Photo Credit: Joe Beasley
Well, it was bound to happen eventually.
For the last 7-8 months I’ve been getting my vegetables from a local food co-op who tries to help local/organic farmers bring their wares to a broader audience. This service sets me back about $41 every two weeks, and keeps me pretty well stocked with fruit and vegetables.
The vegetables are delivered in a waxed cardboard box. You leave your box from the previous week on your porch, and they replace it with a filled box. Think old school milk man, but for produce. Given that my job involves a fair bit of shift work, I’m frequently not home when the box is delivered. Enter my roommate, who when I’m not home brings the box inside for me so I can put it all away when I get home from work. This week, as per our usual, I set the box out before work and asked my roommate to bring the box inside when the veggies were dropped off.
It was about 4am, as I was writing Thursday’s post, when I realized I hadn’t seen the veggie box when I came in. I’ve been trying to keep my electrical costs down, so I didn’t bother turning on the lights when I was heading upstairs. I ran downstairs and didn’t see the box in the entryway *insert fear here* I opened the front door and found my veggie box sitting outside.
FYI, It was about -10 last night when I got home. Every single item in my box was frozen solid.
I was fortunate in that I had the foresight(?) to stock up on frozen fruit this week. I’ve known for a while that I was going to cancel it after my mandatory 13 weeks were up, because I want more budget flexibility, so I figured prepping myself for smoothie season was a decent idea while I was still getting the produce. I looked it up today, and I believe I’m actually at 13 weeks as of this week. I’m going to double check and contact them if that is the case.
Unfortunately, not all of my food was smoothie food. For example, and I have an absolutely beautiful red bell pepper that is now sitting pretty in my freezer. I’ve never frozen bell peppers before personally, but I know when they come out of those stir fry mixes they’re usually pretty mushy.I also have a bag of frozen shallots. When dealing with the mush factor on food, usually my mind turns to making soup. I’m not totally convinced that’ll work on the shallots though.
So readers, I need your help. What would you do with frozen bell peppers and shallots? I don’t think I’m going to be able to make my grocery budget this pay period :s
Recommended Reading: Do One Small Thing, Then Do Another.
Oh boo, not ideal at all. I had a veggie delivery for a while but ended up cancelling it as I just didn’t use the produce quick enough (nor have room to freeze things). Could you make a roasted red pepper soup or something? If they end up blended, the mushie state won’t be an issue. Or red pepper pasta/chilli sauce or something? ie. roast and then blend and use somehow?
you cold use them in a quiche or an omlette. Mix them in with a can of tomatoes for a pasta sauce. Stir fry is a good choice, even roasting them would maybe work.
I’d definitely use them in soups & pasta sauces… Could you roast them & purée them for a dip of some kind? Not sure if you can start from frozen though….
Maybe roasted red pepper hummus!
Testing… (seeing if ths goes through..)
I’m so sorry for not responding to your comments Carla! WordPress decided for some reason that you were spam, I just retrieved 6 of your comments from the spam folder. I was wondering where you had gotten off to!
I would make chili with them! It doesn’t matter if they are frozen in chili because eventually they sort of break down anyway.
That’s not a bad idea, I do enjoy a good pot of chilli!
I’d do stir fry? With whatever meat I had on hand? Not sure it’ll be five-star quality, but it’s worth a shot.
I have some bok choy, so that’s a possibility too!
I actually cut up peppers from my garden and freeze them. Although not as crisp as fresh, not as mushy as commercially frozen. I wouldn’t eat them raw, but anything like stirfry, soups, or sauces would be more then fine.
Although I’ve never frozen onions or shallots, a local company sells them, and they are fine for the same type of thing (really, carmelized onions are softer anyhow!). If those are the only 2 items frozen, they at least won’t be wasted!!!
Fortunately most of the produce was quite freezable. Raspberries, strawberries, bananas, etc…
Make some salsa. I’ve used frozen peppers in salsa before and never had a problem.
Not a bad idea. Do you can yours?
Yup. Salsa cans really well and the best part is, you can make it exactly how you like it.
Oh no, too bad about the box of veggies!! I have never had problems using frozen peppers or onions… I use on top of pizza, in chili, spaghetti sauce, casseroles….
You got me going when you said pizza! I think I may have a GF crust left at The Boy’s.
Oh no! Well it at least turned out better than what I was thinking..thought it had gotten stolen! Anyway, I would use it with a stir fry dish so that you can’t tell that it’s supposed to be not mushy, or like CanadianSaver says, pizza! You can never go wrong w/ pizza.
Btw, I added you to my blogroll, I’ve discovered a lot of blogs since I’ve been busy and I finally updated it. Would love it if you could/wanted to add me too:)
For sure