I still remember my bachelor days when I would buy groceries and put them in the refrigerator with the best of intentions only to have the fruits and vegetables start to spoil within a week. It was a waste of money -- and really frustrating when you wanted grapes or salad.

So a company created something called "Green Bags" ( 20 bags/ $9.99 ) which claim to preserve the life of fruits and vegetables all by throwing them in a bag. Those salads which would last one week were suddenly still fresh after 21 days. Fruits that would never make it more than seven days were still sweet into week four.

We put the claims to the test ... and we could not have found a better tester than Karen Oglivie. This mom/grandmother from Bellevue is as sweet as sweet can be. She loves her family, her grandchildren and her kitchen. Just going into her home, I felt like I was back at my grandmother's house being treated like a king. You can tell she would spoil her children with the tastiest of treats.

The deal was Karen would put a cucumber, lettuce, tomatoes and bananas in her refrigerator for three weeks .. and when all was said and done .. she would make me one of her wonderful salads. Karen was as excited as I was about the test. So she put the goods in the fridge and we revisited her three weeks later. Here's what we found:

The bananas were black on the outside, but just a little ripe on the inside. I decided to be the guinea pig and tried the banana ... and it was good and tasty. As for the salad, Karen thought the tomatoes and salad made it through with flying colors, but the cucumber was soft and had become almost liquefied. It did not survive.

So Karen made her salad with just tomatoes and salad ... and it was good. It tasted so fresh that if you hadn't told me that it was three weeks old, I would not have guessed.

The verdict on Green Bags? They work. You have seen the before and after ... and as you can see ... they give life to produce and veggies that would otherwise die a moldy death in your refrigerator.

We gave it three stars out of four - but only because three of the four products survived. I can easily see it preserving other items with ease.

So what did you think? Let me know your thoughts on the Green Bags ... and we'll run some of your comments tomorrow ... as Wednesday becomes your turn on "Test It Tuesday".