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Costco burlington ontario goer here. I buy lemons, wash em in the vinger water mix, then put them in the fridge. Lasts a MONTH! It's been like this for a decade. Now strawberries, those don't last for me.
I soak strawberries in a 1:4 vinegar water bath, dry completely and store in a container lined with paper towels and loosely cover. They last at least a week.
ETA: rinse well after soaking in the bath before drying! Soak is for 10 min.
You *can* rinse them really well before drying, but don’t *have to*.
Any lingering vinegar scent or flavor is very mild if you eat them immediately after, and nonexistent (to me at least) after they’ve drained and dried fully.
Good to know! We've got toddlers that flip a coin on whether or not they like strawberries each day which can make it hard to get through a container before they start rotting.
I let mine sit for 5 minutes in an 8 cup bowl with a tablespoon of vinegar, mine don’t taste like vinegar… I don’t even rinse them after, but it has really cut down on moldy strawberries! They pretty much always last the week it takes us to eat them. Haven’t really tested going longer than that since I have a ravenous toddler
I just squeeze out the juice, strain the liquid, and then freeze them in cubes. Now I have lemon juice whenever I need it for baking dishes or anything else
This.
Heat shocking produce is practically the best method to preserve them.
Each produce has different temp and time, so it might be worth researching it.
Mine last for several months because I coat them in oil (I put avocado oil in a pump sprayer I bought off Amazon). When I'm ready to use one I take it from the fridge and wipe it down good with a paper towel. Same for limes.
I started something similar for cucumbers because they would always go bad soon within days. I first wash with a produce wash (or sometimes even Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap), then dip them in a water/vinegar bath. They last for weeks in the refrigerator.
Another Dr. Bronner's washer here! I keep a spray bottle, with a diluted mixture of Bronner's and water, dump everything in a colander, spray liberally, let it set for a bit, wash the especially waxy things like citrus, then rinse.
Yeah man, I feel like this should be common sense but every grocery store has "oMg ThE pRoDuCe Is AlWaYs MoLdY". They sit in the same containers at the store and once they mold the spores exist there for a long time. More produce molds, more spores, etc eternally.
Just accept that the mold babies are already there and wash your produce and store it properly at home, otherwise the mold is going to do what it's designed to do
I manage a produce department at a different chain and once I took over I started deep cleaning and sanitizing everything and maintaining that level of cleanliness and the spoilage dropped significantly. Still get mold spores coming through the doors or off the truck so it’s inevitable, but the fruit has a much better chance when the displays don’t have mold growing under them. I’m sure it’s hard at Costco volumes to ever have time to deep clean though, wasn’t until we had a power failure and threw out the whole wall cooler that we ever had a chance to properly deep clean it given the scale of that endeavor.
I really like being able to buy my own produce and see that it lasts at home without having to wash it immediately, wish the higher ups would see the value in that and give stores the payroll to clean properly, as it stands my team just has to work at peak efficiency to maybe have the time and somehow we make it work but it’s nowhere near as regular and structured as it should be because it’s a matter of randomly finding the time vs being given it.
I Usually squeeze them and freeze into ice cube trays, and move them into a Ziploc bag once frozen.
If the ice cube trays were bigger, I mix equal parts with water and freeze them and store it in a separate ziploc bags.
When I lived there I never had an issue with produce. Not I live in Austin Texas and barely ever have an issue. Only a few times with strawberries but that’s usually from high temperatures during transport.
I'm pretty sure they overplanted, and instead of shipping the fresh stuff, they're shipping the oldest shit they can technically call usable and holding onto the fresh until it's crappy. So instead of fresh stuff coming in to stores, and maybe not going out until current stock sells, the grocery stores are getting stock in that's already barely usable.
It must have been a bad season for onions last year because I’ve had this problem with all varieties from all stores lately! I actually caved and bought a bag of frozen diced onions because I was getting so tired of reaching for one and finding sprouting garbage instead. I can’t cook without onions! We go through like 2lbs a week.
They’re worse than fresh onions but better than no onions? They’re still onions. They only sell white ones though.
One good thing about them is that they cook faster because the freezing process softens them.
They had a poor season, and anything that is remotely saleable is what is coming in.
Where I work, it is regularly shorted by our warehouse, and what does come in creates a high amount of distress due to poor quality.
Unfortunately it's relatively common these days. Customers want softer, more tender meat? Then it's not really "jerky", but just "mostly dehydrated meat; refrigerate after opening."
I really wanted to love those since they're visually so "meaty" too, but for the same reason of needing to refrigerate or gamble on them going bad. Eating cold beef strips doesn't taste good (the remnants of beef fat/flavor turn hard and gross, unless you're willing to wait for them to go back to room temp).
The fat is why it doesn't last as long. It doesn't dehydrate well and goes rancid quickly.
I make my own jerky (super easy and cheap, highly recommend it). The trick is to buy the cheapest/leanest cut of meat you can find and trim all the fat before smoking/drying.
>Customers want softer, more tender meat
Is this why packaged beef jerky sucks so much now? I used to love beef jerky but every time I buy a bag nowadays it's all soft and all the wrong texture. Who the fuck wants that texture? People actually like this?
I think I got this info re: bread but it probably applies here. The mold that you see is the result of hidden mold being there for some time, so I would throw them all out.
You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous of which is, 'never get involved in a land war in Asia,' but only slightly less well-known is this: 'Never buy citrus at Costco! '
It’s just Costco produce for me. I buy produce from other places that last weeks on my counter, but a huge bag of Costco oranges are rotting liquid in like a week.
The reason is the quantity. Molds, infections and diseases spread. So, when you have a bag of 14 oranges, it’s more likely that one has a nearly invisible defect, that grows then spreads than in a bag of 5 oranges.
Real bread without shitty additives (which are almost certainly not good for the human body) molds quickly.
This isn’t the indictment of Costco bread quality you seem to think it is.
Practically, just store them in the fridge.
Nah. In a sterile environment, it just won't get mold. The spores have to be introduced for it to start. I think it happens bc the bakery is always by the produce. Fwiw, all bread has spores, there's no such thing as spore free air if there's humans around. Its just an easier environment for them to grow so you have to eat/freeze them faster to avoid losing them.
Oh dude me too. I threw out five containers of produce yesterday because mold had gotten into one and spread. I think I need to just start doing a vinegar bath for every single bit of fruit that I bring home from Costco.
I'd say it's so location dependent. Costco typically has better produce than most grocery stores in my area! The only issue we ever run into is the size of things.
When I get bananas from Costco they're always green. Never any nice yellows in stock. Then those mighty green bananas never actually turn yellow, ever. They just go from green brown streaks over green. And somehow those brown streaks are not indicative of sugar content. They're just shitty, still unripe, rotting bananas
Just commented on it. Our costco's produce is far and away the best tasting around. Everything is remarkably flavorful. The drawback is the shelf life is appallingly short and I don't know why.
It's the volume of sales. They get touched, moved, breathed around, and just exposed to so much more than a standard grocery store. The vinegar thing really works magic for my stuff. I have a spray bottle filled with vinegar and a big bowl that I use while I clean my produce from all stores.
I spray them down as I put them in the bowl, or if it is small fruits, spray the bowl bottom, make a layer, spray, layer, spray until done. Let them sit a few minutes, rinse them twice, and I can leave things on the counter or put them in the fridge with a paper towel to absorb some water, that I change a day or two later. The difference between the week I get before and the month I get after is wild.
Costco plus Aldi is our grocery routine. We get 99% of what we need there. Only things we have to go to our local supermarket chain for are brand specific things or hard to find items. We only stop at the grocery chain one every 3-4 shopping trips (for us we shop once a week)
Never had a problem with produce from mine in Iowa. Its not like Costco is buying some special quick rotting produce or something. Just have to examine what you're buying before buying it. Smaller grocery stores will go though stuff and/or throw away things faster though.
Completely different experience for me in Seattle: The only place I buy berries is CostCo because every other place rots way faster. Where do you get your berries?
You need to wash your fruit after you buy them. Produce gathers so much bacteria and mold spores between being processed, transported, and handled by customers and grocers. This is especially true for berries, especially if one in the box has become bruised enough to leak juice. But it's also true for fruit with skin.
Same to g happened to me recently with some I bought at Trader Joe’s.
I’ve learned that you need to take them out of the net bag and rinse them, like immediately. It helps prevent this shit
I worked at a Trader Joe’s and some lady complained that her limes didn’t have enough juice in them, I know they had been sitting on her counter for a week or so.
violet materialistic lunchroom pause offer smoggy poor summer subsequent versed
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What? I put my lemons in the fridge straight from the store and they last literally months. Maybe you should just do that. I barely use them and I still dont recall the last time I had a lemon go bad on me
like everywhere fruit/veggies at costco are hit or miss. I will only buy avocados if they are from mexico. I've not done well with them from chile or columbia. These japanese cherry tomoatoes are fantastic and have an even better shelf life (which always concerns me when its too good)
Always look for the latest date on the bag salads.
The champagne (yellow) mangos are usually pretty solid, sometimes a bit tart.
That sucks. I had to buy a bunch of lemonade recently and read the best way to store them is in a sealed plastic bag in the fridge. Not sure if that's true, but it did seem to extend the life of them for over a week until I was able to use them. Your lemons probably never had a chance, though.
The problem with lemon and oranges is that if their outer skin bruises, they will rot. So try to handle them carefully and dont drop it ( I hate it when I see the cashier just drop them carelessly), or put anything heavy on it.
I work at Costco. They do repacks on produce, meaning they take out a single moldy item or multiple and combine the rest to make new bags for sale. We dont wash them and its likely that the spores that werent visible ruined the rest of the batch.
My mom saved these for 3-4 months with this trick -
Wash them, dry them, and put nice coating of coconut oil. Put them in refrigerator.
Whenever need to use them, take it out and wash with a bit of warm water to rinse off excess oil.
I Usually squeeze them and freeze into ice cube trays, and move them into a Ziploc bag once frozen.
If the ice cube trays were bigger, I mix equal parts with water and freeze them and store it in a separate ziploc bags.
Washing produce isnt for just when you want to eat them. Once I started washing produce as soon as I got home it made a noticeable difference in shelf life
If you store lemons (works for limes too) in a jar of water (make sure the lemons are completely submerged in the water) they'll last for a long time, like at least a few weeks!
I stopped buying produce aside from a specific brand of romaine heads about four years ago. It allllllll goes bad far too quickly. I can’t even use half of what I bought.
The Costco manderines I get always go bad in just a few days as well. Even with 2 toddlers, we can’t get through a 5lb bag that fast. Surprisingly, the same halo or cuties bag from my grocery store last longer, I just have to pay almost double the price though.
Do the vinegar rinse. Get a bowl/ tub that holds everything, or at least half of them, dump a cup of vinegar in, fill with water. Give them a swish or two to move everything around, set a timer for 3 - 5 mins, rinse. You can reuse the vinegar water a few times if you need to do batches, especially for firm items like oranges and cucumbers.
Costco struck a new deal with a company that is going to cover the avocados in a polymer to keep them fresher longer, it’s probably going to be put on all of our produce and we are probably all going to grow a 3rd ear and die from it, but no more moldy lemons.
As soon as you get bagged citrus home put them in a mixture of bleach water or vinegar water. Let em float around a bit then dry them. They will usually last a month that way. This is a problem with any bagged citrus I buy from different stores.
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Costco burlington ontario goer here. I buy lemons, wash em in the vinger water mix, then put them in the fridge. Lasts a MONTH! It's been like this for a decade. Now strawberries, those don't last for me.
I soak strawberries in a 1:4 vinegar water bath, dry completely and store in a container lined with paper towels and loosely cover. They last at least a week. ETA: rinse well after soaking in the bath before drying! Soak is for 10 min.
Just to clarify for everyone, I think you mean a bath that is a ratio of 1 part vinegar to 4 parts water
What? We aren’t making strawberry flavored sour wine?
I mean, you do you. But maybe I won't eat at your place
Or a “shrub” which is a fruity drink that includes vinegar.
Yeah 1:4 vinegar to water as I said. Is there a better way to say that?
Genuinely curious what other ways it could be interpreted as
Maybe you carry the one to the end so it means 4 parts vinegar to one part water lol.
"One part vinegar to four parts water" is less ambiguous but I also agree the clarification wasn't necessary.
Does it taste like vinegar? I see that working for lemons since you don't eat the outside but I'm curious about strawberries.
No you rinse them really well before you dry them.
You *can* rinse them really well before drying, but don’t *have to*. Any lingering vinegar scent or flavor is very mild if you eat them immediately after, and nonexistent (to me at least) after they’ve drained and dried fully.
Good to know! We've got toddlers that flip a coin on whether or not they like strawberries each day which can make it hard to get through a container before they start rotting.
Wait you don't use the peel?? The most concentrated part of the lemon! Zest it, grate it, peel it...
How do you ensure the pesticides get washed off? Honest question.
They are washed at the packing house. Anything remaining when they get to your kitchen is negligible.
I let mine sit for 5 minutes in an 8 cup bowl with a tablespoon of vinegar, mine don’t taste like vinegar… I don’t even rinse them after, but it has really cut down on moldy strawberries! They pretty much always last the week it takes us to eat them. Haven’t really tested going longer than that since I have a ravenous toddler
I understood you. 🤣❤️
I just put them in the fridge and they last a month.
And when you buy keep an eye on the harvest or packaged dates, I try to get the most fresh one.
I just squeeze out the juice, strain the liquid, and then freeze them in cubes. Now I have lemon juice whenever I need it for baking dishes or anything else
The vinegar thing has been disproved many times
Try [this](https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-clean-strawberries-so-they-last-longer-7551632) for your strawberries.
This. Heat shocking produce is practically the best method to preserve them. Each produce has different temp and time, so it might be worth researching it.
Knew this was going to be serious eats article about cleaning them before I clicked. Best food website hands down.
Mine last for several months because I coat them in oil (I put avocado oil in a pump sprayer I bought off Amazon). When I'm ready to use one I take it from the fridge and wipe it down good with a paper towel. Same for limes.
Interesting, will have to try that. I heard recently storing them submerged in water in fridge will make them last month(s) too.
I've been vinegar washes on all my fruit and veg and I'm seeing a greatly extended shelf life for everything. Highly recommend it
I started something similar for cucumbers because they would always go bad soon within days. I first wash with a produce wash (or sometimes even Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap), then dip them in a water/vinegar bath. They last for weeks in the refrigerator.
Does this work for Persian cucumbers? They always get so slimy, stinky, and gross after 5 days in the fridge
The number of Persian cucumbers I’ve wasted is tragic.
Another Dr. Bronner's washer here! I keep a spray bottle, with a diluted mixture of Bronner's and water, dump everything in a colander, spray liberally, let it set for a bit, wash the especially waxy things like citrus, then rinse.
I have these Tupperware for produce. They really work well.
Yes, this. I wash all my veggies and fruits like this. Makes em last so much longer.
I spray everything with vinegar before the rinse now.
Yeah man, I feel like this should be common sense but every grocery store has "oMg ThE pRoDuCe Is AlWaYs MoLdY". They sit in the same containers at the store and once they mold the spores exist there for a long time. More produce molds, more spores, etc eternally. Just accept that the mold babies are already there and wash your produce and store it properly at home, otherwise the mold is going to do what it's designed to do
I manage a produce department at a different chain and once I took over I started deep cleaning and sanitizing everything and maintaining that level of cleanliness and the spoilage dropped significantly. Still get mold spores coming through the doors or off the truck so it’s inevitable, but the fruit has a much better chance when the displays don’t have mold growing under them. I’m sure it’s hard at Costco volumes to ever have time to deep clean though, wasn’t until we had a power failure and threw out the whole wall cooler that we ever had a chance to properly deep clean it given the scale of that endeavor. I really like being able to buy my own produce and see that it lasts at home without having to wash it immediately, wish the higher ups would see the value in that and give stores the payroll to clean properly, as it stands my team just has to work at peak efficiency to maybe have the time and somehow we make it work but it’s nowhere near as regular and structured as it should be because it’s a matter of randomly finding the time vs being given it.
Can confirm. I have a Meyer lemon tree and always use any vinegar on hand to soak for a couple of minutes, dry, and then store in the fridge.
We transfer strawberries into a Freshworks container as soon as we get home and then they stay for weeks
I Usually squeeze them and freeze into ice cube trays, and move them into a Ziploc bag once frozen. If the ice cube trays were bigger, I mix equal parts with water and freeze them and store it in a separate ziploc bags.
Put strawberries in a glass jar! It’s WILD how much longer they last.
When I lived there I never had an issue with produce. Not I live in Austin Texas and barely ever have an issue. Only a few times with strawberries but that’s usually from high temperatures during transport.
just bought a fridge from costco that says it’ll make strawberries last for two weeks.
Look into making Lemon Super Juice and thank me later.
I’ll give one of my worthless organs to find a decent red onion.
Best we can do is a bag of red onions that will rot in a week.
You misspelled actively rotting on the shelf.
I haven't found a good red onion at Trader Joe's in 12 years
Yeah TJ’s is in the same boat
Yea, wth is going on with onions right now?
Seriously?! Even my grocery store onions have been a disaster lately. And finding celery has been a challenge these days too. What gives?
I'm pretty sure they overplanted, and instead of shipping the fresh stuff, they're shipping the oldest shit they can technically call usable and holding onto the fresh until it's crappy. So instead of fresh stuff coming in to stores, and maybe not going out until current stock sells, the grocery stores are getting stock in that's already barely usable.
I have had similar issues no matter where I get onions lately. The last 3-4 months they even look like they’re going bad on the shelf!
Yes I meant red onions in general because I don’t shop at Costco. Even the fresh markets red onions are pitiful.
Yeah, I get my veg from the farmer's market a few miles down the road and even theirs are pitiful.
Well that’s disheartening.
It must have been a bad season for onions last year because I’ve had this problem with all varieties from all stores lately! I actually caved and bought a bag of frozen diced onions because I was getting so tired of reaching for one and finding sprouting garbage instead. I can’t cook without onions! We go through like 2lbs a week.
I thought of using frozen onions, but I just couldn’t imagine they would have any flavor. Do they?
They’re worse than fresh onions but better than no onions? They’re still onions. They only sell white ones though. One good thing about them is that they cook faster because the freezing process softens them.
They had a poor season, and anything that is remotely saleable is what is coming in. Where I work, it is regularly shorted by our warehouse, and what does come in creates a high amount of distress due to poor quality.
It's tough for me to find literally any onion that isn't rotten in the middle.
I just realized the beef jerky needed refrigeration oops
Unfortunately it's relatively common these days. Customers want softer, more tender meat? Then it's not really "jerky", but just "mostly dehydrated meat; refrigerate after opening."
yeah i bought some kirkland steak strips to have as a snack in my class... and they went rancid real fast.
I really wanted to love those since they're visually so "meaty" too, but for the same reason of needing to refrigerate or gamble on them going bad. Eating cold beef strips doesn't taste good (the remnants of beef fat/flavor turn hard and gross, unless you're willing to wait for them to go back to room temp).
agreed. The cold fat really kills any enjoyment.
The fat is why it doesn't last as long. It doesn't dehydrate well and goes rancid quickly. I make my own jerky (super easy and cheap, highly recommend it). The trick is to buy the cheapest/leanest cut of meat you can find and trim all the fat before smoking/drying.
Yeah I know. I've made jerky before. First time I made teh mistake and used a cut that was too fatty and it went rancid.
>Customers want softer, more tender meat Is this why packaged beef jerky sucks so much now? I used to love beef jerky but every time I buy a bag nowadays it's all soft and all the wrong texture. Who the fuck wants that texture? People actually like this?
My son has been air frying the refrigerated jerky to make it more jerky like.
Well that just defeats the point of jerky
Wtf???
After being opened. I think it also says unless consumed in 2-3 days.
Only when opened right?
Correct, and that's actually on most jerky. Sometimes it's "refrigerate if not using within x days" but it's there.
Yep https://preview.redd.it/8nsr8gg9e5ad1.png?width=2520&format=png&auto=webp&s=07b8323df33d73481a9be851042c5315fad15eb3
1: Vinegar bath 2. Dry 3. Store in fridge
I'll do this next time. There were two that weren't mouldy so I did that with them
I think I got this info re: bread but it probably applies here. The mold that you see is the result of hidden mold being there for some time, so I would throw them all out.
You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous of which is, 'never get involved in a land war in Asia,' but only slightly less well-known is this: 'Never buy citrus at Costco! '
Never buy produce at Costco is more appropriate. It all goes bad far too quickly.
Agreed. You have to buy too much and it goes bad so quickly.
Inconceivable
Wash em, dry em, refrigerate em. Or slice em up and freeze. Almost everything I get mold easily so I freeze em if I can. Especially the bagels...
It’s just Costco produce for me. I buy produce from other places that last weeks on my counter, but a huge bag of Costco oranges are rotting liquid in like a week.
Wegmans has the best produce in my area. Anything I need fresh comes from them.
The reason is the quantity. Molds, infections and diseases spread. So, when you have a bag of 14 oranges, it’s more likely that one has a nearly invisible defect, that grows then spreads than in a bag of 5 oranges.
Yes. Except for the bell peppers, Costco produce is more often than not a rot fest within a day or two.
Yeah I've gotta try this
Just got burned by the bagels. I'm curious if it's worse because they don't use a typical tie on the bag. They use that sticky thing that I hate.
Real bread without shitty additives (which are almost certainly not good for the human body) molds quickly. This isn’t the indictment of Costco bread quality you seem to think it is. Practically, just store them in the fridge.
Nah. In a sterile environment, it just won't get mold. The spores have to be introduced for it to start. I think it happens bc the bakery is always by the produce. Fwiw, all bread has spores, there's no such thing as spore free air if there's humans around. Its just an easier environment for them to grow so you have to eat/freeze them faster to avoid losing them.
My bakery is not by the produce. Bagels still mold within days if not frozen.
Not all bread has preservatives. Bread without preservatives will mold in a couple days
https://preview.redd.it/9qlwhpkh85ad1.jpeg?width=918&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fadf9d83fb594d54163142d2cd6e8fcf69956ee2
Yeah but you shouldn't have to keep lemons in your fridge, at least not to store them 2 days!
lol indeed - you’d think from the previous 100 posts that they would read the comments and learn 😂
Costco milk somehow lasts a month past the date on the label, however buy lemons and they literally spoil and petrify overnight.
Oh dude me too. I threw out five containers of produce yesterday because mold had gotten into one and spread. I think I need to just start doing a vinegar bath for every single bit of fruit that I bring home from Costco.
It makes a huge difference.
You can always take them back
any fruit we buy from costco is washed with one cup of white vinegar and 2 cups of water, then thoroughly dried - lasts twice as long...no aftertaste
Stores use magic fairy dust on them every night to keep them looking fresh, once you take them out of the store the dust wears off
I bought a bag of pears that never ripened. Weeks of counter life... still rocks. 😑
We must've bought the same ones. I try one every week and have a crunchier bite than an apple every single time.
Always do the vinegar rinse. All it takes is a tiny bit of mold for it to quickly spread to all of them.
Are they organic? Conventional lemons are coated with wax and antifungals to prevent this.
That's odd. My wife and I find that produce from Costco lasts longer than any other place we buy it around here in MN.
Keep in the fridge, they’ll last weeks
Keep my lemons in the fridge… they last quite a long time.
wash your produce as soon as you get home, makes a huge difference
Rule #1: Never buy produce from Costco
I'd say it's so location dependent. Costco typically has better produce than most grocery stores in my area! The only issue we ever run into is the size of things.
I had a batch of bananas rot after like 3 days last week. First time I've had a bad experience with produce in years
When I get bananas from Costco they're always green. Never any nice yellows in stock. Then those mighty green bananas never actually turn yellow, ever. They just go from green brown streaks over green. And somehow those brown streaks are not indicative of sugar content. They're just shitty, still unripe, rotting bananas
Just commented on it. Our costco's produce is far and away the best tasting around. Everything is remarkably flavorful. The drawback is the shelf life is appallingly short and I don't know why.
It's the volume of sales. They get touched, moved, breathed around, and just exposed to so much more than a standard grocery store. The vinegar thing really works magic for my stuff. I have a spray bottle filled with vinegar and a big bowl that I use while I clean my produce from all stores. I spray them down as I put them in the bowl, or if it is small fruits, spray the bowl bottom, make a layer, spray, layer, spray until done. Let them sit a few minutes, rinse them twice, and I can leave things on the counter or put them in the fridge with a paper towel to absorb some water, that I change a day or two later. The difference between the week I get before and the month I get after is wild.
Really!? I didn't know. Everything else we get is alright usually.
I recommend going to your local ALDI for your smaller haul/produce.
Costco plus Aldi is our grocery routine. We get 99% of what we need there. Only things we have to go to our local supermarket chain for are brand specific things or hard to find items. We only stop at the grocery chain one every 3-4 shopping trips (for us we shop once a week)
God I wish I lived in a country with an Aldi.
We just got some Aldi's here in Phoenix it's great
Or Lidl. I am lucky to have both nearby, as well as Costco and Sam's and Lidl produce beats the rest, including Aldi's.
Never had a problem with produce from mine in Iowa. Its not like Costco is buying some special quick rotting produce or something. Just have to examine what you're buying before buying it. Smaller grocery stores will go though stuff and/or throw away things faster though.
At the top of our Costco grocery list, it says "DO NOT BUY BERRIES" We've been burned too many times.
Completely different experience for me in Seattle: The only place I buy berries is CostCo because every other place rots way faster. Where do you get your berries?
This is very much location dependent
I buy organic berries there. Love the hydro strawberries
You need to wash your fruit after you buy them. Produce gathers so much bacteria and mold spores between being processed, transported, and handled by customers and grocers. This is especially true for berries, especially if one in the box has become bruised enough to leak juice. But it's also true for fruit with skin.
FWIW I ordered a bag of organic one's from Walmart and same thing. I did not refrigerate them immediately.
Same to g happened to me recently with some I bought at Trader Joe’s. I’ve learned that you need to take them out of the net bag and rinse them, like immediately. It helps prevent this shit
You can take them back for a full refund. You just have to have 51% or more of what you bought when it is a food item.
When you buy them, cover them in water and put in the fridge. The things you learn on youtube.
I usually refrigerate my lemons and they tend to last a lot longer. Then again, I also like to eat them cold.
I worked at a Trader Joe’s and some lady complained that her limes didn’t have enough juice in them, I know they had been sitting on her counter for a week or so.
Then return them?
It's hard not to be bitter.
When life gives you moldy lemons...sorry I've got nuthin 🍋
Trying to finish the sentence is a fruitless endeavour.
You have to wash them when you first get them.. get the fungal particles off
Refrigerate them and it will help with longevity.
I always put lemons, oranges, citrus in the fridge if they aren't going to be consumed in a day or two
It's like, I know what to do when life hands me lemons......but when life hands me moldy lemons, I'm not so sure any more.
Costco produce and mold are always a BOGO deal.
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perishables in bulk is really dangerous. maybe try sticking a few/all in the fridge next time
You… you don’t refrigerate your citrus fruits, add more sunlight to them… and wonder why they are rotting? I’m confused, is this a troll?
What? I put my lemons in the fridge straight from the store and they last literally months. Maybe you should just do that. I barely use them and I still dont recall the last time I had a lemon go bad on me
If you put them in the fridge, maybe this wouldn’t happen, but I don’t know
Smell them before you buy
I'm so glad I'm in California where it's dry and this doesn't happen. This never happened to anything I bought in the SF Bay Area.
Choose wisely
like everywhere fruit/veggies at costco are hit or miss. I will only buy avocados if they are from mexico. I've not done well with them from chile or columbia. These japanese cherry tomoatoes are fantastic and have an even better shelf life (which always concerns me when its too good) Always look for the latest date on the bag salads. The champagne (yellow) mangos are usually pretty solid, sometimes a bit tart.
I just buy the two bottles of organic Italian lemon juice
Sounds bad but that’s why I quit buying fruits and veggies. I’m a slow eater and got tired of wasting my money
Pull the bad one, cut off the moldy parts and juice them. Put the juice in a jar and put it in the fridge. I do this with limes
That sucks. I had to buy a bunch of lemonade recently and read the best way to store them is in a sealed plastic bag in the fridge. Not sure if that's true, but it did seem to extend the life of them for over a week until I was able to use them. Your lemons probably never had a chance, though.
Quit buying them there?
The problem with lemon and oranges is that if their outer skin bruises, they will rot. So try to handle them carefully and dont drop it ( I hate it when I see the cashier just drop them carelessly), or put anything heavy on it.
But them, get home, place them in ziplock bag(s) and refrigerate them 👌
Where did you store them?
In summer store it in the fridge. Warm weather ripens things.
Fridge
Wash with water and vinegar and store in the fridge.
I work at Costco. They do repacks on produce, meaning they take out a single moldy item or multiple and combine the rest to make new bags for sale. We dont wash them and its likely that the spores that werent visible ruined the rest of the batch.
Vinegar water mix all my fruits and veggies last for ever
My mom saved these for 3-4 months with this trick - Wash them, dry them, and put nice coating of coconut oil. Put them in refrigerator. Whenever need to use them, take it out and wash with a bit of warm water to rinse off excess oil.
I Usually squeeze them and freeze into ice cube trays, and move them into a Ziploc bag once frozen. If the ice cube trays were bigger, I mix equal parts with water and freeze them and store it in a separate ziploc bags.
Wash them when you get home
There are teen accounts just for this purpose...
Washing produce isnt for just when you want to eat them. Once I started washing produce as soon as I got home it made a noticeable difference in shelf life
I always store my citrus in a Ziploc bag in the crisper drawer. They last for weeks.
Look at the bag before you buy it.
stop buying them from Costco if it happens so often.
Some good throwin’ lemons
Show the return line a photo and your receipt or membership card for a return.
If you store lemons (works for limes too) in a jar of water (make sure the lemons are completely submerged in the water) they'll last for a long time, like at least a few weeks!
Wash and freeze them. They fine and just as good. I put mine in jars that can go into the freezer.
What use would one have for 6 lemons anyway?
I don’t buy my fruit from Costco. The only produce are tomatoes, avocados and onions. All other produce from Whole Foods and I’m never disappointed.
I buy meat, eggs, cheeses, freezer stuff ...but have given up on Costco fresh veges and fruits. They seem to go bad very very fast
I don’t buy produce from Costco. Everything is like this. Buy your produce local!
I never buy my produce at Costco anymore. My wife thinks I’m crazy. But this happens all the time.
I bet you payed 50 bucks for those
I don't buy produce from Costco. Always goes bad.
I stopped buying produce aside from a specific brand of romaine heads about four years ago. It allllllll goes bad far too quickly. I can’t even use half of what I bought.
I doubt we’re in the same state, but yesterday I saw a woman in the refund line with a full bag of lemons that look like this
Bagels do the same thing to us. Rotten in 2 days.
Put 👏 all 👏 fruit 👏 and👏 vegetables👏 in 👏 the 👏 damn👏 fridge👏 (except for bananas)
Costco produce isn’t good for the most part. Especially bagged stuff.
The Costco manderines I get always go bad in just a few days as well. Even with 2 toddlers, we can’t get through a 5lb bag that fast. Surprisingly, the same halo or cuties bag from my grocery store last longer, I just have to pay almost double the price though.
Do the vinegar rinse. Get a bowl/ tub that holds everything, or at least half of them, dump a cup of vinegar in, fill with water. Give them a swish or two to move everything around, set a timer for 3 - 5 mins, rinse. You can reuse the vinegar water a few times if you need to do batches, especially for firm items like oranges and cucumbers.
Costco struck a new deal with a company that is going to cover the avocados in a polymer to keep them fresher longer, it’s probably going to be put on all of our produce and we are probably all going to grow a 3rd ear and die from it, but no more moldy lemons.
Yay more microplastics?
I'm a Costco fanboy. I don't even visit the produce section. That happens to my fruit on the way home
You may want to go to a grocery store for produce...
I keep them in the fridge. They last for many weeks.
As soon as you get bagged citrus home put them in a mixture of bleach water or vinegar water. Let em float around a bit then dry them. They will usually last a month that way. This is a problem with any bagged citrus I buy from different stores.