How I wash berries and greens

I do not hold berries under a strong tap the way I hold a pot after borscht. The jet hits, raspberries become mash, strawberries lose their smell. At home the kettle has already clicked, and I still take a bowl: cold water, hands through them a little so the sand sits on the bottom, then I pour the water off. Sometimes a second time, if the water is cloudy and there is sand on the bottom as from a path. The kettle can wait a minute. A minute is cheaper than raspberry mash.

Greens are another story, the same bowl. I open parsley and dill, look for snails and yellow sprigs, not the bunch under the tap. Cabbage leaves — one by one if there is sand at the core. Lettuce I spin in a colander, then onto a towel. Wet greens in a salad are not freshness; they are a puddle under the oil. After water, herbs and berries should dry: a towel or a colander for five minutes — and then the oil holds, instead of sliding. Everyone blames a wet salad for nothing: it is not the parsley’s fault, it is the hurry to the kettle.

Berries here often come in plastic punnets, already with juice at the bottom. That juice is a signal: eat today, tomorrow there will be mould. I wash before eating, not in advance for the whole week. Strawberries washed in advance cry in the fridge and spoil faster. Dry in the punnet they live longer. I bring them home, I put them away, I wash a portion for the table. Grapes I take off the stems. Raspberries I do not soak for long: they drink the water and become like cotton wool. Blueberries — carefully; they stain everything, including nails and the kettle if I put the bowl too close to the porridge. I do not collect “vegetable washes” from a pretty bottle. Water, hands, time. If I am uneasy about a shop lettuce leaf — water again and a towel. I do not promise a sterile laboratory. I promise there will be no sand on the teeth, and the parsley will not smell of the bag. For the children, berries clean and dry, in a bowl in the middle of the table. Wet ones they do not take, and they blame the berry for nothing.

A handful for the table, not a bowl “for later”. Do you wash berries in advance — or only the handful you are putting on the table now?