Berry Nice pt.2!

Hello and welcome back to the Vandemonian homesteader. I know it’s been a while since my last post and for that, I apologise. Work certainly kept me busy over the holiday season. But now that the holiday season has passed I can return to focusing on my main goal.

If you’ve read the first berry post that I made before I dropped off the face of the earth you may recall that I went out last September and purchased some raspberries and blueberries for my little experiment. For those who haven’t read it yet feel free to go have a look.

My experiment began the day I posted the article, the 22^nd of September. Half of the berries I purchased were washed in a vinegar and water mix (1 part vinegar 3 part water), rinsed with cold water and then gently laid out on a paper towel to dry. While the other half were left in their original packaging, unwashed and stored in the fridge.

Once dry the washed berries were put into fresh containers lined with paper towel. Both washed and unwashed were sat next to each other in the same part of the fridge and they were left to see how long they would last. Now came the hardest part of the experiment, resisting the urge to eat them.

For nearly two weeks they sat in the fridge. Thanks to hungry guests a few went missing during that time but they were considered acceptable losses. I still had enough left to get a result. And as for the result. It was kind of inconclusive. Both berries washed and unwashed showed signs of ageing. Neither one looked better than the other, they were still edible. But as you can tell from the pictures they looked nowhere near as nice as they had initially.

I don’t consider this a failure, I can’t say that after one attempt and I know that certain food business will wash their product in a similar solution. So there is merit to it, but apart from having clean berries, I haven’t seen it achieve anything else, especially extending its shelf life which was my main goal. So I will need to try it again a few more times in the future.

So there you have it, it may have taken me a lot longer to complete the post than it was to complete the experiment but here we are.

 So until next time, have a good one and catch you later.