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In Praise of Frozen Vegetables

From the Atlantic.

"I sometimes feel like California-based foodies have produced some kind of mass hallucination around the subject of fresh vegetables. But if you poke around your local supermarket, you'll find that they have tons and tons of big freezer full of little conveniently portioned bags of vegetables. Just like pizza or egg rolls. But healthier. Is it 100 percent as tasty as farm-fresh locally grown in-season produce? No. But it's convenient as heck and very very inexpensive."

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"In many cases, frozen produce is superior to the industrially farmed stuff trucked a zillion miles to your house: out of season, for example, you are better off baking with frozen fruit, which is picked ripe and flash frozen near to its source, than using "fresh" fruits which are picked green so that they can withstand the lengthy journey to your house."

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"It would be nice if we all had hours every day to shop at the farmer's market and lovingly hand-prepare quality meals. But as Matt notes later in the piece, if you set that up as your standard, you're quite likely to end up simply buying prepared food. And prepared food is almost always loaded with more fat, sodium, and calories than you'd make at home."

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"...when people discuss why Americans eat so few vegetables, we tend to hear a lot about "food deserts" and the relative unavailability of fresh produce (or inconvenience of cooking it). But frozen vegetables are available in any supermarket larger than a corner bodega; they are cheap; and they are very convenient. For the people who truly live in areas served by no supermarket at all, even frozen vegetables may be difficult to obtain. But this does not describe a majority of Americans. We're not eating vegetables because we prefer meat, fat, and cheap carbohydrates, not because we just can't make vegetables fit into our lifestyle."

When you can't eat fresh, frozen is the next best thing--anything besides canned. Having a garden reduces the "trucking time" to zero, and is cheaper than both fresh and frozen, and a garden (once established) doesn't really take much time at all.

UPDATE: Make your own frozen veggies by lining a baking sheet with wax paper, then laying out veggies or fruit in a single layer, then freezing for a few hours. When frozen solid, remove from baking sheet and store in freezer containers or zippy bags for future use. You can also subdivide them for meal-size defrosting and use--allow 1/2 c. measure per family member.

Posted by Cute at 7:35 PM

Labels: food preparation and use, health