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Excellent idea… some of this stuff can get pretty time consuming, or if you’re not paying attention (ahem, I have that problem… a lot…) and don’t notice you have to soak and/or sprout something and you’re already halfway through the recipe… erg! Doing-things-ahead-of-time tips would be awesome.
My biggest idea is just purchasing the proper equipment. I am researching the best right now and price is not an problem as long as it is quality. The ease of use is worth it, i think.
This is what I do: when coming home from grocery shopping, right away I wash all my greens in the colander and then I put them back in the plastic bag, and pop them into the fridge! It might take a while washing them all at once like this, but in the long run, it saves so much time to be able to wake up in the morning, pull out the bag of spinach and grab a few handfuls, and stuff them in my blender with my fruits of choice! Think about how much easier this is! And faster!
wash and prep all veggies on the weekends. sprout on the weekends. Throw fruit in the freezer for smoothies if you’re not using it right away.
WHOLE fruit in freezers??? You can do this? Like if I went to buy a pint of strawberries, I could just throw them in the freezer in a ziplock bag? This works? Another of my favorite fruit would be pears. I can just put the whole pear in the freezer? This should be a whole other post…
Just beautiful- we freeze our fruit all the time and they make for delicious cold smoothies.
I also shop on the weekend so that I can wash all my produce for the week. I also julienne my veggies and store them in tupperware for grab and go wraps. I keep ready made dipping sauces in the fridge as well. hth
Wow this is great! I have no idea why I have never thought of this. But I dont think you can freeze herbs- such as cilantro or basil I dont think they freeze well.
Organizing Ideally, I wash all the produce when I get it home. The leafy greens get washed, spun dry, wrapped in paper towels and put in plastic bags and then put in a large basket in the fridge. There’s another basket for the rest of the salad fixings: radishes, carrots, cucumber, peppers, onions, etc. That way when it’s time to make a salad, I don’t have to search through the fridge for individual veggies, I just pull out the salad and greens baskets and I’m good to go.
Preparing I usually have at least some almonds soaking in the fridge, ready for a pate or nut milk.
yep, as soon as I get home I whack my washed strawberries, grapes, berries, bananas (easiest if you peel first), baby spinach, etc etc in the freezer. I pre-chop the chunky fruit (apples, pears, oranges) just into quarters to give my blender a break (it’s an old viatmix and I don’t know how it’d take a whole frozen apple!)
Sooo easy to make smoothies in the morning – i just take out the snap-lock bag/container with what I want and pile it in. Sometimes with my eyes closed! It’s 5am-proof! Not quite sure if there are raw implications for freezing stuff, but it saves me having to think that early in the morning.
I dice, chop, shred the vegetables I think I’m going to use for the week on Sunday or Monday…. I make batches of sweet munchies and chips 1-2X a month and keep them in the freezer….. I peel and vacuum seal my bananas, then once they’re frozen I cut them into chunks and put them in individual portions….. I keep all my nuts and my flax seeds in the freezer so they last longer, my dates, cacao, coconut oil, green food powder ect. are in the fridge….. I buy frozen fruit bulk at a restaurant supply store, I also buy agave in bulk so I don’t run out
This is a good thread.
Don’t your greens and herbs taste freezer burned when you just toss them in the freezer?
I was thinking about making some of my favorite dressings and freezing them in baby food jars so I would have enough for a day or two. I don’t like to eat the same thing over and over again but I like even less to make them every day. I can’t think of why this would alter the taste. Anybody have a comment on this or anyone already doing it?
I saw a recipe posted the here the other day about a dressing made with fresh tomatoes. I’m thinking that if I froze that it wouldn’t taste too good. What do you guys think?
There have been some excellent suggestions so far :-)
Are any vitamins lost from freezing?
Cilantro freezes beautifully. It’s how I keep from having to throw it away! I freeze alot of my fresh herbs for future use. I also prefer to cut fruits into smaller and more manageable pieces before freezing.
Dain5000 – you could always take the extra dressing and combine it with flax seeds and make different flavored flax crackers each week, which you could freeze and have weeks worth of crackers :) I don’t think you would have problems with your dressings. People freeze juices ahead of time. Maybe you could just try a jar or two and see how it tastes?
kevin7197 – about freezing your herbs, do you wash them first? How do you store them? Whole leaves in freezer bags or chopped or in ice cube trays, etc.???
1) PESTO—too many herbs = pesto time! (cilantro, parsley, basil, or a combo all make WONDERFUL pestos… just blend with EVOO, garlic, sea salt etc…). green onions whirred up with some olive oil makes a fabulous drizzle over salads (beautiful color as well)
2) MARINATE—chop up any veggies you think you might not eat in time and toss them in a marinade of your choice. make sure they are WELL coated and they will keep for a while in the fridge.
3) PRE-SOAK—soak nuts/seeds in batches, rather than what you immediately need. nuts dry out fine without a dehydrator, seeds are better dehydrated. store in the fridge until you want to use them…
4) PULP—keep pulps on hand in containers in the fridge. you’d be throwing it out anyway, so even if it goes off before you use it it doesn’t matter! but if you want to make a patty you don’t have to clean the juicer too!
i’ll try and think of some more…
After reading this thread, I called my son and asked him to not recycle the next batch of my grandson’s baby food jars so I could use them to freeze sauces. I love different sauces so, if this works well, I can see me having a “Sauce Saturday” and spending a few hours in the kitchen making all my favorite sauces and freezing them up.
Rawmama – I will have to try your flax cracker idea. It sounds really interesting.
I think that was an idea from somewhere on this site…funny thing is, my favorite cracker was made from left over raw italian soup, blended with flax seeds and dehydrated…delicious! :)
Great idea about glass baby jars!!!!!