Kitchen Produce Rack

Maybe you don’t have the same problems we’ve had with produce. We would love to grow more of our own produce, but until we become master gardeners, we continue to buy our produce. I have two concerns when buying produce: un-ripened and waste. We buy un-ripened produce because we only shop once a week and we don’t want it all to go bad in a day or two. If you refrigerate the produce it won’t ripen as quickly, but I don’t like to eat it chilled that much. If you buy produce that is ripe or you don’t eat it within a week (usually because you don’t see it), it won’t last long and it becomes compost or garbage.

For almost our entire married life (now 13 years), we have kept our produce on the counter to help it ripen up, but also to see what needs to be eaten. It tends to drive me a little crazy to just have a fruit bowl/basket because we buy enough fruit for a family of five for an entire week. Fruit baskets also tend to make produce less visible and forgotten. when you get to the bottom of the basket, you tend to start seeing mush.

Considering our problem, I also began to think about the process of buying produce. I’ve been to the grocery store to look at pyramids, sprinkler chill shelves, and many other ways to present everything to the shoppers. I dislike the pyramids because you’re forced to take whatever is on top. I like to buy a mix of produce from ripe to still “green” so that it will last the week. If I have to dig through a pyramid, it’s just like the basket. I like when there is only once layer and I can see everything in front of me–so I didn’t want a bucket or deep shelf. I wanted everything to be at the front so that nothing could be hidden. That made me want to have a slanted shelf. I also didn’t want it to be a closed environment because that tends to harbor mold problems.

So I wanted a shallow, narrow, slatted, and tilted surface, and I wanted it to hold a lot. I could have built it as a standing shelf, but we also value cutting surfaces that kitchens seem to be short of lately. I also wanted my wife to have her glass produce bowl and space for some decorative pieces as well. One other issue I ran into while making this rack was the placement of the over-sink light switch and plug.

I routed out grooves in the slats and created a lip at the bottom of the tilt so that rolling produce wouldn’t just fall on the counter or floor. The grooves were an effort to continue mold prevention and aeration efforts. I created this using oak which is the material used for most common kitchen cabinets. I stained it with a stain that I keep in stock for kitchen cabinet touch-up repairs, then coated it with a couple layers of finish for protection. Once it was built, I secured it to the recessed bottom of the upper cabinet.

What do you think? Is there something that you would have done differently or a feature that you would prefer to have? Let me know in the comments…