Recipes

[Desertdi]

No....I heard that EATING DIRT actually boosts your immune system

[Group 5 minus 1]

Absolutely!! 

[We rescue cats]

I do, I'm surprised that some folks do not. Even our sealed bags of salad, I have found insects in them.

[amyb]

I do. Always. All but the pre-washed greens.

Berries I wash as I use them because they will get mildew otherwise.

But all other fruits and veggies I wash either in hot water/then cold (I don't do the hot for long so that it wrecks them), and on real hard skinned things like melons, zucchini, cukes, apples, I often use a little soap. They get touched so much by others, and also things from the farmstands, that I go to all summer, literally go from garden to store that day and have dust and dirt still on them.

[amyb]

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@Roscoe the Rascal wrote:

I do unless I peel like a banana or orange, but maybe I should rinse off an orange.

I do rinse and wipe a watermelon before I cut.  Learned to do that during pandemic and never thought about it before.

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Same here. I wash oranges now too because often I don't peel them but slice into them and eat them in wedges.

I too just started washing the outside of watermelons since the pandemic...now I can't think of not doing it! But, also I used to buy the already cut wedges (harder to rinse off but you can wipe the outside), and now I buy them whole more often.

Although, years ago I did learn to scrub cantaloupes before cutting, that dirt and germs could gather in all the grooves of the skin.

[depglass]

I eat triple washed organic spinach every day to regulate my warfarin.  No way can I beat that.  Grapes and cherries seem washed, but I do run water on them.  Eating dirt doesn't appeal to me because it can harbor e coli.  I had that once, quite a story.  It came from raw bean sprouts, I notice that store no longer carries them.

[Scorpio1971]

I always all my fruits, except bananas, and veggies in a commercially available fruit & veggie wash.  Even anything that is cut open such as melons, avocadoes, oranges.  All too often you hear of cases of salmonella or ecoli from these items.  If items are not washed to remove external residue when you slice it open the residue in your knife travels through the inside flesh spreading bacteria and organisms. 

Anything picked in a field is subject to contamination since the water irrigation systems sometime contains feces residue from nearby farms in natural rain water runoff into lakes & rivers which are used for irrigation.  Additionally farm workers do not always have sanitation systems and hand washing areas when out in the huge fields picking or tending crops for hours at a time.

[wagirl]

Yes I do and use a veggie brush too. But the one thing I don't wash is bagged salads---but I do wash fresh lettuce. 

[Zhills]

Always rinse them, even the ones I peel...you handle the peel then the raw potato with your dirty hands, yuck.

The way most veggies are grown today with plastic over the soil, they do not get as dirty as usual.  Our strawberries never see the soil.  

[JeanLouiseFinch]

Some packaged veggies are already washed and ready to use. Maybe I should give them a rinse, but I don't. Other loose, unpackaged veggies, I will. If the outside gets peeled off, I don't.  I do give our berries a vinegar soak and spread them on paper towel to thoroughly dry before storing them in glass mason jars. I store whole avocados in a big jar of water, in the fridge.  I do wash their skins before they go in the water.