Photo by Judith Hausman
With a petty second of work , vegetable that would have otherwise gone to waste can be transformed into sauces , soups and salads .
Today , as part of my work in our garden coop , I joined my buddies to review our harvest time shelf . When necessary , we carry bring on in a coolheaded basement where there ’s also a electric refrigerator for computer storage . The recent tropical storm had manducate up many crops prematurely , and the ongoing moistness has invited dirt ball and mildew , too . Nonetheless , we have so much that our stash away vegetables take culling .
Oh so sad : ugly okra , oozingtomatoes , wrinkled peppers and spotted unripe beans . Their glossy , good skin was now primed only for compost . It should be a small comfort that they ’ll become bang-up soil , but it really gets to me to see dissipation like that . In fact , we are already re - thinking next year ’s crops to understate waste .
I hold myself the family and mother for the orphaned , wilted veg . I just kept enunciate , “ I ’ll take it , ” when my mate held up a pocketbook of bean that had been pick late and had gotten a little lumpy , a yellow - stripy Lycopersicon esculentum with one side covered with mordant spots , and a tray of smallbroccoliflorets that had droop . It became my mission to give these vegetable their present moment to shine as a wonderful sauce or to be tucked away in a frozen medley of odds and ends that will try out so good in January .
It is n’t vegetable masochism ; I would n’t eat a pepper with fateful bull growing inside . I certainly help myself to our brand - new , quite - delayed aubergine : a diddly-shit , strip one ; a plump , purple one ; and an nut - white one . But if I did n’t take responsibility for the less - than - invigorated vegetable we had , they would have sat like a doggie in the window for two or three more day and then become inedible , end up at the get-go of the long cycle per second back to becoming food again .
So what do I do with the orphan vegetables ? The easiest thing to do is to slew them up , cook them and freeze them all . This can ensue in inst minestrone in February , using the packet as a base . This meter though , I think I ’ll roast a giving tray of picked - over mixed peppers . I can then either freeze them as - is , whir them into a chunky sauce or soup base , or pickle them . cook , they ’ll hold while I make up one’s mind . There are similar alternative for the broccoli , but I ’ll likely combine some with cooked grain ( quinoa ? dark-brown rice ? ) and somecheesefor a simple , hipster dinner as well .
I ’ll pickle ( more ) dilly beans using the volunteer dill weed heads we have in the garden and the oilygarliccloves we ’ve already dried . When I steam the noggin and add some chick pea plant , crimson pepper and a red onion , they ’ll become a two- ( or three ) bean salad that ’s unaccented yr better than the ones from the deli . The summer squeeze that ’s getting easy will be grated into moist gem . I ’ll peel and scoop the seeds out of the large cukes , and then salt , drain and rinse off them to make a sort of faux Nipponese salad with a Timothy Miles Bindon Rice - vinegar dressing .
The tomatoes really require trimming ; maybe they ’ll become chopped salad to fill the fish tacos I ’ve planned for Friday or familiar to the gorgeous brinjal in a vaguely mediate Eastern spread or salad .
I can make the marginal vegetables glow , and I love the translation that a little extra body of work can yield .
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