Question
Fran Costigan
With the Cycloporos outbreak in full force thoughtout the US, I'd like to know how you, a sister veg and fruit eater are navigating?
Answer
So the other day, I was telling Fran that I had found the perfect, perfect cantaloupe at my local grocer, and her first words to me were, "You better clean that." And I said to her, "I grew up with my grandmother, Mary Montaruli, who used to scrub the outsides of cantaloupe with Brillo." My grandmother was Italian, and she made sure that everything we ate was clean. The second part I want to share before I show you what I have here is I often go to Honduras, and one of my children and I do medical outreach, do mission work. And the chef at the house where we live takes all of the vegetables that she grows, and then she takes about a capful of Clorox and puts it in a big vat of water to make sure that everything is clean. I've been to Honduras 23 times. I've never been sick. I don't do that in my own home, nor do I buy vegetable wash. But I have several of these, and what I do is I take gentle fruit, and that would be raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, and I put them in here, and then I gently douse them with very tepid water, and I let them stay in here, and then I let all of the residual stuff come out, and then I rinse them again, and then I put them out on a kitchen towel, and I look for any imperfections, and I also look to see what's in the bottom of this. I have these in all different sizes and all different shapes, and they're very, very helpful. The other thing I wanted to say is when I have apples that are conventional, or I bought them from someplace that I don't know, I will take a skewer and I will jab it into the top of an apple, and I will take boiling water and pour it over the apple, and it goes into a big basin of a bowl that I have. And it's quite amazing to see that it looks perfectly beautiful when you look at it. But when you look into the water and you see sometimes wax, sometimes other things. I have seen live little animals and things. So I think Chef Fran brings up a very valid point that you cannot be too careful with taking care of vegetables and fruits in today's climate of how food is being handled. So, Chef Fran, that was a great question, and I think it's one that we all need to take seriously. If you are someone who might enjoy using a vegetable wash, they are located in the produce department. They usually come in a green spray bottle, and it's probably the most important thing that you can do now. And it's funny, I have many friends who have young children and talk about how their budgets are escalating because their children love raspberries so much. But most importantly, washing them is the most important thing. And I wash organic and conventional equally the same just to make sure. We can't be careful enough.
