Thursday, November 13, 2008

am i lazy or just trying to save water?

we are currently coming to the end of the navel orange season and in order to prolong our enjoyment of these favourites of ours, i did what any self respecting fruit lover would do and bought 3 cases (20 kg each) of the golden orbs over the last 2 weeks.
as they are at the end of their run, the oranges are kept in cold rooms by the fruiterers and thus become sweaty with condensation when we get them. ever since those salmonella scares with tomatoes in the US and ecoli with rockmelons locally, i've become even more diligent with washing my fruit and vegetables, and the oranges are no exception. with such a mind boggling number of oranges to wash (each case holds 80-100 pieces of fruit), i also contemplated the amount of water i would be using....alot. enter the dishwasher. there's a cycle on the dishwasher called prewash (well, there is on mine). and it only uses cold water without heat. and we all know dishwashers use less water than handwashing - yes, they do. so that's what i did. i fiddled around with the racks a little so i would be able to fit the maximum number of oranges, set the machine to prewash - a whole 12 minutes! and let it do its thing. i have considered the electricity the machine uses, but i also considered the time i saved - i'm certain i would have taken longer than 12 minutes to wash the same number of oranges and definitely tons more water. i didn't wash all 3 cases of fruit, but enough for us to use for a couple of days.

1 comment:

Emily/Randomability said...

I found your blog through the NaBloPoMo randomizer.

Washing all the oranges in the dishwasher is actually a brillant idea!