2nd Day of Christmas - 5 ways to keep food fresh for Christmas and Entertaining
Welcome to the 2nd day of Christmas! What are you planning this weekend? Are you already heading to the shops in preparation for a family get-together? Here are some tips around choosing food at the shops or market and storing it safely when you get home.
1. If you're buying meat or cheese, try and choose portions that have a longer expiry date, to make sure when you're storing it in the fridge it doesn't reach it's expiry before it's time to cook it. It might take a bit of searching in the fridges and frost bitten fingers, but it's well worth it.
2. You'll be buying berries for your pav or trifle of course, and you want to keep those babies plump and juicy. The best way to do this, is as soon as you get them home, remove them from the plastic (and recycle), wash them in cold water, then place a paper towel in the bottom of a reuseable container and place the berries in there, close the lid and pop in the fridge. They will stay so much fresher and make some space in your crisper if you normally store them down there.
3. For those of us in the Southern Hemisphere, it's hot right. And with more heat, and more people in the house, the fridge is opened way more often than it's used to. So check the temperature on your fridge and make sure you're not storing perishables like custard, cream, milk in the door - as that's where the most exposure from heat and constant door openings occur. This will avoid those perishables being compromised - and subsequently the pudding or the pav!
4. Consider the types of storage options you're using to keep your food fresh. Are they sustainable, can they be reused, are they created from sustainable materials, can they be created from other packaging like jars, plastic bags from bread rolls, baby spinach bags. Consider sustainably sourcing packaging when you take food to a friend or relatives house as well, to limit the amount of waste at other's houses too. Of course, make sure it's always sealed well, and this can be done using rubber bands (from say your asparagus or herbs), or those reusable snap clips.
5. And finally, when you're entertaining, recruit a family member to be the food marshal. They can be your person that ensures wastage of our beautiful food is avoided, because let's be honest it's precious and it's super expensive at the moment. They can make sure the brie cheese doesn't stay out too long and melt into a puddle, they can cover the salads or pop them in the fridge when it looks like everyone has reached capacity, they can be in charge of creating doggy bags for your guests so that you don't end up with ALL the leftover food with possibly no way to store it, or not having enough mouths at home to eat it all.
I hope these 5 tips help you during the silly season. Most of all enjoy your food, entertaining or being entertained, savour moments with loved ones, appreciate where our food comes from and try something new that's sustainable or limiting waste.
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