Did you make healthy eating one of your New Year’s Resolutions? Are you as frustrated as I am when all the fresh fruits and veggies you buy seem to go bad before you can get around to cooking them? Here are three great websites that I have found to help me minimize the food waste and increase my confidence in putting fresh fruits and veggies in my meal plan.
Great tool here is the storage section. For each type of food, they let you know if you need to refrigerate it, if it is freezer friendly, and how to revive it if it is past its prime (hello limp lettuce!)
Advice is given in a quick and easy to read format.
Extensive database of foods and how long it is safe to store them before you need to toss them. They provide answers for just about every scenario based on whether it is opened or closed, refrigerated or frozen, and previously defrosted or refrigerated before putting it in a freezer.
If you like to weigh all instances of how your food might be stored before eating or storing it, bookmark this website.
Already visited the two above websites and discovered that your food is still good to eat? The next place to visit is AllRecipes. In the search box on their main page is an option to do an ingredient search. I can put in the vegetable or fruit that I need to use into the search and get back recipes that use my ingredients. I’m able to use my ingredients and sometimes add a new recipe to bring out in the future.
With these three websites, I am able to meal plan and adapt the plan if life gets in the way (or the bag of bell peppers I bought are ripening faster than I can use them). Frozen fruits and veggies are also a good back-up option if you know that it is going to be longer than a week before you have a chance to grocery shop again.
Reposted from our archives. Originally posted March 2019.