Quick and Easy Cheap and Healthy Me and Celery {Food Waste Friday 7/20/12}

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Me and Celery {Food Waste Friday 7/20/12}

Posted: 19 Jul 2012 07:03 PM PDT

One of my biggest pet peeves is throwing away food. I could kick myself every time I dump food down the drain or in the trash: it’s just a complete and total waste! And I hate waste. Which is why I am so thrilled to link up to The Frugal Girl on her weekly feature where she posts a picture of all the food she had to throw away for the week, and invites other bloggers to do the same. The idea is to feel some accountability – who wants to admit they threw away all that money to the whole world? – to help you avoid throwing away food in the future.

So in the picture above, you see what I threw away this week:

yucky yucky celery

That’s pretty much it, except for a small half-serving of a leftover chicken dish that just didn’t get eaten. Those poor little last bits of food; they are sadly forsaken far too often!

As for the celery, I do this to myself all the time. I buy my celery at Trader Joe’s because it’s organic and it’s cheap ($2.29 for 2 celery hearts). And while celery lasts a long time, it takes us a while to go through the package, especially this time of year, when I’m not making soups and casseroles as much. (And we are not big fans of raw celery. Yeah, I know, it’s healthy. But it’s yucky!) So I end up chucking at least part of every bag I buy; and every time I do, I say to myself: “next time, you need to freeze half of the bag before it goes to waste!”. And I never listen to myself.

See, the problem is that chopping up celery just takes up so much time. I would pretty much rather be doing anything else in the world than spending hours of my day chopping celery (except maybe chopping onions – if I had to choose between the two, I would definitely go with the celery over the onions), so that task just gets pushed to the back burner until it’s too late.

I’ve discovered the solution to my problem, though! I managed to rescue about a third of the original package of celery (the inner stalks were not nearly so putrid) … and I didn’t have to chop a single piece of celery! Curious? Find out how I managed that feat in this post here!

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Preserving with my Vitamix

Posted: 19 Jul 2012 06:51 PM PDT

I knew when I was saving up for my Vitamix that it would help me save time and money by enabling me to quickly make certain foods that I didn’t used to make, like sunflower seed butter or coconut milk. What I didn’t anticipate was how it would save me time and money by enabling me to more quickly accomplish tasks I was already doing, like shredding and puree-ing fruits and vegetables in order to preserve them.

At my most recent OAMS trip, I happened across a whole bunch of seconds produce at a local produce stand, especially some tomatoes and zucchini that were in excellent condition. We had just come off a very busy week of VBS and I didn’t have a great deal of time or energy, but I did want to take care of the veggies before they went completely bad. I did a quick little Google search to see if my Vitamix could be put to use for me, and sure enough! It could!

For most fruits and vegetables, I like to chop or puree them before freezing because then they are more usable when I need them. I do occasionally freeze jalapeno peppers and the like in their entirety, because they defrost very quickly. But for the most part, I like to be able to pull the veggies out of the freezer in a usable state. Out of the freezer, into the pot. Simple and quick! Plus, a lot of veggies change texture in the freezer and are not as easy to chop up when they are defrosted as they are when they are fresh.

Unfortunately, this prep work does take a bit of time, so I have been known to put off the task until it was too late. Those seconds tomatoes purchased at the produce stand for half price or less suddenly don’t seem like such a good deal when they’re leaking tomato juice all over the counter 3 days later because I didn’t feel like taking the time to prep them for the freezer.

Vitamix to the rescue!

Puree

The Vitamix is a blender, so naturally, it blends fruits and veggies into purees quite nicely. Any old blender will do the trick with most fruits and vegetables (especially cooked ones), but I will say that I burned out quite a few cheaper blenders by expecting a little bit too much of them in this department.

I was actually kinda floored by how quickly the Vitamix decimated (in a good way of course) my tomatoes. I cleaned them, peeled them (with the aid of some hot water), chopped them in quarters and squeezed out the seeds, then dumped the whole pile into the Vitamix. Turned it on, and I had several cups of tomato puree in (literally) seconds. I poured it into a bag and put it into the freezer to make into a fresh tomato sauce or some other yummy dish at some point in the future. It probably took me about 10 or 15 minutes to get from whole tomatoes to a freezer bag full of tomato puree.

Tomatoes aren’t the only things that can be quickly pureed in the Vitamix, of course. These fruits and veggies (and more) can be pureed in the Vitamix in a matter of seconds by setting the speed somewhere between 5 and 10 (depending on the fruit or vegetable and the desired thickness or smoothness):

Bananas – I like to pour the puree into ice cube trays and freeze it to use for recipes that call for mashed banana. No time for banana bread today, but you have a couple browning bananas? This is a quick way to save those bananas before they go completely bad.
Cooked Pumpkins, Winter Squash and Sweet Potato – You might need to add a little water (or broth, depending on if you want it for a sweet or savory use) to the blender for a really smooth puree. The puree can be used in all kinds of baked goods (Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Blondies are a big favorite!), or even soups and casseroles.
Apples – You can puree either cooked or raw apples in the Vitamix, although I personally prefer cooked. Raw applesauce will definitely need some lemon juice, and should be eaten or frozen right away. It goes brown very quickly! When I do make raw applesauce, I like to add some other fruit with it, like berries. The resulting texture and color is more pleasing.
Peaches – Like apples, they brown easily, so I personally don’t freeze them, pureed or otherwise. I do, however, like to make some yummy peach sorbet, and the Vitamix makes quick work of the puree.

Dry Chopping

The Vitamix can be used as a food processor for a variety of fruits and vegetables by utilizing either the Dry Chopping or Wet Chopping method. The Wet Chopping method requires you to cover the produce with water, then process them for one or two seconds at the highest speed. The Dry Chopping method is simply a matter of turning the blender on at a low speed (somewhere between 1 and 5, depending on the food in question), then dropping large chunks of the vegetable or fruit into the opening in the lid, allowing the blade to slice through it.

“Dry Chopping” is, I guess, something of a misnomer, because it’s more like shredding or mincing. If you want pieces that are diced or larger, you’ll probably want to use another tool or just do it by hand. But I’ve found the Dry Chopping method to be perfect for the following:

Celery – I always buy the organic celery at Trader Joe’s, which comes in a package of two. I never use up both of them before they start to yellow and turn, and I always tell myself that I need to freeze them up before that happens. But of course, I never do, because chopping up celery takes a really long time! I managed to rescue a good portion of my celery this time around, simply by dry chopping it in the Vitamix. You don’t even need to cut the celery in chunks before chopping it; just drop the entire stalks in one or two at a time and watch it chop away! I do recommend chopping only one or two stalks at a time, then cleaning out the container before continuing, just to make sure you get any strands off the blade before you have a tightly knotted mess on your hands! I freeze the resulting chopped celery to use in broth, soups, and casseroles.
Onions – This will help eliminate the tears! All you have to do is peel the onion, cut off the ends, and chop it into large chunks, then let the Vitamix do the mincing for you. Easy peasy.
Zucchini – Seeing as we are smack dab in the middle of the crazy zucchini season, this one comes in super handy! Shredded zucchini freezes beautifully and is perfect for making baked goods or tossing into pasta salads, onto pizza, or into casseroles.
Carrots – I don’t always run my carrots through the Vitamix, because I usually prefer to eat them in larger pieces. But the shredded carrots also work well in a variety of dishes, like this simple pasta salad that we had for dinner tonight.

I was going to make a video for you as I chopped away at my veggies, but ~~my kitchen wasn’t clean~~ I ran out of time. Instead, I’ll share with you the ones I found:

The second video shows you how to chop onions using the Wet Chopping method. Either Wet or Dry Chopping works for onions.

I’m sure there are many more veggies that can be chopped in such a manner, but these are the ones that come to mind.

As for the “preserving” part, all I did with my freshly pureed and chopped produce was pack it away in freezer bags and freezer-safe containers and pop it in the freezer. Done!