Clean those vegetables and fruits before you drink them.

I have used commercial vegetable and fruit cleaners before. They were ok I guess; but I felt that I could do better with a home-made cleaner. I use apple cider vinegar and sea salt. I use the fine grains of salt and not the course salt. I want the salt to diffuse throughout the water as fast as it can. You will have to experiment on the water level. You want enough water to cover the vegetable or fruit but not be too much water that the vinegar and salt doesn't do it thing. It took me a couple of tries to get the water, vinegar and salt proportions right.

For this size bowl here is my recipe: fill it 3/4 full of water, one full cap of apple vinegar and a good size pinch of salt. After the salt has dissolved then add your food and let soak for 10 minutes. After the ten minutes you will smell this awful smell coming from the water. Remove your food and rinse several times before juicing. Note: Sometimes I will get both the yucky smell and the water will be black. I use cold water. If I use tepid water (to help the salt diffuse) I will wait till the water is room temperature before putting my food in the water.

After soaking and rinsing the veggies it's time to dry them before storing them. My first choice to dry my leafy vegetable in a salad spinner. I have not replaced my salad spinner yet, (I blame that on Squidoo too many lenses to create), so I do the next best thing I hand dry them. Using two clean hand or kitchen towels I sandwich the parsley between the two and pat dry. Be sure to spread the leafy vegetables out so there is space between the leaves. After I hand dry them then I remove the top towel and let them air dry, rest of the way. Usually it takes about 10-15 minutes depending on how dense the leaves are.

The type of storage container will vary on how often you juice and how much (volume) you clean at one time. I like to use the vacuum seal method because I only clean enough veggies and fruit to juice for a week. That works well. Veggies are a "soft" type food and if you leave them for longer period of time they will become mushy and will not be good for juicing. The only exception for this is asparagus. I can keep asparagus up to three and a half weeks with the vacuum seal and they will still be firm as when I first sealed them.

Most juicers will tell you to use zip-lock bags. I have found that the veggies won't even last a week with this method. Even though they are dry as a bone when I put them in the zip-lock bag they will become slimy and wet before the week is out. I have not tried the "green" bags so don't know how they will do. Plastic/glass containers have the same problems. If you don't have a vacuum-seal machine the next best thing I have found is Press-n-Seal. Just be sure that all edges are sealed and your veggies will last for several weeks with no slime or wetness at all.

Here is my weeks supply of veggies: asparagus, collard greens, kale, spinach, lettuce and parsley.

You can see when I opened the spinach pouch the leaves spring back to life. I get what I need and re-seal the remaining.