The kitchen can turn from a bastion of culinary hopes and dreams bursting to the seams with fresh food into a sad wasteland of ruined recipes and deflated expectations if you don’t eat your groceries quickly enough. But there’s no need to resign yourself to that fate, friends. You can save your food if you know how.

We often run into tips and tricks for keeping fruits and veggies fresh, but Lifehacker’s got a great list that also includes some other fare you might not know how to save. Check out the 5 tips below and the rest over on their great roundup.

1. Keep your bananas bangin’, not browning: You might already wrap the entire bunch of bananas in plastic wrap at the stem, but separating each piece of fruit and then wrapping the stems will keep them fresher. The wrap keeps the fruit’s ethylene gas from browning and ripening bananas and any other fruit nearby. This will slow down that process a wee bit.

2. Freezer burn no more aka The Moment Your Life Changed: Maybe you’re not like me and can keep yourself from consuming an entire tub of ice cream in one sitting. If you’re strong enough to put down the cardboard container sooner rather than later, trim the tub as the level of ice cream goes down. That will help keep freezer burn at bay, as it’s the extra air in the container that provides a nice place for the crystals to set up shop.

3. Talking tomatoes: Store tomatoes stem down at room temperature. This way, less air and moisture will enter the tomato’s scar and gives it a little extra stamina.

4. Potatoes and apples are BFFs: Keeping your potatoes with the apples will help prevent early sprouting — that same ethylene gas that ripens bananas will put a damper on potato sprouts.

5. Nobody likes brown guacamole: Feel free to argue with me, but brown guacamole looks gross even if it still tastes kind of okay. Drizzle a thin layer of water over leftover guacamole to provide a barrier against oxygen. I also keep the avocado pit in the container, a trick I learned that’s always done wonders for me.

10 Food Preservation Tips in 60 Seconds [LifeHacker]

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