There have been many times that I get home from the grocery store excited about the fresh fruit going into the fridge, only to find that I have mould growing over it just a few days later. I realize that this wouldn’t bother a lot of people but it drives me crazy. For me, just one mouldy strawberry is enough to infect the lot and warrant tossing the entire basket into the compost.
After complaining about this to my friend, Nicole, she told me about an easy way to preserve fruit naturally: vinegar. There is a bit more of a science to it but, basically, I create a mixture of 10% vinegar and 90% water and let my berries soak in it for about 10 minutes. Then, I drain the berries, refrigerate them and they keep for days. Be careful: sometimes, I don’t get the proportions right as I tend to estimate the 10% vinegar, and the fruit ends up with a bit of a vinegary taste.
Thanks to Nicole, when I get home from the store, I soak all of my berries and grapes in this vinegar-water mix. And I don’t bother to change the water-vinegar; I simply scoop out what is in and add another type of fruit. Everything comes out looking fresher, fuller (once or twice, my grapes ended up looking like they had been on steroids), and tasting so much cleaner. And, best of all, fruit keeps longer so I end up saving money.
This is such an easy thing to do and takes very little time. Good-bye preservatives and mould. Hello, deliciousness. Yum!
