My biggest hangup with cooking vegetables with my dinners is that it’s impossible to purchase one portion of most veggies. Like, eating by myself, I’ll never need an *entire* sliced onion, or whatever number of veggies get bundled into one purchase, like a bag of green beans. How can I work around this so I’m not wasting money by using half a product and then letting the rest go bad?
2 things.
First: Do you have access to refrigeration?
If you have a fridge, you can put the green beans in the fridge to prolong their life.
If you have a fridge, you can cook enough food for 3-4 meals and then before sitting down to eat your portion of dinner, put the extra meals in an airtight-sealed storage container in the fridge so you can eat it for lunch tomorrow & dinner the next day.
Most cooked food is good for like, 4-5 days in the fridge. Having leftovers available means I don't have to cook tomorrow, I can just scoop some into a bowl, put the rest back, and reheat what's in my bowl using a microwave or stovetop pan.
If you don't have access to refrigeration, come back and we'll talk about options.
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Second: "I’ll never need an entire sliced onion"
..... wwwwwwhaet? Hi, my name's bewilderment, nice to meet you. What on earth are you talking about?
Eating an entire onion is fine. You're allowed. Onions are tasty. You can also eat raw onion on salads, tacos, & various other shit.
I've never encountered a casual dinner recipe that could be ruined by cooking a whole onion instead of half of one.
You're allowed to eat a meal that's just a huge pile of cooked onions & green beans with spices on it. It's great. There are no food cops that will materialize at your door to stop you.
You're also allowed to eat just an entire can of green beans as a meal, or just a whole bag of carrots.
You're also allowed to cook your whole sliced onion, and use some of the cooked slices in tonight's meal, and store half of the cooked onion in the fridge to drop into a noodle dish tomorrow night.
You can also cut the onion in half, use half of it tonight, and half of it tomorrow. Leftover raw ingredients are also an option.
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I guess I'm a little confused why you're holding on to produce and not eating it - or you're buying so much produce that you can't eat it all in 1 week.
Fresh produce should get priority when choosing what to eat. If there's fresh veggies & fruit available, every meal should include some.
Stir Frying uses a lot of fresh veggies all at once, so is a good option if you need to quickly use it up.
There's loads and loads and loads of vegetable-heavy recipes available online. Write down what ingredients you have a lot of and look for recipes that include them.
Making SOUP can also use basically ALL your remaining veggies, if they're reaching the end of their lifespan. Soup broth can be frozen for months.
You can also chop a bunch of veggies into itty bitty bits, dump the whole pile into pan with some oil, fry until they start to change color & soften, then dump in a can of diced tomatoes & a shitload of herbs and spices to make Sauce to use.
For the rest of the week, all you need to do is cook some noodles, meat, or hell - bigger chunks of vegetables!
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If you have a hard time remembering when a vegetable might go bad, or keep forgetting you have a vegetable so it sits in the fridge till it rots - stick a whiteboard to your fridge, with a dry-erase marker.
Write the NAME of the veggies and the DATE you put them in, and the DATE you need to eat it before.
When figuring out what to cook check that list and pick 1-2 of the oldest veggies so you can use them up before they go bad.
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If the problem is forgetting your veggies exist when they're out of sight in the bottom drawers of the fridge, then don't put them in there!
For a long time, I put most of my veggies in the little shelves on the fridge door, and put all my sauces in the bottom drawers, so I could immediately see all my produce every time I opened the fridge.
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My advice boils down to:
Eat larger amounts of vegetables.
Eat vegetables with more meals.
Seek out recipes that use them, if you don't know what to do with what you've got.
Use refrigeration to prolong the life of both raw ingredients and leftovers.
Make and Eat Leftovers.
Keep track of your produce better so you know what's more likely to spoil soon & can eat it before the bacteria do.
