How to Store Leafy Greens
You’re making your famous salsa for friends and your cilantro from last week is vibrant, fragrant and ready to use. Or the abundance of your garden’s spinach is alive and perky for your blue cheese and pear salad, easily two weeks after being picked. This is your beautiful life with Abeego.
Unlike avocados or cantaloupes, greens don’t have their own skin or rind to protect their delicate leafiness. You are the knight in this story and Abeego is your shining armor. Save your greens and enjoy them to the last bite. Simply eat, wrap, eat, repeat.
Keep reading, our leaf-loving friend, and learn how to store your leafy greens with Abeego.
KEEP GREENS FRESH IN ABEEGO | IT’S SIMPLE
Like your mom, the Internet is full of advice on food storage and how to keep greens fresh. From putting the stems in a jar of cold water, or placing them in an airtight container with a paper towel, or putting a tea towel in with the clamshell container. While we love the sharing of food-saving knowledge, we also love simplicity.
There’s no trick or hack for keeping greens alive with Abeego. It’s easy. Step one: wrap up your greens in Abeego. That’s it! Done!
We invented Abeego with ingredients from nature chosen for their natural preserving qualities that mimic nature’s own peels, rinds, and skins. The result is a reusable food wrap that breathes, protects, and keeps leafy greens alive for what feels like forever.
BREATHABLE ABEEGO VS AIRTIGHT STORAGE
From delicate leaves like basil and arugula to hardier plants like Swiss chard and kale, all greens need a protective barrier to last longer. When they’re left naked or in a flimsy paper bag, greens quickly lose their moisture, dry out, and wilt. Check out the difference in the Swiss chard below - the left was wrapped in Abeego for 3 days (and lost only 4.05% of its weight in moisture) and the right was left naked for 3 days (and lost a whopping 20.31% of its weight in moisture!)
While airtight methods (like plastic bags) solve the protection problem, they create another. Greens are alive and need to breathe. When greens are kept in a bag or impermeable storage container, the ethylene gas they emit becomes trapped, resulting in an environment ridden with excess moisture where bacteria and mold can thrive. Because of this, greens quickly wilt and rot in airtight containers.
Wrapped in Abeego, your greens get the natural barrier they need to retain their moisture. Because Abeego is breathable and allows air circulation, greens’ natural gases don’t build up and are released.
Keep your greens fresh with Abeego and retain their nutrients and flavor for longer than airtight methods in a super simple superhero way.
HOW TO WRAP GREENS IN ABEEGO
Large Abeego is the standard size we recommend for wrapping up spinach, kale, or salad greens. The Medium Abeego is also great for smaller bunches, like herbs. The Giant Abeego will tackle a whole head of lettuce no problem. You can also fold the Giant into a good-sized sack perfect for foraging & collecting greens.
Whether picked fresh or straight from the farmer’s market, put your wrapped-up greens in your fridge’s crisper drawer. Then grab and rinse as you need!
Wrap up your greens like a burrito or a giant bonbon with a twist at the ends. If you’re short on wraps, mix and match and wrap together.
Get creative with how you wrap with Abeego and check out our wrap-etoire of techniques on YouTube.
HOW LONG CAN YOU KEEP GREENS IN ABEEGO? IT DEPENDS.
How long you can keep your greens gloriously alive in Abeego depends on a few factors.
Are your greens freshly picked from your forest frolic or have they lived a long shelf life at the grocery store? Each food has a different quality depending on how it was stored before you brought it home and before that, where it was grown and how far it has traveled.
Get to know your greens before wrapping them up. Smell them, taste them raw, test for crunchiness between teeth and squeeze between your fingertips. Do the same each time you open your Abeego-wrapped greens and ask yourself if there’s been any change. Really get into it with your food!
When you tune in even deeper with your food, you will know for yourself how long you can expect to save it. At first, you’ll be blown away by what Abeego can do for your greens. Then, as your food wisdom deepens and your trust in Abeego grows, you’ll gain confidence in your ability to know and save your food. That power belongs to you. Abeego is the vehicle for getting there.
Get into your greens like these Abeego Explorers and share your results!
BUILDING THE ABEEGO HABIT
BAG YOUR OWN
- The power is yours when you have Abeego. Next time you’re out grocery shopping, skip the bagged spinach and get it by the bunch! You have Abeego - you’ve got this! It’s way cheaper plus it isn’t washed in a chemical bath. If you really love your greens in a bag, simply make your own out of Abeego.
GROW YOUR OWN
- If you have dirt and seeds, you can grow greens! Level up on your food wisdom and relationship with food tenfold by growing your own. Greens are great for new gardeners because they’re generally hardy and quick to grow. We love You Grow Girl’s guide for growing lettuce in containers. She uses a repurposed recycling bin!
- Expand your palate and check out these Oddball Spinach Substitute suggestions from gardener extraordinaire Niki Jabbour who really knows how to keep it fresh.
- Harvest your greens before they bolt. You know they’ll be safe and sound in your Abeego.
- New to gardening? Abeego Founder, Toni Desrosiers, offers a Beginner’s Guide to Gardening here.
EAT YOUR OWN
- Whip up our favorite kale stem pesto. It’s a great way to practice eating root-to-stem.
- Making a smoothie? We always add a heaping handful of leafy greens, stems included, to cut down on food waste. Check out some zero waste smoothie recipes here!
- Embrace the chillier weather and make the greenest soup you can think of! We love this leafy green soup recipe from the Crowded Kitchen.
SHOP ABEEGO & KEEP LEAFY GREENS ALIVE
It is with deep respect and gratitude that we create, build and operate our business in the communities of Southern Vancouver Island, which as a business we acknowledge is located within the ancestral and unceded territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən (Lekwungen) (Esquimalt and Songhees), Malahat, Pacheedaht, Scia'new, T’Sou-ke and W̱SÁNEĆ (Pauquachin, Tsartlip, Tsawout, Tseycum) peoples.
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