Keep'n berries fresh

I received this tip from our local spice shop!

Berry-Liscious!
For those of you not on Facebook, we thought we would share this awesome tip to keep those berries we buy at the farmer’s market (which can be expensive) from getting moldy overnight!  This is one worth sharing again! Pass it along to all your “berry” friends.

Berries are delicious, but they're also kind of delicate. Those raspberries, in particular, seem like they can mold before you even get them home from the market. There's nothing more tragic than paying $4 for a pint of local raspberries, only to look in the fridge the next day and find that fuzzy mold growing on them.

With fresh berries just starting to hit farmers markets, we can tell you how to keep them fresh! Here’s a good tip on how to prevent them from getting moldy in the first place.  Wash them with vinegar! Yep, it's true!  When you get your berries home, prepare a mixture of one part vinegar (white or apple cider works best) and ten parts water. Dump the berries into the mixture and swirl around. Drain, rinse if you want (though the mixture is so diluted you can't taste the vinegar) and then pop in the fridge.

The vinegar kills any mold spores and other bacteria that might be on the surface of the fruit, and voila! Raspberries will last a week or more, and strawberries go almost two weeks without getting moldy and soft.  So go forth and stock up on those pricey little gems, knowing that now you can keep them fresh as long as it takes you to eat them.