In the nick of time!

Don’t you just hate it when you buy some perishable grocery item, only to have it go bad before you can use it? Even though I plan my menus and grocery shopping carefully, sometimes it still happens. More often than I’d like!


A couple of weeks ago, I bought several colored sweet peppers because they were on a good sale, thinking I’d make some fajitas. For one reason and another, the fajitas kept getting moved to menus for days later in the week. I thought I’d make them for tonight, then noticed that the particular recipe I intended to use called for the crock pot -- which I had just washed and put away. Not anxious to wash the pot again so soon, I moved the fajitas to tomorrow and planned a supper of leftovers -- the steak for the fajitas was still frozen, anyway. (Yes, I know you can buy those plastic liners for the slow cooker, and I like them for some things, especially ribs, but I thought it might be a pain trying to scoop the fajita filling out of the liner.) The peppers weren’t spoiled yet, just wrinkly, and I didn’t want to waste them.


So here’s what I did: washed the peppers and cut them in strips, then arranged them on a huge parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Stuck the sheet in the freezer just as it was. When the pepper strips are frozen solid, I’m going to stuff them into zip-top freezer bags and have some great IQF peppers on hand. I ended up with lots more than I’ll use in the fajitas, so there’ll be some for the future, and I’ll feel not only rich, but thrifty and smart. (Not as smart as if I’d done this right off, however. A lesson for the future!)