Look! So Much Organic Food!

Wow. That's a lot of food... and that's only what didn't end up in the fridge. We're trying to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables. Because we grew up in Chicago, land of lunch meat, bacon, and Cream of Mushroom Soup, it doesn't come easy. So we signed up for Planet Organics, only to be confronted with physical confirmation that we, indeed, had a problem: there's hardly space in our kitchen for a week's worth of fruit and veg... nor a place to stash the large, reusable plastic container in which everything was delivered.

To hold the fruit, we settled for a large colander, thinking the holes would hold off mold and help some of the fruit ripen; the potatoes, apples, and tomatoes are hanging out on the side. But now we're on the hunt for a better, more space-efficient solution: hanging baskets for the fruit, perhaps, and a ceramic crock for the potatoes.

As for the food itself?

It's delicious. We're holding out hope for the peaches, which are still hard as rocks, but the strawberries we ate for breakfast and the green beans we sauteed last night made the $55 seem worth it. We're already looking forward to next week's box.

Do you have organic food delivered? How do you deal with storing it? Any tips or tricks we should know about?

Comments (7)

Watch out for fruit flies! Organic produce is especially delicious to these breeders.

Unfortunately you may have to resort to storing some items in the fridge if you don't use it fast enough.

At the first site of fruit flies make a little trap. A glass with vinegar at the bottom and a paper cone stuck through some plastic wrap at the top should knock most of them out. The buggers will be enticed by the vinegar, fly into the cone and will not figure out how to get out of the glass.

I agree with Art. I get a significant haul from the CSA and everything ends up in the 'fridge except bananas and potatoes. I store all my salad greens in my salad spinner with basket and they keep for a while (a week or more).

I was recently curious how I could make strawberries last longer and I found out that different fruit/veggies release gases that can ripen other types of fruit/veggies faster. Check this out: http://www.wildoats.com/u/health101104/

I am signing up for one this week! I'm pretty excited, though we have a short growing season here. I think there's still time for lots of good local produce. Since it's just for me I don't think I'll have a problem storing all the food. I hope not anyway ;)

A tip for the hard peaches - put a couple of apples in a brown paper bag, and then put the peaches on top of them and roll the top of the bag closed. The apples release a ripening gas (or you know, something. I'm a little vague on the science of this) as they sit there and they will ripen the peaches in a few days. We do it all the time with all sorts of fruit (works for nectarines, apricots, etc.) - works like a charm, and you can reuse the paper bag for each new batch of fruit.

I've always wanted to try my neighborhood CSA, but it hasn't happened yet. For two big reasons. The first being that they only do subscriptions at certain times of year, and I always forget or am too broke to hand over a big chunk of money, and the second being that my roommate and I have big problems with bringing home way too much from the farmer's market, so I'm worried that if we join a CSA rather than forcing us to eat more fresh fruit and vegetables, it will just end up going to waste as we opt for pasta or frozen tamales yet again. Maybe next year I'll finally find the discipline.

Great, link, thanks canadian in swedish clothing! I too have the problem of being subscribed to an organic produce delivery company, but being bombarded with too much food, which spoils pretty quickly. I split my order with a friend of mine, and that seems to work well.

I also ran across this site, for storing goods in the fridge & freezer...

http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/fttstore.html

Maybe for storing, you could buy one of those tiered tea/hors d'oeuvre trays.