All Life Is Local: Still Life with Robin: Ah, But the Strawberries!

by Peggy Robin

Ever see The Caine Mutiny? There's a slightly mad captain with a particular paranoid obsession centered around intense desire to maintain his supply of strawberries.

I share a certain sympathy with the infamous (fictional) Captain Queeg. Not because I believe the people around me are conspiring to get my strawberries....but because time and nature are all against me. Hear me out.

Every week Ior so, I buy a plastic carton of fresh strawberries. And every morning I cut up one or two and have them in my cereal with milk. I enjoy the first two or three mornings with juicy, ripe, red strawberries in my cereal for breakfast, and then by day three or four, I am hunting for the one or two that still look plump and fresh. By day five or six, I'm checking to see if any in the carton has gone moldy, and if I see mold, I have to throw out the whole rest of the carton. And strawberries are not so cheap these days!

Nobody else in my family eats strawberries. In fact, both my daughters are slightly allergic to them (causes itching inside the mouth), so the suggestion to use them up faster is not applicable.

But a few weeks ago, someone on the internet passed along a strawberry-saving trick. I've tried it out and it seems to work, so I'm passing it along to you, in case you face a similar strawberry-time-passage dilemma.

Buy two dozen eggs that come in plastic cartons. Use all the eggs but save the plastic cartons. Wash and dry them and put them away. The next time you buy a pint of strawberries, get out the empty egg cartons and put the strawberries, one by one, in the egg holders, until you have emptied the strawberry carton and filled the egg cartons. There are usually 24 medium-sized strawberries in a pint basket. If it's a pint of mixed sizes, I've found that you tend to get an equal number of large ones and small ones, so you still tend to get 24 strawberries to a pint. That justs fills both egg cartons.

Store the filled egg cartons in the top shelf (least cold spot) of the refrigerator. After a few days, I think you'll find they are still looking nice and red. Maybe not quite so plump....but not starting to wither, either, and no mold growing anywhere. I've been doing this for a few weeks now, and not once have I had to throw out a moldy carton.

See the photo below -- it's been a week since I brought these guys home from the store and they're still looking pretty perky!