Do you buy fresh vegetables or are
you a frozen veg eater?
Seasonal fresh vegetables are yummy
to look at in the shop because they are sprayed with water to keep them looking
fresh. Get them home and revel in preparation, when you can actually smell them
and breathe in the different scents… so long as you don’t store them too long.
Buying is or should be cheaper
which is a major consideration when shopping … but I wonder how much we pay for
the waste, all those discarded leaves, stalks, roots and peelings we throw away
because we don’t know if they’ve been caught up in various pesticide sprays.
At one time I swore buying
fresh was healthier as well as cheaper but I’ve changed my mind on that score.
Frozen vegetables are readily
available at all times of the year. There is no waste, no throwing stuff away
because they’ve ‘gone off’ or sell-by dates are exceeded … the latter still in
evidence despite talk of removing them … which enhances the wisdom of buying
stuff from freezers.
What do I do? Well, I follow both routes.
Casseroles require fresh veg but a meat and two veg meal is perfectly fine
using the frozen variety.
The latest quandary for me is the fact that I can’t buy a
cabbage small enough for two people. Now that our appetites are somewhat
diminished we can’t eat a whole Savoy and anyway who would want to eat Savoy
every day for a week?
There’s nothing like variety, so I like to intersperse
the cabbage with carrots, sprouts, beans etc. My local supermarket used to sell
frozen cabbage which, although not as good as fresh, made a pleasant change
from root veg. It was also brilliant to use when making bubble and squeak. Sadly,
even that has disappeared so I’m back to looking at the fresh cabbage and
wondering if it would be really wasteful to throw three-quarters of it away.
