Wildly Affordable Organic Kitchen Containers: Make Produce Spray for Just 10 Cents a Bottle

In this week of blog posts, learn about five key kitchen containers that will save time and money, making it easy to live the Wildly Affordable Organic Way. Yesterday, we used home-made ice packs to keep food cool on the way home from the market. Today, fill a spray bottle with a home-made produce spray to knock out bacteria on fresh fruits and vegetables.

Wildly Affordable Organic container 2: keep a spray bottle filled with diluted vinegar to spritz fresh produce

Spritz smooth-skinned produce with a produce wash made from one part white vinegar to three parts water. Wait a few beats, then rinse with running water to remove the vinegar. You’ll get rid of 98% of the bacteria, according to the editors of Cooks Illustrated, compared to just 85% removed by rinsing and scrubbing.

Start with a clean, empty spray bottle. I got one intended for misting house plants at a garden center. It’s handily marked with measurements and dilution ratios on the side. One cup of white vinegar plus three cups water makes four cups or thirty-two ounces of vegetable spray. I buy big bottles of vinegar on sale, so a full bottle of produce spray costs about 10 cents. That’s wildly affordable!

Spritz any smooth-skinned produce, especially ones that you will eat raw without peeling. Think strawberries, apples, bell peppers, celery, and summer squash. I also spritz cantaloupes before cutting them.

Do you make your own salad dressings? Do you use fruit in salads? I’d love to hear your clever salad ideas.

Linda Watson

Linda Watson started the Cook for Good project after becoming obsessed with the national Food Stamp Challenge: living on a dollar a meal per person for a week. Her three-week experiment became a lifestyle, the website CookforGood.com, the book Wildly Affordable Organic, and now the Wildly Good Cook videos and teachers' training program. She teaches cooking classes and gives talks on thrift, sustainability, and food justice across the country. You can get more from Linda on Facebook..

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