Strawberry Fail

Remember how I said in earlier post that the water here doesn't have bleach....so we have to rinse all our fruits and veggies in a water+bleach or vinegar mix? Before I go on, one unfortunate thing is that even though I am in beautiful, tropic South America, there is a major lack of good-looking fruits and veggies here. We have no idea why. It seems like everything would be very appetizing and abundant. No such thing. However, the other day in the grocery store I had a magical find - a box full of strawberries that were all nice and dark and red (at least all the strawberries on top were). There were only a few unripe ones. Normally there is about half and half. I bought them of course. Today I decided to begin eating such strawberries. I remembered I had to rinse them off, then sadly remembered I would have to put them in the water/vinegar mixture. An hour later, I came into the kitchen and found the strawberries lusciously soaking up the mixture. I had completely forgotten about them. I could have just rinsed them off in the mixture, or left them sitting there for about half hour max. "Oh well, so they're a little soggy, they'll be fine", I thought to myself. I bit into one and it had an interesting flavor. I asked Kim to try one, and she looked like they tasted weird as well. After pondering whether they were bad or unusual or what, we came to the conclusion that they had soaked up the vinegar! GROSS! Our solution was to put them in regular drinking water and maybe soaking up regular water would flush out the vinegar taste. I came back from painting the sede (headquarters) for about 5 hours and found the strawberries quickly headed down the path of becoming prunes. Oh my I think I can follow directions and cook recipes, but I am just really bad at taking care of food in general. I always do silly things like that and have to throw food away! At least I'm still young and don't have to feel bad about making mistakes - it's always a learning experience! After this mess-up, I made my chicken+cheese sandwich for dinner. The last 4 pieces of sliced deli chicken in my last package had formed a sticky goo by the time I went to eat them, probably from the grease? (hopefully something like that!) I was glad that this time I was opening a new packet of chicken. To my dismay, ALL the slices had that same glossy coating! Oh my cooking woes. This time, I blame Venezuela.