How to Eat More Vegetables - Easy Recipes - Preserving Food - Cooking at Home - SHTF - Survival Homestead

Many fresh food items you buy can be easily prepared and frozen for convenient use later.  Ideally, you want preserve the ingredients for your diet when they are plentiful and least expensive.  Most vegetables are fruits are plentiful and least expensive in the fall, with tropical in season in the spring. 

Only freeze fresh food without blemishes.  Old vegetables are not to be frozen for later use.
 

For all freezing use small “freezer bags” or plastic containers and push all out the air before sealing.  Frozen food should be consumed within the year.  The result is a freezer full of little bags of semi-prepared vegetables, which are easy and convenient to use in cooking through the winter when no vegetables are in season.

Peas, berries, and nuts and can be frozen whole. Peppers and mushrooms only need slicing to freeze well. Tomatoes can be frozen whole, add them to soups or thaw them in a strainer to use as fresh.  Bananas should be frozen in their skins, just peel and use frozen for smoothies.

 













Beet greens, chard, parsley, spinach, and most leafy culinary herbs and greens can be preserved by chopping dry leaves into bits, spread loosely on a cookie sheet and put in the freezer.  When they are frozen transfer the loose flakes to an airtight freezer bag for use in soups and seasoning.

Vegetables like garlic, onions, carrots, cucumbers, cabbage, squash, turnip and ginger freeze best when grated in a food processor. I make a coleslaw mixture with cabbage, onion and celery seed, eat now or freeze for later.

Once grated, half fill the bag.  Press the food down to the bottom as you press out all the air and seal.  Once the bag is sealed, grab it from the bottom and gently shake so the bits spread out evenly to the top, Score with your fingers if necessary to make “weak spots” where pieces can be easily removed when frozen. The idea is to  fill the bag like a pancake so you can break off pieces as you need them.  

Frozen properly, the food pieces will be loose and making it easy to add them while cooking. As long as you cut them into small pieces, to be added to recipes on demand, the texture and flavor is excellent. 

I add them to soup, stirfries, or just in a pan with some butter (I love turnips and greens this way).  It is like having the prep work done so meals can be made in a hurry. A little chicken stock (which you make by boiling a chicken in a big pot, like in the picture below, and then just freezing the liquid) and a few handfuls of these veggies and beans or rice or pasta make a soup in less than 20 minutes. 

The reason we don’t eat at home is we don’t know how to cook.  Homecooking is a lost art, with an unfair stigma, mainly because it doesn’t produce money but it can quickly turn your life around.  It drastically reduces packaging and the pollution that creates, it vitalizes and heals your body, nurtures your loved ones, conserves money and enables you gain control of the security of your food in these uncertain times.

More recipes and tips on sustainable food to follow.