26 - How to Keep Your Produce Fresh Longer: Reduce Food Waste & Save Money

Are you tired of buying fresh fruits and veggies only to find them wilted, mushy, or spoiled just a few days later? In this episode of the Nourished Living Podcast, I’m sharing my favorite hacks to keep your produce fresher for longer—so you can save money, reduce food waste, and always have ingredients ready when you need them.

From freezing herbs and ginger in ice cube trays, to the best way to store carrots, celery, potatoes, avocados, and even bread—you’ll walk away with simple, practical tips you can start using today. 

Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode:

• The best ways to store fruits, veggies, and herbs to extend their shelf life
• How to freeze garlic, ginger, and tomato paste for easy, no-waste cooking
• Simple tricks to revive stale bread and wilted greens
• Why glass storage and reusable produce bags are game changers for your health

If you’ve ever felt frustrated throwing away spoiled food, this episode is for you. Grab a notebook, or just bookmark these hacks for the next time you go grocery shopping!

Don’t forget to grab your free set of affirmations designed to rewire your mindset, boost your confidence, and help you step into the most empowered version of yourself. The world needs you shining! 

Click here to download 'Your Glow Up Affirmations' now!

Connect with Courtney:

- Instagram: @healthywithcourtneyy

Transcript

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Welcome to the Nourished Living Podcast, where I'll be diving deep into nutrition, holistic wellness, and practical tips to help you live your healthiest, most vibrant life. I am Courtney Podany, a nutritional therapist, certified personal trainer, type one diabetic and mom. I'm here to help you take charge of your health with ease and confidence. Together we'll explore how to nourish your body, mind, and soul in a way that feels good and sustainable. So grab your favorite beverage. Take a deep breath, and let's get into the episode. I. Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Nourished Living Podcast. I am your host, Courtney Podany. About a year ago, I had been getting a lot of questions regarding how to keep produce fresh longer, and I did a video on it for my membership program and it was a hit. So I wanted to turn this into a podcast episode as well. Because it is just the worst when you go to the grocery store and think you're able to get all the food you need for a couple of nights of dinners or all the fruit for your week only to find by the next day it has gone bad and now you have to throw it away only to return to the grocery store again, to repurchase those dinner ingredients, spending extra time and extra energy that was not planned for. So we will go over best practices for food storage to extend the life of our produce, reduce food waste, and get more bang for our buck. No one likes to throw away food or waste food, so if we buy it, we want to be able to use it. Right. Well, here we go. Okay, so first, if you have an ice tray, you can do wonderful things with it, aside from just making ice. If you do not have ice trays because you have an ice maker in your refrigerator already, I would highly recommend buying a few. They are super cheap and usually come in a pack of a couple, so that's perfect and all you need. You will get that money back in no time by all the money you save from freezing food, I promise. So you can freeze minced garlic or ginger in ice trays for up to a year. You can cut it up nice and small just like you would prepare it before a meal. Then put it into the little ice tray to save for later. This one has been a game changer for me, especially because I typically order groceries online, and when I put in that I need fresh ginger for a recipe I'm making, the recipe will usually only call for like a tablespoon minced, but the smallest quantity I can order online without actually having to go into a grocery store myself is a quarter of a pound. Which trust me, that is a lot larger than the one tablespoon that I need. So rather than the ginger going to waste, I am now able to store it up to a year and it is able to provide for many dinners when you need it, you can just pop it out like you would if there was an ice cube in there. And basically just one of those little ginger cubes will be about the amount you would need for one dinner for a family of four. More, of course though, if you're doubling or tripling the recipe. And what is also great is that if the recipe calls for you to saute the ginger or garlic to be added into a soup or curry or what have you, you won't need to defrost it. You can just plop the little ginger garlic. Cube into the pot you are cooking with and the heat will do the trick for ya. You can do the same thing with herbs like cilantro, thyme, rosemary, basil, parsley, anything like that. However, for these, there is a slight variation then with the ginger or garlic, after you place the herb. Which could be minced if that's how you'll need it later, or just peeled off from the stem. You'll pour some olive oil into the tray over the herbs so it solidifies. That is how it will be able to be preserved and kept the freshest until you need it. For me, when we get cilantro and parsley, it's similar to the ginger. It comes in a much larger quantity than I need for that one dinner, and then it goes bad before I get to the rest. But you know, now that I am thinking about it, maybe I just need to meal plan with the ingredients better and just have like a flavor profile for the week or something like that, where things like cilantro or ginger get used for multiple meals. But hey, in the meantime, I am trying to keep things as fresh as possible to avoid it going bad. For citrus like lemons, limes, and oranges, you could also utilize ice trays. You could squeeze the juice into one of the little cube holders, and that will stay good forever, basically. But if you did not want to juice the lemon right away, maybe you just wanted to keep it good for like a week, or you also were going to need to zest the lemon and not just only have the juice. You could put the lemon in a glass storage container or something that is airtight and then into the fridge, unwashed. Also tomato paste can be saved in ice cube trays. I know when I make things like chili, I have to buy a good sized can of tomato paste, but I use like one and a half tablespoons, so it's obviously not equivalent to that whole can that I just bought. So you can put in the extra tomato paste into an ice cube tray, and again, just pop it out when you need it. Throw it in the pot for cooking, and you're good to go. Next for carrots and celery, you can put these in a mason jar and then fill the remainder of the jar with water so they are completely covered for the carrots. If they are not peeled already, you will want to peel them before storing and celery will last up to two weeks, and carrots will last up to one month. For green onions, you can also put them in a mason jar with the roots facing down, and then you put water in as well, but just enough to cover the roots here, so it's not going to also submerge the green part of the onion. And then you can either place the glass on your window sill in some sunlight to keep it growing until you are ready. Or place that glass in the refrigerator. For asparagus and artichokes, it's similar. You place them in a jar with the tips up and the bottom of the asparagus submerged in like one inch of water, and then into the refrigerator. You might need to trim the bottom of the asparagus and the stem of the artichoke. Okay, potatoes. I know we are all guilty of keeping potatoes around for too long before we actually got around to cooking them, and then they start getting some sprouts. To avoid this, you can place your potatoes in a glass bowl with one apple in it, and then put it in a cool dark space. The gas that is produced and emitted from the apple will help to prevent the sprouting supposedly for up to many weeks. I have not firsthand tested this out because I have usually needed the potatoes to eat. So at least recently while trying this apple trick, I have not tested out the weeks of freshness theory, but it does keep for at least a week. I know that. Also, it is important not to store potatoes in close proximity to onions. So apples are okay. Onions are a no. And this next one I was really excited about when I came across it because my kids love avocados, but sometimes we don't go through the whole one. So to best preserve avocados. You'll also need an onion. So halve both the avocado and onion place the cut side of the onion down in a glass storage container, and then you can add the halved avocados in with them. For berries like blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, you will store them unwashed in a glass storage container. I know it might be tempting to wash the produce before you're setting it aside to store it, but it'll stay much longer without any added moisture in with it. You can just take it straight from the store or farmer's market, put it in a glass jar and then rinse it when you're ready. For apples, zucchini and squash, you can store them in your fruits and vegetable drawer in the fridge and just having them loose is best rather than contained to keep them cool and crisp and do not cut them up at all. Don't wash them. Just keep them whole. For bananas, they are already in their peel, so you don't have to worry about putting it in a certain container or anything. They will just go directly into the fridge. If you have brown bananas that you don't really feel comfortable eating, you can put those in the freezer and then add those straight into smoothies. Or if you are more of a baker, you can add it into a banana bread recipe. For peaches, tangerines, plums, and apricots, you can place them loose in the fruit and vegetable drawer, unwashed and uncut. However, if you get them and they are not yet close to being ripe, you can actually leave them out on the countertop for like one to three days to ripen, and then once they become ripe, you will then move it into the refrigerator to store. For broccoli, cauliflower, and green beans. Those are also going to go straight into a glass storage container without washing. So just straight in and then you can go ahead and rinse that when you need it and you're ready to enjoy. Tomatoes are okay just out on the countertops at room temperature, but they must be away from sunlight. So if you usually keep your fruit by your kitchen window, move the tomatoes somewhere out of the sun and those will last up to five days. For lettuce, arugula, spinach, any type of dark, leafy green, and cucumbers, you'll dry them off a little bit and then wrap it up in a paper towel, and then place that into a glass storage container so these are dried, wrapped up in a paper towel, then placed into storage, and then into the refrigerator. So the paper towel helps to absorb any extra moisture that might occur, decreasing the likelihood that it will become wilty. However, if your lettuce does become wilted and you want to try to revive it, you can submerge it in a bowl of cold water for about 30 minutes, maybe a little bit longer. And then just take it out after that time has passed and see if it has crisped back up to your liking. And this isn't about produce, but while we're talking about revival. If you have stale bread to try to revive it, you can run it underwater for a brief moment. Of course, you don't want it completely soggy, but a little damp, and then heat the oven to 300 degrees and stick it in the oven. And then your bread will come out fresh or another option. Instead of running the bread under water, you can place a bowl of water in the oven with the bread And while we were talking about food storage, I know we've talked about this before, but I would recommend using glass storage containers instead of plastic Tupperware, so you don't have any plastic leaching into your food. If you do not wanna go out and purchase a whole new set to replace what you have, you can start to save your pasta jars, your pickle jars, your salsa jars, anything that comes home with you that's glass and boom, I bet you could come up with a whole new set pretty quickly. Okay, and while we are talking about plastic leaching through foods, I also recommend buying mesh produce bags to bring with you to the store so you don't have to use the plastic ones that they provide. Again, it is just to reduce the amount of plastic that gets into your food, which you will eventually be eating. These bags can be found on Amazon with like five or six to a package, and they can be washed so you can reuse them again and again. Super easy doesn't include a lot of effort and it helps to keep you healthier, a small shift with a big impact. Okay, so this was a lot of info, the transcript will be available as well if you just need to look back quickly about how to store certain produce rather than having to listen to the whole episode again. And I hope this was helpful. I hope you are able to actually utilize all of the wonderful, amazing food that you buy. Never have to throw away any bad produce again, and start saving some money Before I let you go, if you are ready to rewire your thoughts and step into a more confident, empowered version of yourself, make sure you grab my free affirmations. These powerful statements aren't just feel good words. They are rooted in science to help shift your mindset so you can create a lasting change. Your words shape your reality, and these affirmations will align you with everything you desire. The link is in the show notes to get yours now. As always, thank you for hanging out with me today. I will see you in the next episode. Thanks for hanging out with me today and tuning into the Nourished Living Podcast. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and found something you can start implementing right away to kickstart your nourished transformation. If you loved this episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, or share it with someone who could benefit from these insights. You can also connect with me over on Instagram at Nourished Living for more resources and support. Until next time, stay nourished.