Using Up All Your Produce

The last time I made veggie summer rolls, I ended up with a lot of leftover vegetable matter (as usual), so I thought I'd post about how I reduce food waste by using that stuff up.

To make the summer rolls, I needed sliced up red bell pepper, carrots, cilantro, basil, cucumber, green onions, and lettuce. Not pictured: tofu and spring roll wrappers.

 

 

I made ten summer rolls because it's enough we'll all have our fill, but doesn't leave more leftovers than we can easily finish off the next day at lunch. Knowing this beforehand, I got out about ten lettuce leaves and picked twenty basil leaves off my basil plant. Basil and cilantro especially do not stay fresh for long after picking, so I made a point of using up all my lettuce, basil, cilantro, and green onions in this batch of summer rolls. Sometimes one summer roll has a bunch more herbs in it than the others because I didn't plan well enough early on. No one has ever complained about this because they are still delicious.

When I cleaned up, I had containers of (from left to right): thinly sliced red bell pepper, julienned carrots, about 7 oz. of diced firm tofu, and julienned cucumbers.

The goal is to use everything so it doesn't end up in the trash. Produce like this will usually keep for a few days in the fridge, but it's easy to forget what you've got, so it's best to have a plan for it all immediately. Ideally the same week's meal plan will have taken these leftover bits of produce into account (learning to do that is a big part of successful meal planning). Here is what I did this particular night:

• I put the tofu in the freezer where it currently remains. I'll get it out the next time I make stir-fry or similar. It keeps indefinitely in there, so there's no rush.
  
• I served the cucumber slices to Simran as a veggie side over the course of the next couple of days and ate some myself at lunch until they were gone. Took maybe two days.
  
• I used some of the carrots in the Korean BBQ Soy Curl Crunchwraps I made later in the week.
• I put the the remainder of the carrots and some of the red bell pepper into the Pasta Marinara with Spicy Italian Beanballs I made later in the week. This was not part of the recipe, but you can throw leftover cut vegetables into most pasta dishes and all it does is make them healthier.
  
• I diced up the last of the red bell pepper slices and put them in the freezer to use in either stir-fry or red beans & rice in the future. Or in a random pasta dish. Just plan on cooking any produce you put in the freezer because the freezing/thawing process changes the texture, and they won't taste as good in, say, a salad.