For those who use juicers or blenders

11 years ago

I posted about our new Nutri Bullet a few days ago...and we love it. But it occurred to me to mention something that some of you might not be aware of.

Many of these foods are grown with a very high use of pesticides, the residue of which can remain on the outside skins. Imported foods can be especially 'iffy '.

Our raw fruits and veggies must be very thoroughly washed and rinsed! This is true even if you're buying organic foods. It's also true if you remove the skin, rind, peel.

Here's what I do: as soon we get home with the produce, the greens go into a warm water bath with a bit of organic soap. Then, I fill the sink up again with cold water so I can rinse everything well. Remove as much of the water as possible before storing.

Foods with peels, rinds, and skins need to be given a soapy bath, too. With the skins on. Use a soft brush on them, then rinse in cold water, dry and refridgerate.

Berries shouldn't be stored wet. I usually wait to wash them until I use them.

This little bit of time ensures that we get all of the great benefits from these great foods ......and none of the toxins.

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Comments (10)

Chi
11 years ago
Good advice! While washing is very important, it won't get rid of all of the pesticides.

I try to buy organic for that reason, but I know it's usually cost-prohibitive for some people. There is a "dirty dozen" list circulating around that gives advice for the fruits and veggies that are the most affected by pesticides and would benefit the most from being organic for people who can't go all organic.
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User
11 years ago
Same here, I have the "dirty dozen" list memorized. :o)
Have been buying lots of organic greens to add to the smoothies, but just found out all greens and veggies grown in CA or AZ are watered with water from the Colorado River. This river is heavily contaminated with a chemical called perchlorate which is basically rocket and missile fuel and causes lots of health problems. So, you just can't win.
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I used to do 100 or so quarts of tomato juice each year, but now with just the two of us I'm down to maybe 20 to 30. I have a motorized cone/screen strainer like the Squeezo that was mentioned but I have not used it for years. There are several drawbacks to such a device: they are messy, they reject so much pulp along with the skins the juice is too thin for my taste, washing the fruit first is fine but processing with the skins on surely involves carryover of any spray materials (and whatever) to the final product, and they are a b---- to clean up prior to placing them in a fair sized piece of real estate for storage after use. I have processed cored/skinned/stewed tomatoes through them and that does improve the product taste and thickness. But I have found a better way. Tomato juice can be safely processed in a water bath canner; so a batch up to 7 quarts can be easily done in one canner load. It takes about 1.5 pecks to make 7 quarts, which for most of us is within the peak daily yield for our garden. I have found the following process makes the best juice for me with a reasonable investment in time and cleanup. Skin the tomatoes after boiling, cooling in a sink full of cool water, core them and remove any bad spots or poorly ripened areas. Chuck the cleaned/skinned tomatoes into a big aluminum pot. I like to cut the tomatoes at least in half and look for internal bad spots before I put them in the pot. When you are done cleaning and skinning the tomatoes bring them to a boil in the pot. I like to use a medium flame and stir them up in the pot till all is well stewed to prevent burning. Bring to a full boil, adjusting heat to prevent boilover as necessary, and adding a little salt at this point seems to soften the tomatoes quicker. Boil for no less than 5 minutes-io minutes is better. At the beginning of the boil you will smell a pungent oder. This is some kind of natural acidic material that once gone will yield a better tasting product. Most likely your nose will know when it is gone but 10 minutes will surely do it. You can let the stewed tomatos cool a bit after this point but I just put on heavy rubber gloves and get on with it. Ladel the stewed tomatoes into a standard blender; before you turn the blender on make sure the top is on it and oriented so that the pour out spout is well sealed off. You need only make one mistake with boiling hot stewed tomatoes and improper positioning of the top to understand the importance of sealing the top off. Turn the blender on to a lower setting-like maybe a 3 on a 1 to 10 scale-and let her rip for 10 to 20 seconds. You'll get a feel for this with experience. I hold the top down on the blender until it stabilizes the load-particularly if I have filled it so full it is within an inch of the top. 4)Turn off the blender and pour the thick product into a food processor mounted securely over a largish pot. Now this next step is important: Turn the crank on the food processor BACKWARDS, SO AS TO LIFT THE SLURRY UP OFF THE BOTTOW SCREEN INSTEAD OF FORCING IT THROUGH. Quickly you will have a sludge of seeds with some very crude fine parts of tomato flesh (The hard white core like material left in the tomato interior after cleaning the tomatoes) in the bottom of the food processor. This is to be discarded. Mostly I just throw in in the garbage container with the peels and cores, then dump it into the garden. Occasionally I rinse out the food processor over the kitchen sink. Go ahead blender batch at a time until you are out of stewed tomatoes. You will be pleasantly surprised how fast the process goes and how thick and tasty the resulting seedless juice is. Finally, flavor your product as you like and process it in accord with USDA instructions for storage and later use. By the way, a 50% concentration of this juice in an electric roaster pan set at about 275F with a fan blowing over it will yield unburned tomato paste suitable for sauce or whatever.
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Chi
11 years ago
Sometimes I like to wonder what fruits and vegetables tasted like before we ruined the environment!
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nanny98
11 years ago
It is hard to know where our foods are grown, even harder to know how they are watered....however much of California vegies are grown in the Salinas Valley....a very long way from the Colorado River.Even the huge Central Valley, the 'bread basket' of the country, gets its water from Northern California. (DH worked many years for the Dept of Water Resources....sending it thru Sacramento River and aqueduct to our southern counties. Even some of our southernmost counties receive water thru the aqueduct .... more costly than Colorado River water, but lots of it goes SOUTH.
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User
11 years ago
Nanny, here's the quote from the newspaper article. I googled it and there's lots of corroborating info.

Rocket Fuel in Salad

Tests on lettuce samples from a California supermarket found the presence of this toxic substance, which leached from a defunct rocket fuel plant in Nevada into the Colorado River, which irrigates the fields where most American lettuce is grown.
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cookie8
11 years ago
I use a capful or so of hydrogen peroxide with water and soak my fruits/veggies. Plus I buy organic for the foods with highest pesticide ratings.
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rhizo_1 (North AL) zone 7
Original Author
11 years ago
Please understand that you must also treat certified organic food the same way. Approved pesticides can be harmful and must be washed off. Don't think that 'organic' means pesticide free.
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nanny98
11 years ago
Hey....did not mean to disagree over the 'rocket fuel in our salads'....was only intending to post a bit of geography. Those articles are probably 100% accurate. I have spent a winter in Yuma, AZ/Winter Haven CA and, yes, they grow miles and miles of green veggies, irrigated 24/7 for markets all over the world...2 towns 5 minutes apart, but you cannot take vegies from AZ to Ca.....crossing the Colorado River. I don't think, they ship to Ca either.
And, I am not saying that I believe the Sacramento River water is as wonderful after it leaves the Sierra Nevada Mountains and travels thru those aqueducts that have had every kind of 'unmentionable object' found in them; its just not Colorado River Water sent to where a great amount of agriculture is grown in California. My former state has 500 miles of canals and aqueducts carrying water from Northern California to the Central Valley even over the Techapi Mountains into the Los Angeles Basin and a more recent aqueduct to the counties near San Luis Obispo and Santa Maria on the coast. The water begins its long journey in the Siskious near the Oregon border and becomes the Sacramento River. There are huge storage resevoirs/dams all along the route toward the San Francisco Bay where is it retrieved and piped into the huge aqueduct that takes it south and east and west.

A thread on another message board asked 'what sight-seeing thing in your area most impressed you and would you like to share with others'.....so maybe that was on my mind when your thread came up. WATER....California's real Gold.And the Aqueduct which is the life blood of much of California.
Pesticides in our water....in our air....in ourselves, let me count the ways.
Genetically altered whatevers.....wow, topics that make one wonder what kind of 'altered' future we have facing us.
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User
11 years ago
Yes, that's the big picture. Even if you buy supposedly organic, safe produce, it can still be (and more than likely is) contaminated by the water, soil, whatever. I guess we are doomed, no matter how clean we try to keep our diet.
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kayjones
11 years ago
When I go to the store and watch how shoppers handle the food, going so far as to open the package (Strawberrys), take some fruit out with their hands and put it up to their noses to smell, there is NO WAY I would prepare it without washing it first - EWWWWWW!!!
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For those who use juicers or blenders

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rhizo_1 (North AL) zone 7Original Author

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