No Stupid Questions

Fruit: dehydrate, freeze, or alcoholic fermentantion. Some fruit have special methods, like sulphured apples or bletted medlars.

Vegetables: easiest thing is to pack in brine of 3Tbl per Qt, leave at room temperature or a little cooler for a week before eating. I alway throw in some onion and garlic because I like it that way. Lasts like 6 months at room temperature. Most vegetables have additional special traditional preservation methods, but that fermented pickle in brine works for pretty much all of them.

If you want to be more specific with which foods you need to preserve, I can provide more options.

I'm writing a book on food preservation, ama.

Not sure if you're thinking of long or short term, but I've found that if I want to have, say, 2lbs of stawberries last me until I can eat them that a vinegar rinse in the sink will stave off the mold. It also has the benefit of killing off some common bacteria like e coli and staphylococcus aureus if you let it sit for long enough. Whenever I get fresh fruit that I'm not going to eat that day or the next, I'll clean it by dumping it in a colander and spraying it thoroughly with a spritz bottle full of food grade white vinegar and letting it sit for at least 5min, sometimes a half hour. Then I rinse it with water, let it dry a bit and then put it in the fridge. Strawberries will last over a week generally, and they usually go soft or ferment before they go moldy.

I tend to grow a lot of what I eat myself. I do aeroponics, with specific crops staggered so that there’s a bit more than enough weekly/monthly. (Things like strawberries, are weekly. Things like potatoes monthly.) I started out with a living wall in an apartment and kinda turned into a plant dad.

-freezing (fruit, carrots, beans,herbs.) sometimes it changed their textures, but there flavor remains good, and you won’t notice in cooked food. Good, imo, for a few months. You do have to wash and blanch things,

-canning (berries- as a jam- tomatoes, string beans,)- obviously changed their textures as it generally involves some form of cooking (tomatoes for example are sealed in a mason jar using a pressure cooker.) they last the longest.

-pickling. It’s not just for cucumbers (“pickles”). You can can them for longer, but pickled things last a few weeks. Red onion pickled with garlic cloves and one of a variety of peppers is amazing. (Particularly replacing sauerkraut on Reuben’s)

-drying. You can dry most things, in a dehydrator, and vacuum pack it and reconstitute it by adding water back to it- just measure before and after to know how much. Vacuum bagging after will let things go for months. (Also consider prepping ‘camp food’ this way. Keep some on hand for easy meals and rotate stock… or if shit hits the fan.)

Curing- this is usually reserved for meats (jerky, ham, etc)

Prolly not exactly what you're looking for but an option nonetheless: make jam. The sugar helps preserve, plus put it in jars and put the jar in the fridge, lasts a long time

Keep your bananas away from other fruit (including other bananas). Bananas give off a lot of ethylene, which quickens the ripening process. All fruits give off ethylene, it's part of the ripening process, but banans do give off the most.

Freeze if you can. I should point out though that if your things seem to be rotting at much higher rates than you would expect, then there might be something else that's molding, and that thing might be spreading the mold spores onto your vegetables. I would suggest checking all the contents of your fridge for mold if that's the case

Planning. I buy what I know I will eat within the week. And if it goes bad before that/i end up not eating it, it goes into my compost pile.

Freezing is my go to or just putting in some air-right container to make it last a little bit longer.

One option is to pickle them. Even without canning them, which is a whole process to itself, you can put pretty much any vegetables in water, salt, and vinegar and they'll preserve in the fridge for much longer.

Just search whatever vegetable you have plus "pickled" and you'll find recipes.

Edit: you can pickle fruits, too!

I make sauerkraut when I have excess cabbage. It lasts for aaaaages and is so easy to make.

I hear the way they preserve apples and other fruits for months is to store them in a special refrigerator with all the oxygen pumped out, only nitrogen gas I believe.

How are you storing your veggies? Some fruits and vegetables emit ethylene gas which promotes ripening in many fruits and veggies. Things like storing bananas with apples will cause both to turn rotten faster. Also storing fruits in bags that don’t allow the ethylene to escape will cause your veggies to rot faster.

You could always make preserves.

I'll show myself out

We cut up some fruit to freeze and individually pack it in snack bags to be used in future smoothies and baking. This works well with berries and bananas. Extra homegrown veggies go to the office to share. The rest go in the ditch behind the house for the animals to enjoy. The ditch is dry when not raining so raccoons, possums, squirrels, foxes, deer, and birds all use it to travel and fruit and vegs disappear.