Your 5-a-Day Are in the Bag

The Market Lady is already acting on her New Year’s resolution to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables.

There is a reason for this prompt, bold leap into 1999: Supermarkets and grocery stores are making it so easy for the M.L. and everyone else to eat more of both. Gorgeous produce departments are not new to California supermarkets. One of the top 10 tourist attractions of our state for Easterners is still a tour through any supermarket’s lush produce section.

But up until the last year or so, those bountiful fruits and veggies were prettily displayed in big bins--whole, unwashed, unpeeled and unchopped.

And the Market Lady has a confession to make: She loves her salads, soups and stews but she hates to wash, pare, chop and slice any vegetable grown by humankind.

And that is why it has become more fun to prowl the produce aisles in the late 1990s. They still have those big bins of fruits and vegetables--but now they also have those little cello bags and tubs of pre-washed, pre-peeled and pre-chopped fresh . . . well, everything from arugula to zucchini. Prices generally range from $1 to $3 for the vegetables, and about $4 for the gourmet salad greens, slightly higher than buying them in their great unwashed state.

Who would have thought that in Ventura County, a shopper could go into a Ralphs, Vons, Lucky, etc. and daintily fill a bag with triple-washed, pre-torn gourmet salad greens such as the aforementioned radicchio and arugula? Not to mention baby bibb lettuce and spinach leaves. Who would have thought it? Not the M.L. And not only salad greens but fresh shredded carrots, chopped broccoli, chopped celery, chopped onions, chopped cabbage, chopped cauliflower and sliced mushrooms, all in those little sacks or tubs, just waiting to be upended and eaten. The operative word in the previous sentence was “chopped,” which the M.L. has to do much less these days.

Pre-made salads and garnishes aren’t the only easy avenue. The Market Lady once spent an hour just chopping the vegetables for her delicious vegetable-beef soup. Today, all those veggies, including pre-trimmed and chopped stir-fry beef, can just be upended into a 2-gallon soup pot. No pre-peeled and chopped potatoes yet, but there is always hope.

Tony Navarro, produce manager at one of Ventura County’s Ralphs, says that in the ready-made salad section, “anything with the word ‘Caesar’ in it” sells well. Statistics agree with him. The pre-made salad market is one of the fastest-growing categories of supermarket foods, according to the Chicago research firm Information Resources. Total sales increased 18.5% last year over the previous one.

The actual taste of ready-made salad greens and veggies can be uneven. The M.L. was not very impressed with the taste of the pre-chopped onions she bought for a salad; they tasted of the bag they came in. However, when cooked in a soup or stew, they were fine. A bit of experimentation is called for.

Suffice it to say that the freshest, just-picked ingredients always make the best dish.

But as an alternative to fast food, takeout or restaurant dining, it has become much easier to say, “I created it myself.”