Crowdsourcing Vegetable Solutions

[writerkit]

I have reached the limit of what I can store in the freezer without attracting the ire of my roommates for taking up the freezer, although once I deplete my frozen meat pies a little more I'm going to take some amount of the frozen meat and turn it into more meat pies. (What do I have in the freezer? Several pounds of ground meat, some tupperwares full of hand pies, and a bag of frozen broccoli. Supplemented by three jars of pickled herring in the fridge.) Now, meat pies are one way of getting vegetables into a preservable form, since I never put *just* meat in there, but I can't freeze enough vegetable to manage a month's worth of vegetable matter, and I don't actually *want* to live on pickles as my only vegetable although I do have two small jars of cornichons in my supplies.

The problem is, the easily preservable things all fall into categories I can't have-- I can't have carrots or onions or beans or tomatoes or peppers. My usual vegetable matter is broccoli, eggplant, spinach, and cucumber. I need a way to get versions of these that are shelf-stable at room temp. Products I need to order off Amazon are fine for the moment while there's still time for them to take a bit filling orders.

And while we're crowdsourcing, I need a way to make pasta palatable using shelf-stable ingredients within my food restrictions-- normally I do olive oil, a grated cheese blend, and anchovies, but my cheese blend isn't stable long-term at room temp. I bought some aged gouda today which was being *sold* at room temp so I'm assuming it's safe to *keep* at room temp.

Comments

[elusiveat]

How about kimchi? Kale chips? Dried seaweed? And then of course there's canned vegetables, although not always the most palatable thing.

A lot of aged cheeses don't really spoil at room temperature but do leak oil all over the place, so watch out for that. Presumably this isn't a problem for cheese sealed in wax until you cut the wax open?

Can you eat pesto? You could buy some jars of shelf-stable pesto and that might be nice.

Nuts + olive oil + seasonining can be a nice pasta topping.

[writerkit]

Can't do kimchi, but I do like dried seaweed and I'm planning on a visit to H-Mart on Sunday after the Magic tournament, so that's a thing to remember.

I put the cheese in a plastic bag, because I was concerned about being wrong about the room temp thing and I wanted to keep any mold it might develop from spreading to other things in the bin.

Pesto is a good idea! That will probably take me to the one grocery store in the area I *haven't* hit yet, because the only place I can think of that's known to sell shelf-stable pesto with no cashews is Pemberton's. (I have been to *all* the grocery stores. All of them.)

[elusiveat]

Good luck finding the right pesto!