Fresh produce in the grocery store is a marketing gimmick. The reason it’s there in the front of the store is to look nice and give you the psychological cue that you have fufilled your obligation to buy healthy things and may now buy what’s in the aisles with less guilt. Similar to how grocery stores don’t profit on rotisserie chickens which you have to walk through the aisles to get to so you will usually end up buying more than the chicken. They may control costs by displaying what loses them the least money, but direct profit from the fresh produce isn’t why it’s there.
Frozen is cheaper and healthier if we’re talking what to buy for nutrition. Fresh is really only fresh locally. Yes, it’s sad that fresh vegetables from your own locality can be unaffordable. The reason for that goes far deeper than the supply chain disruptions from the past few years.
I definitely prefer the texture of fresh-ish for certain dishes, and there are some which I only buy fresh for preference even though I’m aware of the healthier alternative. That last part is only to advocate for the kind of stuff that’s suited to a global supply chain for nutrition purposes as long as we have to deal with the system we have. Frozen can be convenient, like with soup or other dishes where the produce would be thoroughly cooked. I toss them right in from the freezer. Air Fryers can close the gap on a lot of dishes as well.
I discovered the glory of freezing my excess food instead of letting it go bad and I’ve never gone back. Never again will I experience the heartbreak of an entire block of cheese going moldy. (Important: GRATE THE CHEESE BLOCK BEFORE YOU FREEZE IT)
That I don’t know other than sodium possibly being an issue. I learned this info a while ago but for this comment I grabbed the first link which featured a credentialed dietician. Since it was high in the search results and from the language used in the article it could very well be an industry advert. Hopefully the dietician didn’t risk their license by making a false claim in service of the industry.
I doubt any industry advert would make straight out false claims. Usually you just direct the covnersation and avoid negatives and overinflate positives. Salt is a good point. I know there is some low sodium but not sure if there is no sodium and I bet if there is it will be replace with another kind of salt.
Fresh produce is completely raw, frozen is typically parboiled (very slightly cooked), and canned is completely cooked. Frozen is typically the best balance between freshness and convenience. The only veggies I buy fresh are things I’m going to eat raw, like broccoli for eating with dips.
Organic typically has a higher carbon footprint because it requires more land and often even water resources and of course more labour.
Less pesticides, yeah, sure. But those pesticides allow us to grow crops much more efficiently. Everything is a trade-off I suppose, but I am very skeptical that the trade-offs of organic are worthwhile.
As a “Mediterranean” person myself, our home has always included meals with beans of one type or another on a regular basis so they are natural to my diet. As soon as the weather gets cold, I especially love the excuse to eat them more often since they are not only yummy, but feel like a comfort cozy time food. My favourite hands down are lentils, since they can be cooked in so many ways that appeal to me. At the moment one of my favourite ways to make them is super simple: slow cooked in veggie broth with some garlic cloves and chopped leeks (the latter are browned first in a little bit of olive oil), cooked until tender, with saffron, white pepper, and a pinch of salt. Serve with lemon juice and chopped fresh coriander leaf. Cheers! 👩🍳 🥰
Gazpacho. Throw whatever veggies you have in a blender, season and bam - soup. Add a filler if it doesn’t keep you full. Beans, lentils, potatoes, rice are all good options.
I looks like when people hear that legumes are not vegetables they assume they are somehow worse. The truth is, legumes are not vegetables, they are better. Legumes are important part of Mediterranean diet which “includes proportionally high consumption of unprocessed cereals, legumes, olive oil, fruits, and vegetables”. Vegetables are good for you but without legumes there’s no Mediterranean diet and it’s proven that this diet has many health benefits. So eat your vegetables but even more importantly, eat your legumes.
Not exactly soup, but congee (rice porridge) is great for filling your belly and it’s very easy to make.
I guess you could make it watery enough to pour it out of a thermos if necessary.
Fry some onion, garlic and chorizo (you can fry it directly in the pot with some olive oil).
Add water, lentils, potatoes, tomatoes, bay leaf, salt.
Cook.
Eat.
Delicious. It’s maybe 15 minutes of chopping and hour or two of cooking. If you have some pressure cooker it’s fast and easy. Without it it takes longer but it’s still really easy, just stir from time to time. Try it once to figure out the proportions but it’s hard to mess up.
I second the taco soup. I call it tortilla soup and do it a little differently, as they stated. It is really simple and really quite delicious.
I make it with a whole chicken which is fairly cheap, in a slow cooker, hard to mess up. But just the other night i made it with some plain chicken breasts i picked up that day. Butterfly cut them seared them off and finished them in the soup.
Three or four cups of Chicken stock.
I omit the taco seasoning and just use healthy amount of cumin and a little chili powder. Salt (depending on salt content of chicken stock), pepper, garlic powder.
Cans of corn, black beans, garbanzo beans, roasted tomato.
I recently started sauteeing a heap of mushrooms chopped to bits and adding that too.
Finish with a squirt of lime, some cheese, and tortilla chips, or i sometimes crisp up some regular corn tortillas and cut them up in it.
Super simple, tasty. I personally can eat it throughout the week.
They kind of do, but it really adds to it. Sort of like a corn dumpling almost. But it’s best to just crumble them up and mix them in slowly from the top of the soup. Then only the bottom ones get soggy, and you get a little crunch left from what you pull off the top of the pile.
I personally started pressing my own tortillas recently, and they’re a little thick and they turn into literally corn dumplings.
I’m a fan of taco soup. Plenty of recipes out there to find one that works for you. The gist is some stock, beans, tomatoes, green peppers, ground beef, and taco seasoning mix. You can add some onions, or cheese, or sour cream, or crushed taco chips (stale works great), or some extra spice from peppers… basically anything goes.
First, thanks for such an enthusiastic, detailed, and entertaining write up! Not to mention educational! I, too, adore beans and eat them alone as a lunch often. May I suggest Rancho Gordo beans, I swear I don't work for them lol but getting to try all the amazing varieties they have has been so delightful!
Onion & carrots, anywhere from 1:2 to 1:1 by weight, boil in just enough water to cover, grate in some fresh ginger, salt, puree. Add more water if it’s too thick. Throw in some chicken bouillon if you like.
I don’t care what the classification is, I love beans. I love ‘em canned, I love ’em dried and pressure cooked, I love ‘em baked, I love ‘em on toast, I love ‘em in a chili (don’t @ people with strong opinions about beans in chili), and I love ‘em in a tortilla.
Could make pasta sauces, like bolognese, and freeze them, then make some pasta when you want it, like 9-8 minutes. Could also pre cook the pasta although I’ve never be a fan of reheated pasta. Hell, maybe could make a pasta dish and freeze the whole thing. Not exactly a soup, but i suspect pasta and pasta sauce evolved from soup.
Bean & vegetable soup. Easy to change up the beans used, and to vary the vegetables over the seasons, as well as whatever herbs & spices you like. Useful if the supermarket discounts things at the end of the day, or if they don’t always have everything in stock, as you can adapt it on the fly.
Scotch broth - mix of lentils & soup barley, usually with a small amount of carrot & cabbage, but you could use any vegetable. Useful if you forgot to start soaking your beans or pulses on time, as it barely requires soaking.
Alternatively you could make an extremely strong vegetable stock, freeze that as icecube-sized amounts, then pop a couple in a pan, add water to dilute to the strength of regular stock & simmer the rest of your ingredients in that. Making the stock would take a fair bit of time as you’d have to reduce it so much, but then you’d be set up for much shorter weekly soup-making sessions. Issue here is, if you’re not totally happy with a batch of stock, you’re stuck with it for a lot longer than a batch of soup.
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