Health
Habits
Food
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10 Simple Ways To Eat Less Without Noticing
Juicing: Stupid and Pretentious or Nourishing and Enlightening?
10 Tasty Carbs That Won’t Make You Fat
How To Start Working Out When You Don’t Like To Exercise
Focus More on Your Brain and Less on Your Diet if You’re Serious About Losing Weight
Home Court Habits: The Secret to Effortless Weight Control
10 Reasons You Aren’t Losing Weight When You Think You’re Doing Everything Right
How To Burn More Calories Without Breaking A Sweat
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Foodists
Fresh Berries
UPDATE: Experiment underway (see pic).
UPDATE2: Success!! No mold!
Berries are a bit of an enigma, but I think I’m getting to the bottom of it. I noticed that whenever I buy raspberries, blackberries or boysenberries at a regular grocery store they grow moldy very quickly, sometimes in less than a day. And at $4.00 for half a pint, who can afford that gamble?!
Traditionally blueberries have been a safer bet, they have fewer wet spots where mold likes to grow. But I really only care for the taste of the organic ones (one of the downsides of having an over-developed gustatory sense), so they can still be hard to get.
But I think I made a discovery this morning. It seems that if I buy my berries at the Farmers’ Market, they last much longer. Today for breakfast (a combo of Dorset Cereal’s muesli and Flax Plus by Nature’s Path) I finished off the blackberries and there wasn’t yet even a hint of mold. This is the third time in a row I have come out of the market with mold-free berries. They taste better than the store bought ones as well and are the same price or less.
My theory is that they are fresher. The guy I bought them from said they were “picked yesterday,” which on Saturday meant Friday. All that shipping of the mass-produced berries at Whole Foods must be too much for the delicate little guys.
Anyone else have any tricks for keeping berries fresh and mold-free?
Hey Darya! Very cool blog. If I have berries that I want to keep, I put them in a glass jar, with the lid on tight, and store them in the fridge. They’ll last for about 10 days or so this way. Just make sure they’re unwashed when you store them, so there’s no moisture and thus no mold. -Tim M.
Darya, your blog has saved me from what could easily have been a very slippery sloped rapid descent into dietary stagnation. You know, I hear in addition to the best kind of berries, you can also find the best kind of women at farmer’s markets 😉
"They'll last for about 10 days or so this way.">>WOW! I'll definitely give this a try. Thanks Tim!!
I just did an experiment taking the jar technique one step further. I used a standard wide mouth pint mason jar and use a vacuum sealer to take the air out. http://www.foodsaver.com/product.aspx?pid=9066
I guess you could call it cold canning. I do it with coffee and quinoa and other dry goods. I just ate two week old blueberries today and they were as fresh as the day I processed them. Great for portion control and storage too.