Is there any way for me to preserve celery, onion, fresh garlic, etc. and use it at a later date?

Question

What I mean by preserve is can I freeze them and use them at a later date? I get so tired of wasting fresh vegetables. I mostly shop at Wal-Mart and they sell large quantities of celery and green onion, considering it's just me and my husband. I don't use either of those ingredients often but when I do they end up sitting in the vegetable tray until they rot. Also, when I cut an onion in half I usually wrap the other half in foil but when I come back to it at a later time it's all dry and all the juice is gone.

Answer 1

I, like you, have a household of just two people. If I can't get to my onions, celery, green onions, carrots, or any other veggie in the vegetable bin within a reasonable period of time (or I'm going on vacation), I dice them up, put them in a zip lock bag and toss them in the freezer. I then use them for my soups and they work great.

If I cut my onion in half, I put the half in a zip lock bag and put it in my vegetable bin - it doesn't dry out. Just make sure you press the air out of it.

I found, when I use zip lock bags, if I have chopped lettuce for a future salad, keep the air in the bag so it can breathe or it will turn brown faster. That holds true for bell peppers and carrots also. For celery I take the air out. My grandmother used to take her celery, rinse it off, place a wet paper towel around it and then seal the whole thing in aluminum foil. Her celery would keep for a very long time and look great. She did the same thing with head lettuce.

One more thing, if you have a head of lettuce and you just aren't using it fast enough (with just the 2 of you), then keep in mind you can cook lettuce. I use it to line my steamer when I steam shrimp, cod, and scallops. I place a layer of my romaine (can use head lettuce as well), in the steamer, place the layer of cod down (it takes the longest to cook) and place another layer of lettuce over it. I then steam it 10 minutes. Then I add another layer of lettuce, add the scallops, cover them with lettuce and steam another 10 minutes. Then I do the same with the shrimp and steam another 10-12 minutes or until the shrimp are nice and pink - don't overcook the shirmp, though. I generally use a pound of each. Then for my first meal, we have eat the cod and a little of the shrimp and scallops and eat the lettuce (it tastes like a mild spinach). I refrigerate the leftover fish and for my next day I use half of the scallops and shrimp in a Seafood Louis (bed of lettuce, artichoke hearts, hard boiled egg, black olives and the seafood with homemade Thousand Island Dressing. For the third day I make Seafood Alfredo for dinner - and all the fish is gone. But, you could freeze the cooked fish and pull it out at a later date instead of doing the three days like I did. My first two were for lunches and the 3rd was dinner. For the cod, I sprinkled a little Raspberry vinaigrette on it just before serving. For the shrimp and scallops I served a little homemade tartar sauce on the side.

Answer 2

I found celery stays fresh longer in a pitcher of water in the fridge. Garlic lasts forever, just on the shelf...onion can be soggy if frozen, I guess salting it before freezing may help...we eat a lot of onion so I don't have a probem with them going bad.