Two days for leaves, a week for roots, and a month for onions in the right place. Buying to that pattern will save you money.
The most common complaint about vegetables on an island is that they do not last. Usually the vegetables are fine and the plan was wrong, so here is the pattern we buy to and the one worth shopping to.
Leaves are two days. Anything green and soft that comes off a boat on a Wednesday morning is excellent that day, good on Thursday and tired by Friday. Buy them for the days you will actually cook them and do not buy a week of them.
Fruiting vegetables are three to five days. Tomatoes, cucumbers, capsicum and beans will hold most of a week if they are kept out of the sun and not in a sealed bag. A sealed bag in this climate is a small greenhouse.
Roots and hard vegetables are a week or two. Carrots, cabbage, pumpkin. Cabbage in particular is the most underrated thing on a boat: it arrives hard, it keeps for ten days and you can take a leaf at a time.
Onions, potatoes and garlic are a month if you keep them dry, dark and apart from each other. Onions and potatoes stored in the same basket spoil each other, which is a piece of kitchen advice older than any of us and still ignored in half the houses on this island.
Frozen is until you break the chain, and here is the thing people get wrong. A bag of chicken that thaws on the walk home and goes back in a freezer is no longer safe, whatever it looks like. That is why our frozen goods travel in a cool box and why we will not hold a frozen order for more than two days.
Buy to that pattern and your weekly shopping gets cheaper without you buying anything cheaper.
