I enjoy cooking. A lot. Over the last few years I have been making more items from scratch (bread, pancakes, mayonnaise, mustard, yogurt), saving a bit of money but mostly enjoying the process.
It should be no surprise that the Internet is a big resource for me, or that I have stumbled across the growing movement against food waste. One of the tenets of the move to reduce food waste is keeping food longer, and I'm finding lots of good ideas. One point is that the number of people engaged far outnumber cruising sailors and so knowledge from experimentation can accumulate more quickly.
This is good stuff people: little things like washing lettuce when you buy it and storing it wrapped in a damp towel in a cooler, wrapping celery in aluminum foil, and what keeps better in paper, in plastic, and in or out of the refrigerator.
I'm going back to Lin Pardey's Care and Feeding of Sailing Crew and other cruising classics to pick up some of the common practices to feed into the "no-waste" crowd to test and see what we learn.
If you are interested, check out Jonathons blog here: http://www.wastedfood.com/
I'll report back regardless.
My Father always wraps his bananas individually in alum foil, and puts them in the fridge, and they will stay fresher by a week, then unwrapped ones (the skin gets a funny dark greenish yellow color, but the inside is great!) He then "Recycles" the foil on the next hand of bananas!
Shawn
Sail Away!: A Guide to Outfitting and Provisioning for Cruising (Paperback, 1998)
Author: Paul Shard
Has the best description of how to care for food that I have read as well as the most practical. Saved me many of $$ so far.
A Guide to Outfitting and Provisioning for Cruising
$31.00 for a used paperback. :o
Out of my league. :( But, I will keep it in mind when I go to the flea markets.
I found one for 19.95
Also look into the 1995 edition of Care and Feeding of the Offshore Crew by the Pardeys