Ask Lemmy

On Sunday night, I sit in front of the tv, once again watching guilty-pleasure shows, and I use whatever veggies are left over to make salads. Each week I try for a mix of styles so I don't get bored: for a couple salads I may toss in some nuts and berries or apple pieces to make it a bit sweet, while others I'll put in extra peppers or onions to give it some zing. Any lettuce goes on top so it doesn't get soggy over the week; crunchy stuff like croutons goes in a snack Ziploc on the side so it stays crunchy (ziplocs get rinsed and reused every week, and some recycled year to year). Dressing goes in an old pill bottle along the side. I make ten salads: one for each lunch and dinner for the week.

In front of Sunday night's tv, I'll also make little veggie snack-packs: veggies in a Ziploc (add a little water to keep them fresh), some of them with an old pill bottle of dressing or dip on the side After I've finished, any veggies that haven't been used cooking, salads or snack-packs, they get frozen to be used in future meals.

Herbs tend to come in small bunches during the season and it can be annoying to process small amounts each time. I've settled on cleaning and chopping them up each week (in front of Friday nights tv), then freezing them. At the end of the season, I'll take them out of the freezer and dry them and add them to my spice cabinet.

Once or twice a year, I'll spend a couple hours making freezer jam, which is insanely simple: mash the berries, add sugar and pectin, stir, put in containers, leave them on the counter for a day, then move to the freezer. I can use the jam for sandwiches, cake filling, topping for pancakes and waffles, or give them out as stocking stuffers over the holidays.

And once a year during high tomato season, I'll spend a Saturday afternoon processing tomato: I'll make and can some salsa, make and freeze some marinara, boil down a bunch of tomatoes into tomato paste (freeze them in ice cube trays, then move them to ziplocs; you can use them as-is or dilute them into soup, sauce or puree).

How much time is all this? I find it helps to reframe things and count them toward other goals or desires. The hour I spend doing PYO on alternate weeks isn't "farm-share time", it's counted toward my weekly exercise goals. Time in front of the tv isn't counted either, as I'm catching up on guilty-pleasure tv (without the guilt, since I'm actually working, lol). The couple hours batch-cooking on alternate Saturdays, I would likely to have been batch-cooking anyway. That really leaves like 1.5 to 2 Saturdays each year, where I'm making jam, making and canning salsa, etc.

Price-wise, I'm paying $400 a year for a ten-week share, but again I re-frame it: I eat the fresh meals over the summer and fall and the frozen meals over the winter and spring, plus there's also whatever I've pickled, canned, jammed or frozen. For me, it's really a year-round benefit that works out to about $7.70 per week for farm-fresh (often organic) ingredients and homemade meals spiced to my personal tastes. It provides over half the food I eat each year, which means the rest of my food budget stretches further. And I'm eating healthy foods, not highly-processed stuff.

For me, the key has been coming up with a set of recipes for the ingredients I'll get, for dishes that I'll enjoy, and that preserve well - usually frozen. I only have the normal freezer-on-top-of-fridge, but by the end of the season, it's crammed with lasagna, French onion soup, eggplant Parmesan, scalloped daikon, strawberry pancakes, blueberry muffins, stuffed tomatoes and peppers, zucchini boats, butternut squash bread, seven-layer casserole, chili, etc.

I'll admit this isn't for everyone: you need to adjust your habits to what's in season instead of what you buy from the store, you need to find recipes that work for you, you need to spend time cleaning, processing and cooking the veggies. But for the people who do adjust, it can save money.