Avoiding waste with fresh vegetables - any hints?

I buy frozen too. Half the time they are better than the fresh. Nutritionally, there's no difference.

Buy less.

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.

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.

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.










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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:

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.

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.

A great way to use up a lot of vegetables before they go bad is to juice or use them to make vegetable soup.

Pretty much any veg can be used in a smoothie or soup. That"s how I use up mine.

Carrots keep a week or more in the crisper part of my fridge as long as they were dry when they went in, often they're damp so I lay em out on kitchen towel for a few hours before storing loose stood upright on their root end on a piece of dry kitchen towel.

Broccoli keeps up to a week if I cut a sliver off the stem and leave it in a glass of water for an hour or so, if it's a bit limp it will take the water up and firm up again. Then I store in fridge in a plastic bag with air-holes but careful not to let it touch the broc as condensation will start a bit of mould, every couple of days I take it out of the bag to wipe off the condensation and blot the broc with kit towel before returning to fridge.

Round lettuce and Little Gem type will take up water too so I cut a sliver off base and leave in a shallow bowl with a little water, then store in fridge in the base of a 2ltr ice-cream tub covered with a plastic bag with air-holes.

Yes!

1.) Place a large kettle of water on the stove on low to medium heat.
2.) Prep ALL your fresh veggies in the manner that you find advantageous*
3.) Place ALL scraps and cut-aways into your kettle of water - keep it at a low simmer (add a pinch or two of good sea salt for flavor and to help the water boil)
4.) Continue to fill your kettle with:
Carrot tops, veggie skins, perhaps mushroom stems, the "white" part inside all your peppers, etc.

* Some people like carrots with skins on, some don't, etc.

Please consider buying only organic produce from your local PSA, or Farmer's market. It does no one any good to buy "organic" produce that had to fly 4,000 miles in a jet to reach you! Scrub the veggies good and clean before you prep them.

Hints on storage:

1.) Try to buy only what you can eat within 5-7 days.
a.) Try shopping with a friend, prep together for the social benefit, and you can have twice the diversity of produce ( or three times if you ask two friends to join you)
2.) Go to www.fenugreen.com and learn about (and purchase) "Fresh Paper", which keeps produce 2-4x longer. It works. Trust me.
3.) If you want produce to ripen, put it in a brown bag. Conversely, do not use brown bags on "almost" ripe produce that you are trying to keep longer. You can simply dump your prepped veggies in your bottom fridge drawer and place a Fresh Paper sheet in the bin; no need for bags.
4.) Keep condensation at bay by placing a very clean, fresh towel in the bin along with your Fresh Paper.
5.) If lettuce needs cleaning, do it right a way; wash it, spin it; empty water out of spinner; repeat until there is no more water in the spinner. Then (yes, you're getting the hang of it!), store you leafy produce (not only lettuce, but spinach, kale, etc.) in the spinner itself, with a small clean towel and a Fresh Paper.
6.) Do NOT wash berries until right before you are going to eat them; they will spoil over night.
7.) Consider getting a food dryer to handle over flow on any fruit you have bought. Found a sale on grapes at .89 cents a pound and can't resist buying three pounds? Clean grapes, pat dry, place in your food dryer, and in two days you will have homemade raisins that will knock you socks off!
8.) Consider blanching, then freezing your "extra my eyes are too big for my head" produce. This is best done with a vacuum pack machine. First, bring a big pot of water to a roiling boil. Then gently place ALL your veggies in; this will cause the water to cool down. When the water comes back to a rolling boil again, spoon your produce out right away and place on a clean towel. Pat dry. When the produce is bone dry, wrap it in saran wrap and place inside a good quality zip lock bag. Always mark the date! This is the "poor man's" version. Better yet, when your material is bone dry, place it in a vacuum bag and run thru your machine to create a seal.

There's lot's more I can think of, but I'll finish with this. You can save that veggie broth in your fridge for up to 5 days. Use it to cook your rice. Use it as a soup starter. Freeze the rest, and remember to always mark your date and what it is!

Hope this is helpful.

Best,

SpecialK

I love to have part of the vegies as a salad the next day. Raw day one, and then cooked day two in a soup or casserole. I find that many of the vegies are ingredients for other dishes.