Food Storage Tips Tomatoes and Lettuce

Our grandparents knew these tricks but somehow the secrets have been lost along the way of nuclear families, convenience foods, microwaves and takeouts. This series of posts aims to bring you food storage wisdom to help reduce the complete waste of food that goes on. According to Love Food Hate Waste discarded food costs the average household £480 a year, rising to £680 for a family with children, the equivalent of around £50 a month. £600 per year. That’s a holiday! So lets address that by knowing how to increase how long we can keep our food stored and fresh.

Last week we looked at food storage tips for Carrots, Onions and Cucumber

This week we are gong to look at tomatoes and  lettuce.

How to store tomatoes

• Keep  green tomatoes, stem side down, in a paper bag in a cool area until they turn red in colour.
• Ripe tomatoes,  should be kept at room temperature,  away from sunlight, in a single layer, not touching one another, stem side up. Consume within a couple of days.
• Overripe tomatoes that are soft to touch with very red flesh are best kept in the fridge. The cold air will keep the tomatoes from ripening more and they should last for another three days. Let them come to room temperature so they  develop some of the flavour  lost in the fridge

How to store lettuce

• Wash your lettuce and remove any damaged leaves. before drying really well.
• Wrap the lettuce in paper towel, and place it in a plastic bag or a storage container.
• Store your lettuce in the fridge in the salad/crisper drawer
• Replace the paper towel when it gets soggy
• To avoid bruising give it lots of space
• Keep removing spoilt leaves

Thanks to YumSugar for the tomato advice and to Frugal Living for the lettuce advice . If you have any other tips do let us know!