Avoiding waste with fresh vegetables - any hints?

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BlueArbitraryCat
BlueArbitraryCat Posts: 13 Member
in Food and Nutrition
One of the reasons I have given in the past for not eating a lot of fresh vegetables is that I find them wasteful. Every time I buy fresh, I end up throwing out a lot of food.

I cook vegetables for one person (usually steamed) and don;t want to *have* to have the same vegetables 3-6 mights in a row.

I have been dealing with this by buying frozen vegetables because they will be fine until I am ready to eat them.

Any tips?
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Replies

  • kikityme
    kikityme Posts: 472 Member
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    I buy frozen too. Half the time they are better than the fresh. Nutritionally, there's no difference.
  • _Zardoz_
    _Zardoz_ Posts: 3,987 Member
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    Plan your meal menu so several meals use similar ingredients or make extra to freeze. A lot of vegetables you can just blanche and freeze as well

    And no matter what fresh vegetables taste better than frozen that's if you have taste buds
  • runfatmanrun
    runfatmanrun Posts: 1,090 Member
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    Buy less.
  • BlueArbitraryCat
    BlueArbitraryCat Posts: 13 Member
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    It is winter here, so roasted or steamed pumpkin are great to fill the comfort food gap in a low calorie way.

    In summer I find carrots and lettuce don't last. I could solve the carrot issue could be solved by daily shopping but lettuce doesn't come in single serves.

    Am I missing something?
  • Meerataila
    Meerataila Posts: 1,885 Member
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    Dehydrator. You can make spices, sun dried tomatoes, dried fruit like raisins and apricots, and plenty of other things. And it changes the flavor of the foods, so it gives your taste-buds more variety.
  • Pohudet
    Pohudet Posts: 179 Member
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    Fresh vegetables from the farmers market last much longer than store bought ones.
    To make them last longer, I wipe them if they are wet, and then I wrap them in a clean paper towel and put in a plastic bag, and then put them in the fridge. This helps them last for over a week, especially important with fresh herbs and lettuce.
    If you bought a bunch of fresh radishes, wipe them, including the leaves, with a paper towel and/or leave them out to dry if they have water on them (many stores sprinkle them with water for freshness). Then put them in a bag and in the fridge. You can use 2-3 radishes a day from that bunch for your salad or garnish. After 2 or 3 days you may want to cut off the remaining radishes from the bunch, wipe them to make them dry, and put them in a clean, dry bag to continue storing them in your fridge. Throw away the leaves at this point, since they will start to rot and may affect the radishes. The rest of the radishes will keep in the fridge for another 3-5 days.
    I hate to waste food, and so I use whatever remnants of fresh veggies I have to make a quick vegetable stock. I will take carrot tops, bell pepper tops, stalks from fresh herbs, the middle of the cabbage/cauliflower/broccoli and their loose outer leaves, all left over veggies from various dishes that accumulated for several days, and boil them in water for 20 or 30 min. (I usually add an extra half/whole carrot and whatever non-hot spices I have, bay leaf, peppercorns, maybe some Italian seasoning). After they boiled, I strain the veggies and throw them away, and use this vegetable stock for cooking rice in, or add it to soups or stews. This stock keeps in a container in the fridge for several days, or you can freeze it for future use. I do the same with water left over from steaming my veggies. Dont waste your money buying ready made stock from the store, use your own. Also, store-bought stock usually has high sodium and may have added chemicals.
  • db34fit69
    db34fit69 Posts: 189 Member
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    For the cookable ones (i.e. not lettuce), two easy ideas:

    1 - chop them up and make a casserole!

    2 eggs
    2 cups cooked rice
    whatever veggies (usually use cabbage, spinach, but the one that came out of the oven an hour ago used broccoli)
    cup of yoghurt
    2 cans tuna
    200g light shredded cheese
    mix it all together, dump it in a dish, and cook on around 325 for an hour.

    2 - roast veggies
    Chop them all up, throw them all in a plastic bag, dump in 2 tbsp oil, salt, whatever spices, throw in the dish and cook on 400 for however long it takes for them to taste good.
  • Chezzie84
    Chezzie84 Posts: 873 Member
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    One of the reasons I have given in the past for not eating a lot of fresh vegetables is that I find them wasteful. Every time I buy fresh, I end up throwing out a lot of food.

    I cook vegetables for one person (usually steamed) and don;t want to *have* to have the same vegetables 3-6 mights in a row.

    I have been dealing with this by buying frozen vegetables because they will be fine until I am ready to eat them.

    Any tips?


    I used to throw so much fresh vegetables away that I now buy frozen vegatables.
    I dont know where in the world you are from so I dont know what brands etc you can buy.
    I am from the UK and I buy Birds Eye steamers. They are bags of frozen vegetables that you put in the microwave for 3 minutes and they steam cook in the bag. One bag will do myself and my partner as part of a main meal.
  • BertieGotSkill
    BertieGotSkill Posts: 61 Member
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    I would experiment making your veggies in different ways. Like cooking kale/spinach and adding cajun spice to it or cutting your zuchinni into pasta.










    u
  • bcattoes
    bcattoes Posts: 17,299 Member
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    I have been dealing with this by buying frozen vegetables because they will be fine until I am ready to eat them.

    Any tips?

    Actually, this would have been my tip. Buy frozen. Since some nutrients are destroyed by light, frozen sometimes maintains a higher percentage of those nutrients than 'fresh' that has been shipped in.

    You can also freeze whatever you don't eat. Either freeze an entire meal or just the leftover vegetables. Most vegetables can be frozen after light blanching or steaming. Vacuum sealed bags will help prevent freezer burn.
  • Rianne90
    Rianne90 Posts: 229 Member
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    You can make a soup or pasta sauce with the veggies that are close to expiring (meaning, not super-fresh looking so you don't want to eat them as is but they're still safe to eat). Those things freeze super-easy and give you a nice easy and healthy meal option for when you're short on time or just feeling lazy :flowerforyou:
  • ajff
    ajff Posts: 986 Member
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    We have similar issues b/c we have a huge garden.

    When food it at it's freshest, we eat it raw. When it starts to lose that freshness, we start cooking:

    Onions, celery, carrots - good in soups or chicken stock, or crockpot roast beef, if you're into the down home.

    Tomato, zucchini, etc... - I make a huge batch of minestrone (using onions, carrots, etc) and freeze it; it is great at work in the snowy depths of the Wisconsin winter!

    Broccoli/Cauliflower - either steamed (with cheese sprinkled on top, this is Wisconsin after all!), or soup, or stir fried

    Green onions, peppers, etc.. - stir fried veggies

    Also, throughout the year I look for recipes that will use up veggies. And I network, I have a few single friends who appreciate a half bag of snow peas every now and then!
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,874 Member
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    I pretty much plan out my meals for the week and then shop and only purchase those vegetables that are included in the meals planned in appropriate quantities. I rarely have waste. I also stick primarily to hardy vegetables like cabbage, carrots, broccoli, etc. For less hardy vegetables, I generally only buy these on an as needed basis...(i.e. lettuce and greens, tomatoes, cucumber, etc)...knowing that I will need to consume these within a few days.
  • Adc7225
    Adc7225 Posts: 1,318 Member
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    I run into the same issue but more because I only like a handful of vegetables.

    I buy fresh and I use "Green Containers" that I find does help keep them fresher a bit longer than before. I also blanch some vegetables and this also buys me a few days.

    Frozen is fine, you can blanch fresh vegetables and then freeze them for yourself - third option find someone to share them with.
  • JoRocka
    JoRocka Posts: 17,525 Member
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    anything particularly wrong with continuing with purchasing frozen?

    I only buy frozen outside of stuff that's fresh and on sale and I have immediate need for- like I have a meal planned specifically for THAT produce. Seems to work well for me- mostly. i still throw away stuff b/c I forget it or never get around to it- or BF changes plans on me- but mostly it works.

    Zucchini is the one exception- i always buy fresh. It's so nasty frozen.
  • whovian67
    whovian67 Posts: 608 Member
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    get a nutribullet and pulverize them.. or freeze steamed veggies.. at least you know you didn't add boookoooos of sodium to them before you freeze them..
  • Pohudet
    Pohudet Posts: 179 Member
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    In summer I find carrots and lettuce don't last. I could solve the carrot issue could be solved by daily shopping but lettuce doesn't come in single serves.

    Am I missing something?
    I buy carrots in packs of two pounds or even bigger. They keep for weeks in my fridge, in the bottom drawer, if left in a plastic bag with holes in it. If some carrots are left outside the bag, they can become limp. If they were wet in the bag, I wipe them with a paper towel and put them in the bag and in the fridge.
    If you are buying the so-called "baby carrots" pre-washed and pre-peeled and ready to eat, those are the only ones that will not last more than a day. Because in fact they are not really tiny carrots, they are pieces of big carrots that are cut by a special machine and made to look like baby carrots. So, like all cut veggies, they will not last long. They will dry out because they do not have their protective skins. Or, if they are wet in the bag, they will rot.
    If you buy carrots that have green herb-like tops still on them, put them in a plastic bag with their tops sticking out. Then a week later you can cut off the tops and throw them away (or use them for vegetable stock).
    Check your carrots once a week, and if there is moisture that accumulated in the bag, take them out, wipe them, put them in a dry bag.
    with lettuce, you can wrap your head of lettuce in a paper towel and into a plastic bag and into the fridge. will keep for 5 days guaranteed. Or if there is dirt between the leaves at the bottom, you can separate the leaves, wash them, dry them, wrap individual leaves in paper towels, put them in a bag and into the fridge. Will keep for 5-7 days.
  • ChapinaGrande
    ChapinaGrande Posts: 289 Member
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    I plan my produce purchases this way--I buy the vegetables and stuff that I want, but I plan to use the things that go bad faster (lettuce, asparagus, eggplant, berries...) at the beginning of the week and then use the less perishable ones later (potatoes, zucchini, green peppers, plantains, uncut watermelon, apples...) Unless I forget that I bought something because it gets jammed in the back of the fridge, this has really reduced the amount of fresh things that I've wasted. I also dice things like onions and peppers into small pieces and stick them in the freezer so I can just get a handful when I'm making sauce or whatever and just throw it in. I freeze a lot of things that are about to go bad. I LOVE my tiny deep freeze! I freeze berries and bananas for muffins or smoothies, cubes of pureed cooked foods for my baby, I could go on and on. My deep freeze has paid for itself because of the fresh food I am able to preserve.
  • bm1409
    bm1409 Posts: 1,715 Member
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    A great way to use up a lot of vegetables before they go bad is to juice or use them to make vegetable soup.
  • sweetilemon
    sweetilemon Posts: 122 Member
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    Aparently if you put it in milton (or diluted steralising fluid) fresh veg lasts a lot longer.

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