Summer StashingLazy cook healthy food

It’s so much easier as a lazy cook to have healthy food through the winter if you have invested a bit of time into it in the summer. 

If you can make a few favourites for stashing in the freezer in summer, then when you want a quick meal in the winter, you’ll have some vegetable dishes to add colour, flavour and variety.

Every winter we are delighted to have such tasty food easily available at the end of a long day, and are grateful to our past selves for having had the foresight to make it!

Many who live alone feel less incentive to put together varied meals that take a little extra time to prepare, and busy working people often just don’t have the time to start a meal from scratch after their work days. For everyone, being able to put a healthy meal on the plate fast makes us more likely to eat well in our hectic lives. When you sit down to eat that home cooked meal, you can taste and feel the good nourishment sinking in and sustaining you in ways that processed foods cannot.

Cooking a vat of sauce or vegetables to freeze does take longer than cooking for just one meal, but is easy to do on a September afternoon at home.

Late summer is a great time to make these, as ingredients tend to be abundant and cheaper. If you have your own garden you may be able to use some of your own produce. Otherwise, ordering in bulk from local farms is a good option for freshness and a lower price per pound.

Make some easy tomato sauces.* It is as simple as chopping up some onions, garlic and tomatoes, and simmering in a big pot. For an even lazier option, we have found you can also put your tomatoes into a Dutch oven or covered roasting pan and stick it in the oven for several hours: no stirring or watching the pot necessary!

You can freeze your tomato sauce as is, or use it to freeze other vegetables in it without any freezer burn. The sauce coats and covers the other veggies, so they last much longer than frozen pieces of vegetable. When you eat this in the winter you will have a tasty dish.

Some vegetables retain their texture better than others. Cooked veggies that work well frozen this way are:

• Corn, briefly cooked and removed from the cob

• Zucchini, or any summer squash, chopped and cooked in the tomato sauce until tender.

• Carrots, chopped and steamed

• Roasted red peppers - a lovely variation, but more time-consuming

Other tricks with tomatoes: freeze whole or halved tomatoes as is. When you run them under hot water the skin will slide off and those tomatoes can be added to soups or stews.

Roasted Roma tomatoes are a treat. Cut them in half length-wise and place on a cookie sheet. Drizzle with olive oil, salt and Italian herbs, and pop into a 325 degree oven to slowly roast and get somewhat dried out. This may take an hour or more. Pack into jars and cover completely with olive oil. Use in salads, sandwiches or on a veggie platter.

Red Peppers are so expensive in the winter. We often do a whole bushel basket for winter prep. This takes a bit of time, but we find it’s worth it, especially when done in bulk.

To roast peppers, just bake them whole in a hot oven at 425 degrees until the skins are blistered and blackened. Some people prefer to do this step on a BBQ. Put them into a big bowl and cover with a lid or cling wrap. The residual heat will steam them and loosen the skin. After about 15-30 minutes, remove the skins and seeds - they usually peel away easily with your fingers. Now you can add them to tomato sauce or put them in jars covered with a little olive oil. You can also flatten them between pieces of waxed paper, slip them into a plastic bag, and slide them into a small space in an almost full freezer! They are great in sandwiches, omelettes, and added to other entrees.

Zucchini are so plentiful right now, but need to be cooked before they are frozen.We like to grate them in a food processor and saute the shreds in olive oil until they have released all their water content. This takes about an hour for half a dozen average sized zucchini, stirring now and then. This makes a wonderful frittata, or can be added to soups and stews.

Pestos: Whizz up a variety of pestos.** One unusual but favourite pesto is cilantro in sesame oil. If you get really fresh cilantro, you can throw the whole bunch in, stems and all, then the other ingredients, and it’s ready to freeze in minutes.

Freeze fresh herbs dipped in olive oil and flattened between sheets of wax paper.Then slip that into a plastic bag, so you can snap off a bit as needed. Or use ice cube trays, but please note that they aren’t airtight, so they don’t store things as long. Use the herbs to add a dash of extra flavour to a pre-frozen sauces or soup, stew, or even omelette for variety, and to up your weekly plant intake count.***

Eggplants historically had a tendency to a bitter flavour. Some newer varieties have had the bitterness bred out of them, but if you are unsure which type you have, it’s best to de-bitter them. This can be done by covering eggplant slices with a sprinkle of salt and leaving them for about half an hour, then rinsing them off.

Here are two recipes for eggplant that freeze well:

Ratatouille takes some time in summer, but makes a great quick portion of several vegetables and herbs for easy winter meals.

This isn’t a posh ratatouille, more of a vegetable stew, but still yummy and healthy.If you aren’t keen on any of the ingredients, just leave that one out!

1 large or 2 small onions

1 to 6 cloves of garlic, according to taste

1 large or 2 small eggplants, de-bittered if necessary

2 to 6 peppers: preferably mixed colours

1 - 3 zucchini, depending on size and how much you like them

1-2 lbs tomatoes, cores removed and chopped. Plum tomatoes have more body, but any tomatoes are good for this as the juice is important. 

Herbes de provence, or a combination of thyme, rosemary and basil

Our lazy cook method is so easy! Just chop all the vegetables in bite sized pieces and pile them up in a large roasting pan. Give the whole pan a good slug of olive oil and a sprinkle of salt, pepper and herbs. Now pop in the oven, uncovered, and roast for about three hours, stirring occasionally.

Eggplant Curry: If you like curry, curried eggplants freeze well, as long as they are fully cooked before they are frozen.

Sometimes we “cheat” and use ready-made curry pastes: pick your own according to how spicy you like it. 

Fry onions until almost translucent, add the garlic and fry for another 2-5 minutes, stirring to make sure it doesn’t burn. Then add curry powders or paste and fry another couple of minutes, continuing to stir. Add the de-bittered eggplant chunks and just enough water to cover them.

Stir to make sure the spices are mixed in, not stuck to the bottom of the pan. Bring to the boil and simmer until the eggplants are fully soft.

If you want to use fresh spices, use about 1 tsp each coriander, cumin and turmeric per 2-3 eggplants. Fresher spices always make tastier curries, but curry pastes work better than old powdered spices from the back of the cupboard.

Store your ratatouille and eggplant curry in the freezer, preferably in glass dishes. 250 ml gives a reasonable portion for one in winter. Glass dishes without any neck are easier to use to cook from frozen, as the contents slide out readily to defrost and heat up in the pan.

The time it takes to put a healthy meal together from your freezer stash in winter gets food on the table faster than delivery, or popping out to a drive-through, and is so much healthier and cheaper. Even if you just make one or two of these ideas right now, you’ll thank yourself for it in the winter!

Here's where to find those links:

* Tomato Sauce

** Pestos

*** Count plants not calories