I am looking for folks who have systems in place to help them use up their produce before it goes bad. Basic stuff like lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes and peppers. I REALLY do not want to go to the store multiple times a week.
My beautiful wife and I are also looking for ideas on sides. We both feel we are are stuck with the same sides. We appreciate any input because we don't eat out so it is easy to fall into the 'same old same old'.
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I freeze tomatoes whole from our farm after harvest. Then you can store them in zip top bags or even jyst plastic grocery bags. Their skin acts as a barrier to freezer burn. You can use them to make sauces and anything that requires cooking them. Potatoes can be in normal sides like hassel back, fries, baked, mashed, hash, so forth. You can also turn them into gnocchi, freeze them on sheet pans, the vac seal and stash in freezer for a very long time. What peppers are we talking about. You can make fermented hot sauce or canned salsa, or pickle them. You can also fire roast or oven roast them, remove the seeds and stems, then vac seal and freeze.
My parents AND daughter were both giving me jalapeño peppers for a while this summer, and my solution after the first bag went bad in the fridge, was to pickle them, in the form of cowboy candy...
If not cooking outdoors, I am cooking on the stovetop with my 14" carbon steel wok, 12" CI skillet, or in the oven with my two Lodge CI pizza pans, or two dutch ovens. I've also got a nifty Lodge carbon steel grill pan that rocks for veggies outdoors.
Mike981 We are kind of in the same boat. Unfortunately, I never know how Yvonne will feel from one day to the next. Today has been a "sleep late" and "tired" day. Most days she is on the go, and while she is not driving right now, folks pick her up, I drop her off, etc. I feel like EVERY WEEKEND we buy produce at Sam's that we end up tossing at least half of. We simply cannot eat all the baby spinach and lettuce she buys to make salads with, or the 3 English cucumbers she gets each trip either.
She has always loved salads, and while we could get buy with a couple of bagged salads a week, we won't buy those with the scares this summer, so are buying romaine and spinach ourselves, and making our own. But most of it goes bad before we are done with it. Something I should do and have not done in a long time is grilled romaine salad. You literally split the romaine head, drizzle or spray with oil, season, and toss on a hot grill grate for a couple of minutes per side. Think wedge salad, but grilled and with romaine.
For potatoes, while I do this with new potatoes, you could do it with larger potatoes in chunks - do the "potato smashers" thing where you boil, then drizzle EVOO on a sheet pan and smash potatoes into it with the potato masher, then drizzle with more EVOO, salt and pepper, and then bake at 425 until crisp. Someone on here turned me onto that one, and it's a good way to get rid of potatoes that is not the same old microwaved/baked/boiled/mashed.
Peppers - the idea to pickle them or make cowboy candy works for jalapeños or other similar sized peppers. For the others, maybe try stuffed peppers to use them up? I used to take the bag of sweet peppers that Yvonne would buy, split them, scoop out the seeds with a spoon, then bake with cheese and taco meat or browned sausage as a filling.
I never heard of grilled Romaine but my sister said it was great and made us some. We really enjoyed it. And it helps change things up like he said he was looking for
Bob Hicks, from Mormon Mecca
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Here is a tip for prolonging the life of a head of iceberg lettuce. Remove the core and cut the head in half. Wrap each half in paper towel which for me is three sections of the newer short sheets. Place the paper towel wrapped lettuce in a plastic 1-gallon food bag. I like the slider types vs the Zip Locks. The wrapped heads will last a minimum of two weeks and for me, closer to three weeks. It will make a peeled cucumber last at least a week if not up to 10 days. I store cut tomatoes in plastic Tupperware/Rubbermaid sealed cups for up to a week or more. If you have any of the vacuum containers, they will keep it fresh longer by removing the air from the sealed containers.
I would also like to add that you shouldn't buy any more fresh produce than you can consume within a week.
Agree, Sams club packages are too large for us with only two here now. We just get our produce from the local produce stands. And you get more local grown that way also. Felt a bit better this summer eating our locally grown lettuce with that cyclo going around. And of course Michigan was the worst hit.
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You can freeze peppers and they are great frozen. Lettuce, I succession plant and also plant indoors. Tomatoes can be frozen, canned, dehydrated, etc. There are a number of ways to preserve. For me the best way to preserve potatoes is to keep them in a dark space around 50 degrees. We have made mashed potatoes and frozen, but it is hard to beat a fresh potato. For sides, we eat salads almost daily and it really depends on what is coming in at the time as to what we put on the salad. Aside from that we are always trying go figure out ways to eat what is coming out of the garden. With our steaks the other night, we had squash, zucchini, onions and Swiss chard sautéed in butter and it was great.
I find lettuces like romaine lasts an extremely long time. I separate out the individuals leaves from the heart, wash, spin dry and then spread out and roll up in paper towels and store back in the produce bag. Have easily gotten a few weeks of life out of romaine that way. Pre-cut or cut lettuce only last a few days before getting gross.
Potatoes I keep in a paper bag. Will generally last a few weeks on my counter as long as its not near onions and in a paper bag.
Tomatoes and peppers - i got nothin for ya on those!!!
If we have veg that needs to be eaten we usually just cut it up and eat as a lunch side.
Summertime is different than wintertime for us. Most of the time in the winter we buy individual potatoes instead of bagged potatoes. The per pound price is a little higher but we purchase less at a time and can choose the potato quality easier. These would be russet bakers, individual red or yellow potatoes.
It doesn’t work for everyone but a couple of sides we always have are homemade sauerkraut and homemade beans of some sort. I make baked beans in a crock and various types of pot beans (pinto, black, pinquito and Mayocoba). We’ll use them for a quick side dish and I also have beans on toast for breakfast a couple days a week.
Tomorrow I’ll make a crock of baked navy beans. A 2-1/2 pound batch yields about a gallon of finished beans. Some go to mother in law, some to freezer and the rest for fresh eating.
For an overabundance of tomatoes, we usually make a large batch of vegetable marinara sauce and then portion out and freeze. You can dice and add many other vegetables to the sauce, like summer squashes, carrots, celery, etc. Very handy to have for pasta dishes all through the year.
Produce help and side ideas.
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