How do you wash your veg?

Do you just rinse? Or try to wash as much as you can? Peel carrots etc?

I've noticed more chalky substances on things like cabbage - and I assume it's pesticides... how on earth are we meant to get them off

The only cabbage I can get is white or red, so only the outside leaves need removing and I do not bother washing/rinsing once those leaves are removed. Cauliflower [and broccoli if and when I can get it] is just soaked for a while in salt water and then rinsed and drained.

Carrots, unless old, are scrubbed with a vegetable brush under the tap, as are potatoes, sweet potatoes, butternut squash etc. Old carrots are peeled, as is pumpkin. Tomatoes, cucumber, courgettes, aubergines, sweet peppers - just rinsed well under the tap, as are all fruits.

But I guess at my age I have consumed enough muck and germs that I can say I have definitely eaten that "peck o' dirt" and I am not overly fanatical about things. Good hygiene, yes, but scrubbing everything with bleach and disinfectant and the suchlike? No.

Quick rinse under the tap here. Spuds and onions are about the only veg I peel, everything else just topped and tailed or cut in half and deseeded. Huge 'bouquets' of parsley just rinsed under the tap and rooty bits cut off.

A lot of the fruit and veg sold here would appal UKers who are used to seeing perfectly rounded (or straight) uniformly coloured, waxy looking fruit and veg that lasts for weeks after you bring it home!

Our spuds and onions still have red muddy earth on them. Here you rummage through the boxes for the least disfigured ones lol! Oddly shaped and with brown spots and scars, but they TASTE SO MUCH BETTER! Especially stuff like toms and cues. And the size of them, unbelievably huge grapefruit (I once picked one up thinking it was a melon!) Pomegranates as big as your head.

Never buy lemons, they grow on trees all about (so do prickly pears and pomegranates - but the oranges that grow all over are very bitter and used, I think, if at all, for marmalade).

If I am taking black cherries or strawbs to the beach, I buy them on the way and they don't get washed at all (I have survived for 5 yrs doing this). And I am positive the farmers who BBQ sweetcorn cobs on the side of the road don't bother washing them before they trundle them down from their farms.

In the UK I had a job to push a sweetcorn skewer into corn cobs - here you could bite right through it - it's as tender as the kernels - dogs love them!

I'm not overly hygienic when it comes to food and will happily share a lolly or a drink with my dog if we are out together and it is scorching hot.

I eat cabbage every day and I never wash it, I just remove the outer leaves coz I figure once it's been subjected to boiling water for 10 mins it's definitely dead, along with everything else! Lettuce yes, always but never cabbage. Carrots are always peeled but that's because they look so manky once cooked if they're not peeled, they get that brown tinge don't they, looks awful on a nice, white plate! Anything that's eaten without boiling is always peeled for me, especially bananas lol!

Yes - I think you can safely assume that your cabbage is DEAD after boiling it for 10 minutes!

A quick rinse if necessary but mostly I don't bother. I frequently buy fruit and it eat it without even going home so it's not washed.
I'm very well preserved

vinegar apparently

I must admit, I don't. I don't bother rinsing the fruit we eat and just peel the veg that needs peeling. Having said that, I don't buy a vast amount of fresh veg - just carrots, onions and potatoes, oh, and the odd parsnip.

Helen

Is it windy near you by any chance

Strangely enough, no, Jackie!!!! It gets windy around Dave's chair but he never eats it! It's good for you and it has the potential to ward off nasties like cancer, or so I've read, but I only eat it coz I love it!