Our oldest daughter LOVES berry fruit – raspberries, strawberries, blackberry’s, etc.  When she comes home for a weekend from college, I try to have berries in the fridge, just waiting for her.

This past weekend, she was home and I needed to make a run for the grocery store.  White there, I noticed a disturbing thing – all of the berries had absorbent pads in the bottom of the packages.  WHAT?  When did this become necessary?  My usual MO for purchasing berries is to turn the plastic container over to make sure there are no moldy berries in the package.  With the absorbent pad in there, I could not tell.

What am I supposed to do NOW?  How can I feel confident that I am purchasing something that isn’t already moldy???   Oy.

Lucky for the grocery store, when I got home, I immediately opened the package, looking for mold.  I would not have hesitated to go back to the store and either get a refund or find berries (by opening the package) that weren’t moldy.  After making sure we had a good batch of them, we rinsed them in one part vinegar and three parts water…then rinsed them again in just cold water.  This is supposed to keep them from molding so quickly.  DD#1 was afraid that they’d taste like vinegar – but that didn’t happen!

Do your berries have an absorbent layer at the bottom of your berries so you can’t see what you are purchasing and ensuring that there is no mold in the package/on the berries?