Frozen vegetables. [Apologies to Stuart, but your thread is wandering.]

I'd be interested in whether folks here stock frozen foods, especially fruits and vegetables. We find that fresh vegetables are almost always better, but that a few are often more reliable and often much better than what's available fresh.

Examples:

Peas
Corn
Edamame
Blue berries
Blackberries
Cherries
Lima beans
Broccoli florets

We particularly like the Stahlbush Island Farms brand.

Any thoughts?

Edamame, limas, and corn. Lots of fresh-frozen strawberries from this past summer. I couldn't imagine using frozen when fresh was available, though...


(Hey, I cleaned out MY off-topic posts! )

[Jenise]

Bob, I grew up on frozen vegetables but for squash and corn in season--as a child they provided a handy meal I could make for myself, especially, believe it or not, for breakfast because I disliked all conventional breakfast food. To this day, a concoction I call hot and sour creamed peas seasoned with lemon juice and tons of white pepper is a winter breakfast favorite. Corn and lima beans are also favorites, and haricot verts are a good standby for when fresh vegetables aren't available. Also, like you, I've added edamame to my list of frozen veg favorites. Thawed but cold and dusted with an artisan salt is a another breakfast favorite.

I eat weird food.

But I'm surprised to see broccoli on your list, fresh being good and available year round now.

Off the top of my head... green chile, red chile, corn, peas, green beans, mixed berries.

Jenise, I don't think you are weird at all. I never ate "breakfast food" for breakfast either. Now I will have oatmeal in the morning or a couple eggs, but growing up it was leftovers for breakfast (when I bothered eating breakfast).

Broccoli is usually very good to excellent here, and easy to check for freshness. But every once in a while, we go through two or three weeks when it is very flaccid, and no amount of refreshing in water -- I cut off the ends and put it in a bowl of water like flowers -- will revive it. Both the Market Basket and Whole Foods -- same sitch when it happens.

I much prefer fresh, especially since I like the stems and Janet won't eat them -- so there's always plenty for me. And we usually can get very good broccoli sprouts during the arid periods.

The Stahlbush Island is only a tiny step behind the best fresh, especially since we steam broccoli for four minutes or so. I don't use the frozen in salads where I serve it raw.

Stuart introduced me to Edamame, and I always have a bowl full in the fridge to snack on. Another food Janet doesn't care for, but hot or cold, a delicate delicious snack just as it is -- with salt or with John Ash's balsamic reduction drizzled on.

I like corn and peas cold for breakfast too -- mix them up and sprinkle a bit of oatmeal on top for a bit of crunch.

I haven't cared for frozen haricot verts -- they seem to be too thin to stand up to transportation in the stores in this area, and often have little crystals of ice, so they have a bit of freezer burn here.

'fresh-frozen strawberries"

Another favorite -- I like strawberries, blue berries and peas frozen right out of the pack.

And please don't to much cleansing of your stuff, Stuart -- it's always worth a chuckle, at least when I can figure out what you're writing about.

Regards, Bob

PS: Frozen corn competes well with fresh corn much of the time -- the frozen from quality packers is always frozen immediately after picking; "fresh" here is usually several hours to days old -- and they new varieties may be even older, now that they are breeding corn to hold longer before cooking.

But right off the plant and into the pot -- heaven. Wish corn weren't so greedy for space in the garden. B.

Yahbut at the same time, when I've tried using frozen corn in my version of the Slanted Door corn and wild mushroom stir-fry, it never tastes right nor has the right texture. But frozen corn is fine in Chinese corn and egg soup or cornbread, so I keep it for that and spend 48 weeks a year dreaming about the fresh stuff.

Roasted corn is great from frozen corn, and even marginal fresh corn tastes awfully good roasted, especially if there is some corn milk.

Technically is the a gift from Dr. Malliard? I've read that for a Malliard reaction to occur, you need carbohydrates and amino acid, but I don't see where the amino acid is coming from. (I roast the corn kernels in the corn milk without adding butter.)

If there are cells, there are amino acids.

Peas and whole baby beans.
Plus frozen peach puree from my own peaches that seem to want to all ripen at the same time.

Bought some frozen berries for the first time recently.

Just about everything else that I like is available year round, or bought only when in season. Like corn - and it is just about corn season here, yay!.
I love fresh corn on the cob, cooked then seasoned with salt and pepper, smothered in butter and accompanied with a slightly buttery and mealy-rich chardonnay!

If there are cells, there are amino acids.

Yes, but keep in mind that seeds are a tiny embryo, along with enough stored energy to support the infant plant until its own photosynthetic apparatus is up and running. For most seeds, the protein content as a percentage of the whole seed by weight is minuscule. Seeds from the legumes are the most notable exception.

-Paul W.

Somebody remind me to freeze corn-on-the-cob next Summer for Thanksgiving.

[Jenise]

Somebody remind me to freeze corn-on-the-cob next Summer for Thanksgiving.

Howie, freeze corn on the cob next Summer for Thanksgiving.

My list is short and very similar to the rest of you guys...

Corn
Peas
Edamame (in the pods)
Artichoke hearts
Brussels sprouts

I don't usually stock frozen fruit as a rule, but my husband can never resist the humongous bag of mixed berries from Costco when he thinks he's going to start another "smoothie kick." He usually makes one, and then the rest of the berries ripen with freezer burn until I throw them out.

Artichoke, hearts -- thanks. I'll look for them -- haven't seen them before, but then I haven't looked.

Just checked my freezer. The only vegetable (or fruit) was fava beans. There's normally some panise in there but I'm all out at the moment.

We usually stock a variety of frozen veggies, especially english peas, corn, broccoli, and pepper, onion & sugar snap stirfry blend (which comes in handy for quick skillet suppers when we are too stressed from work to want to stress over a big meal).

I grew up in a rural setting, and we always filled a freezer with produce from our large garden, to tide us over the winter.

Actually, I love frozen veg. We keep peas, baby peas, corn, beans, chillis and my most recent discovery, frozen okra. I used to buy lots of endamame until the recent scare with Chinese imports - we can't seem to buy the Japanese grown ones here. I also find tinned options very good too - in fact, I prefer tinned corn over frozen, and we get very nice tinned pineapple and baby beets here as well. Fresh is always nice, but not always better - so much produce gets snap frozen at its peak, and sometimes you just don't get to buy fresh at its peak. Blueberries are a case in point - over here they're half the price frozen than they are fresh, and usually nicer, and since I mostly use them for baking, that's how I buy them - frozen.

Digressing slightly, we've always made sugo from tinned Italian roma tomatoes rather than fresh - and we use lots of Italian tomato passata as well. Vine-ripened fresh tomatoes are lovely for salads, but that's about it for us. We have gorgeous tinned Italian roma, and now cherry tomatoes as well, for about $1/tin, so they're a house staple.

Favas
Berries - raspberries at least, sometimes blueberries (usually bought fresh)
Corn
Peas - Isabella eats bowls of them straight from the freezer when she gets home from school.

I have a really hard time in putting out the $$ to buy fresh berries, considering that when I lived in N. Georgia, I could pick berries by the gallons from my Granny's 15 blueberry bushes, or wild blackberries and hucklberries from the nearby hills. Those were the days...
Someone please tell me again just WHY I moved to the friggin' city? Oh yeah, for a woman...

corn
okra
peas
the occasional green bean.
peaches (great for a last minute cobbler)
raspberries
blackberries

I buy all my berries/fruits at the Farmer's Market during spring and summer, freeze and put into vac/seal bags. This summer I had plums from a neighbor, I cooked in a bit of sugar and vac/sealed those too.
In winter, we eat from the freezer and what is in season at the market. In CA we have a lot to pick from. Right now Clementines are available. Next month the wonderful Satsuma mandarins are in. Apples, pears, lemons are abundant.

The veggies we eat are always fresh and in season. I do keep frozen peas and corn. I love putting the peas in risotto now and then or in cold pasta salads. The corn usually goes into soups.

I'd be interested in whether folks here stock frozen foods, especially fruits and vegetables. We find that fresh vegetables are almost always better, but that a few are often more reliable and often much better than what's available fresh.

Examples:

Peas
Corn
Edamame
Blue berries
Blackberries
Cherries
Lima beans
Broccoli florets

We particularly like the Stahlbush Island Farms brand.

Any thoughts?

We buy fresh when it's available but stock:

Spinich
Corn
French Cut String Beans
Lima Beans

I sure hope I won't run afoul of the Food Snob Police.