Summer Harvest

So here’s a quick kitchen tip in lieu of an actual recipe.

Do you often find yourself cutting up vegetables? When you’re done chopping most kinds of vegetables, you will likely have a number of odds and ends which are not aesthetically appealing or even particularly digestible. Some examples might be: skins of onion and garlic, tops of carrots and beets, stalks of asparagus, et cetera.

Although it is tempting to feed them into the garbage disposal and be done with them, I implore you to instead toss them into a plastic bag (or a container, or something anyhow) and them place said container into the freezer.

Do this every time you chop veggies. It doesn’t really matter what scraps you toss into the bag. You can even put items in that while not spoiled or rotten, you don’t intend to use before they become so. So for instance if my usual veggie delivery folks bring say far more collard greens than two relatively small people would ever consume in the course of two weeks, I might add whatever won’t be used to this freezer bag. Really, you cannot go wrong.

After anywhere from two weeks to a month, you will have a fairly large collection of odds and ends which would ordinarily have ended up in a compost pile, or zooming through your plumbing in hundreds of tiny parts. Now find an afternoon or morning when you have an available two hours (plus or minus). Remove your bag of scraps from the freezer, remove the scraps from the bag, and toss them into a pot full of boiling water! Bring said water and vegetable leavings to a boil, turn the heat down to “low,” and simmer for anywhere from an hour to three depending on how strong you want the broth. Strain out the icky solids, salt and spice to taste: bay leaves are nice, and enjoy!

Now you’ll have a lovely vegetable broth which has many different uses. You will also have the satisfaction certain Native American societies had when they were still able to hunt bison and used every single part!

Really, there is no excuse not to make this yummy broth which is so easy to use. Try using it when:

1. Cooking pasta!
2. Cooking rice!
3. Poaching eggs!
4. Making soup (the work is basically done)!
5. Steaming other vegetables!
6. Sauteeing!

Goodness, this is an excellent thing to do!