworker mentioned the other day that he had some fresh green beans recently, but that they weren't as good as the ones that came out of a can! They were leathery, and he had to throw out about a quarter of them!
Then he told me that they were about 3 weeks old. Ah-ha! I think we've found the problem!
That's one thing that takes a little getting used to when switching from processed food to fresh food. Fresh food doesn't stay fresh! You have to prepare and eat it soon! With processed food, we're used to things keeping for weeks, months, even years! (All those preservatives in the ingredients list? Now you know why they're there.)
Even fresh produce from a supermarket tends to be varieties that were bred for their durability and extended shelf-life. The fresh produce you get from the farmers' market — or your garden — tends to be varieties that were bred for their taste!
We have a book, From Asparagus to Zucchini: A Guide to Cooking Farm-Fresh Seasonal Produce, that provides plenty of useful information about what to do with fresh produce after you bring it home — how to clean it, how to store it, and how quickly to use it! We've been putting our produce in Ziploc bags, marking the date on each bag with a Sharpie so that we know which is the oldest.
We've been feeling guilty about going through so many plastic bags. True, we could wash out the bags and reuse them, but finding room to prop open the bags so that they could dry was a challenge. We recently bought some reusable plastic storage containers which we'll be trying out, in the hopes that those will work better.
Another book, Keeping the Harvest: Discover the Homegrown Goodness of Putting Up Your Own Fruits, Vegetables & Herbs, is a great resource for learning how to store produce for later use. It covers freezing, canning, drying, root cellars, and more. However, even if you aren't going to eat those green beans until months later, you still need to freeze or can them while they're still fresh!
In the case of sweetcorn, it is particularly important to process things quickly. The sugars in an ear of sweetcorn start changing into starches almost as soon as it is picked, resulting in a less-sweet taste. If you're blanching sweetcorn for freezing, it's best to have the water already boiling when you go to the garden to harvest!
When you go the the farmers' market and buy stuff, you should use it as soon as possible. Because we have farmers' markets on 3 days during the week (Wednesday morning, Thursday afternoon, and Saturday morning), you don't need to do a week's worth of shopping. Our great-grandparents would have bought food multiple times during the week, particularly in the days before refrigeration!
If you can, try planning meals in advance, then buying what you need for those meals, rather than just buying a bunch of whatever is there, then trying to figure out how to use it all up before it goes bad.
For example:
- At Wednesday's market, you could buy the food for Wednesday's lunch and dinner; and Thursday's breakfast and lunch (4 meals).
- At Thursday's market, you could buy for Thursday's dinner; Friday's meals; and Saturday's breakfast (5 meals).
- At Saturday's market, you could buy for Saturday's lunch and dinner; Sunday's meals; Monday's meals; Tuesday's meals; and Wednesday's breakfast (12 meals).
By planning and buying smaller quantities, you'll have fresher food!
Do we do that? Uh... no. We're not that organized yet! But it's a good idea, and I'm hopeful that someday we'll be that organized! I'll alert the media when that happens.
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