WFMW - Keeping Salad/ Greens Fresh

For years, I bought bagged salad mix for our family. I guess I had convinced myself that I was being smart and saving money because when I bought lettuce, it usually went bad before we could use it all. There were several flaws in my thinking. First, this approach assumes that we would use all of the bagged salad before it could go bad. This almost never happened, even though we eat salads almost every day. Our bagged salad usually only stayed fresh for at most 2 days. This thinking also assumed that when I bought a $2.50 bag of salad that it was worth paying someone else to prep our salad, because doing it myself was so much work (ha!).

In an effort to get our grocery spending under control, about a year ago, I started buying romaine when it was on sale for $1.00 each (we have at least one store each week with lettuce on sale for $1.00), and washing and drying it myself (I saw a tip on Good Eats about spinning your lettuce in a pillow case in your clothes washer on the spin cycle if you don't have a salad spinner - pretty unusual, but it does work, lol). Washed and dried well, this lettuce will keep for about a week, and conveniently, provides about what our family can consume in a weeks time. Instead of spending $2.50 every other day (or about $7.50 a week) for lettuce, I was paying $1.00 a week (we are paying $0.00 a week right now because we are growing it in our garden from seeds - free salad is delicious!).

What works for me to keep our lettuce fresh for a whole week is to put a paper towel in the container with the salad. This helps to absorb the excess moisture that causes the lettuce to brown. So, our lettuce stays fresh and crisp for at least 7 days (and sometimes even longer, if we haven't finished it off by then.).

For more ideas check out Works for Me Wednesday at Rocks in My Dryer.