|
Why'd I buy so many vegetables? --'Cause they're good for ya. I've noticed a couple things when I cook. One, I live alone and if I don't do something with my vegetables they'll inevitably go to waste. Two, I tend to use the same veggies over and over in my cooking, whether it's in soup or a stir-fry. My solution? Mark's Vegetable Mix When I get home from the grocery store, I take my produce and cut it up. (All right, sometimes I wait until the next day.) Get out a large mixing bowl, a cutting board, a decent knife, and have at it. My mix is very simple:
Dice the red and yellow onions, put them in the bowl. Slice the celery and add. Slice the carrots and add. Cut up the green onions. (I like to slice the whites thin and the greens in half-inch slices.) Mix well together. Put them into Ziploc bags, then toss them in the freezer. When it's time to cook something, simply break off however many veggies you need, then reseal the bag and toss it back into the freezer. It's that easy. It saves time when you're cooking because everything's already cut into whatever-sized pieces you prefer. It saves money as you're not wasting a bunch of celery or green onions to rot in the fridge. For an easy lunch, add some of the mix to ramen noodles on the stove while you're making your sandwich. If you like chili, jambalaya, Southwest or Italian cuisine, put half the vegetable mix into the freezer, then dice a green pepper and a red pepper, mix it in with the rest, then Ziploc and freeze that separately so you've got that, too. Mark's Stock Pot When I feel up to it, I'll take the ends and unused pieces from cutting into a large pot for vegetable stock. Fill the pot with water, add two diced tomatoes (or one can), bring to a boil, salt to taste, and simmer on the stove for a couple hours. Let cool. Pour it through a strainer into a ice-cream bucket, cover, and put that in the freezer, too. The stock makes a nice bean soup. |
|