Farmer Shares Brilliant Tips To Keep Strawberries Fresh

Lots of us like to stock our refrigerators with delicious fruits and vegetables during a trip to the supermarket. Especially in the summer!

Fruits, like strawberries, are refreshing and packed with vitamins and minerals that are good for us and keep us healthy.

Strawberries are filled with antioxidants, vitamin C, folate, potassium, manganese, fiber, and magnesium, according to Organic Facts.

 
The are even said to improve eyesight, brain function, high blood pressure, arthritis, gout, and several cardiovascular diseases. Strawberries are even linked to boosting the immune system and preventing certain cancers, as well as premature aging.

Farmer Shares Brilliant Tips To Keep Strawberries Fresh
Source: Foodal

It’s a shame to spend all that money on our strawberries only to find that they get slimy or covered in mold when we reach for them in our refrigerators after having only bought them a few days prior.

It’s a total bummer and a giant waste.

 
Thankfully Hip2Save has shared a brilliant way to make sure that your strawberries stay fresh and last longer in your refrigerator. This hack will extend the life of your strawberries for days, or maybe even a week or two after you take them home and put them in your fridge.

Farmer Shares Brilliant Tips To Keep Strawberries Fresh
Source: The Krazy Coupon Lady
You’ll need:
  • White vinegar
  • Water
  • A Colander or salad spinner
Directions:

Step 1) Pour 1 part white vinegar and 5 parts water into a large bowl. About 1/2 cup of vinegar and 2 1/2 cups of water should do the trick.

Step 2) Soak your berries in the mixtures for a few minutes. The vinegar will get rid of mold spores and bacteria. That’s the stuff that makes your strawberries spoil quicker.

You’ll probably be grossed out by what the water looks like after your rinse your berries in this solution.

Farmer Shares Brilliant Tips To Keep Strawberries Fresh
Source: The Krazy Coupon Lady

Step 3) Dry your strawberries thoroughly. You can place some paper towels into a salad spinner or let them air dry in a colander.

Making sure you remove all of the moisture will prevent them from getting moldy.

Step 4) Place your strawberries into the refrigerator on top of a paper towel.

Farmer Shares Brilliant Tips To Keep Strawberries Fresh
Source: Sunshine in My Pocket

Don’t worry your strawberries will not taste like vinegar after using this method.

Here are a few other tips that will help your strawberries last longer:
  • The Kitchn says you should keep the stems of your strawberries on until you’re about to eat them. this will prolong their shelf life.
  • Also, if you notice any spoiled berries in your bunch that has mold on them, be sure to immediately remove them. This will prevent the mold from spreading and ruining the rest of them.

Enjoy your delicious tasting, longer lasting strawberries!

 

 
 
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Here’s How Many Insects You’re Eating Every Year

You’ve been munching on insect legs and heads for a long, long time.

Here’s How Many Insects You’re Eating Every Year

Are you brave enough to try roasted grasshoppers? It probably wouldn’t be your first meal that contains insects. Odds are, you’ve been eating bugs this whole time—and you just never knew it.

Yep, you read that correctly. According to a new study by Terro, an ant and insect control company, bugs could be in your breakfast… or lunch… or dinner. After analyzing data from the FDA and FAO, Terro found that insect fragments are found in many of the foods that you’d buy at the grocery store (and it’s even legal!)

The highlights? By Food and Drug Administration (FDA) standards, frozen broccoli can have 60 insects per 100 grams (about 1/2 cup), Terro reports. Technically, the average coffee drinker could consume almost 140,000 insect fragments per year. And beetles are the most popular insects eaten globally; they make up 31 percent of bug consumption.

Sounds scary. But wait! Before you toss everything in your pantry, you’ll want to read the fine print.

While the idea of an insect head squished inside your chocolate bar might be pretty gross, it’s totally harmless. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) “allows for a small amount of insect material that is guaranteed safe for human consumption to pass into our food,” Terro writes. “Otherwise, resource costs would be too unmanageable to eliminate all defects from food production.” Not to mention it’s nearly impossible to remove every single bug from food grown on farms.

Thankfully, there’s a lot of nutritional value in insects, too. Mealworms provide more protein than chicken or salmon, and crickets have almost as much iron as red beef, according to Terro’s research. So chow down—if you can stomach it!

Read Terro’s charts above for even more fascinating facts about your insect consumption. And by the way, not to gross you out, but there might be fecal matter in your coffee.

 
 
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How To Tell If Your Avocado Is Ripe

It’s an art, not a science—but there are some tricks

How to Tell If Your Avocado Is Ripe

There are few feelings of disappointment quite like that of slicing open an avocado only to realize that it’s not yet fully ripe or—even worse—gone totally black and rotten. So how can you tell if an avocado is ripe before you’ve cut into it? There are a few signs your avocado is ripe and ready to eat, and once you know what to look for, you’ll improve your accuracy immensely when it comes time to choose a ripe avocado at the grocery store. I should note here that avocados are fickle fruit, and these tips to tell if your avocado is ready to eat aren’t foolproof. But knowing they’ll definitely make it easier to know when an avocado is worth the $2.50 at the grocery store versus when it’s time to just give up. 

So here are the three things you should look for when trying to find the perfect avocado.

Note the Color

The most obvious indicator of an avocado’s ripeness, especially from far away, is its color. If the avocado is bright green and glossy, it’s unripe. You’re looking for an avocado that’s darker in color—almost a hunter green with a more matte finish. But if it’s a deep, dark shade of black, or the fruit has brown, flaky spots, it’s overripe—and the inside of the avocado is probably speckled with black, too.

Squeeze It

Color alone, however, can’t tell you if an avocado is ripe or not. Sometimes, an avocado that looks underripe, with green specks coming through the darker skin, is actually just right. That’s why you need to pick up the avocado and gently squeeze it. As the experts from the Haas Avocado Board explain, “If the avocado does not yield to gentle pressure it is considered still ‘firm’ and will be ripe in a couple of days.” The avocado shouldn’t feel totally mushy, though; the fruit should still have a bit of structure. Be careful not to squeeze too hard, though, because if you do, you will bruise the fruit, and that doesn’t help anybody.

Check the Stem

If you’ve got an avocado in your hands that feels soft enough but not too soft, looks dark enough without seeming rotten—and you’re still not totally sure if it’s ripe or not, it’s time to check the stem. Erica, the Seattle-based food and gardening blogger behind Northwest Edible Life, told The Kitchn that the best way to know if an avocado is ripe or not is to take the little stem off the top of the fruit. “If it comes away easily and you find green underneath, you’ve got a good avocado that’s ripe and ready to eat.” The stem of an overripe avocado will also come off easily, but it’ll look black underneath. Meanwhile, the stem of an underripe avocado will be a challenge to wiggle off.

It’ll take some practice to learn how to pick the right avocado, but at least you’ll be able to make a lot of guacamole until you perfect your technique. If you’re still in doubt about whether your avocado is ripe enough, you should err on the side of buying an underripe fruit. That way, you can ripen the avocado at home instead of having to throw away an overripe one, which is really the ultimate tragedy.

 
 
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