Thursday, April 11, 2013

diy thursday: natural homemade berry wash

 
 
We eat lots of fruits and vegetables. We try to buy organic when possible, at least the dirty dozen. But even if they are organic, they are dirty. Non-organic fruits and veggies of course have many more substances on them such as pesticides and wax.  I have a fabulous fruit and veggie spray that I have been using for years that works really well to remove such things on the skin of fruit and veggies. I will share the spray recipe at a later time, but I wanted to share this super simple way to wash your berries and other soft skinned fruits and veggies. My spray works great on larger fruits and veggies with hard skin such as apples and bell peppers, but it would be a little tedious to use on smaller fruits such as berries.
 
 
 
The recipe is simple. All you need is a bowl of water and distilled white vinegar. Use about 1/2-1cup of vinegar depending on how big your bowl is.
 


After adding the water and vinegar, just dump your berries, in this case strawberries, into the bowl. Give it a swirl and let it soak for about 10 minutes.

The vinegar kills any mold and other bacteria that might be on the surface of the berries.



 
Then pour out the dirty water, rinse the berries with cold water and dry them.
 
 
And voila, they are clean. They will also last much longer.