Ok, I have a bit of a problem here sometimes...
I do nearly all of the cooking (by agreement since I'm better at it than
he is <G>) so I prefer to do the meal planning AND the grocery shopping
so I know what I have and can use it within a reasonable amount of time.

I've been buying less as I'm on a very strict diet (trying to lose 123
lbs. and am down by 23 so far since Jan. 4th) so am not eating a lot at
all. In fact, I fix myself a separate meal from what I cook for dad.

At the beginning of the month, he gets his SSI check and tends to want
to grocery shop. <sigh> We end up with TOO much fresh produce! I s'pose
I could blanch and freeze it, but I've run out of freezer space and he
would just buy more! :-P

Enter the Tilia food saver! I'm finding that it DRASTICALLY increases
the shelf life of fresh produce! Or at least on the one item that I
tried it on, plus it should allow me to clean and prepare it prior to
sealing it into portions. Handy that! :-)

So, dad bought 2 nice big beautiful bundles of Asparagus! I had a lot of
older produce that I really needed to use up first, plus there were
about 2 days worth of leftovers in the 'frige. It's been my experience
that, even at a good regulated 40 degrees, asparagus starts to spoil
after about 3 days. The tips (which are the best part!) go first, then
after about 5 days, the stems start going soft.

So I took a large foodsaver bag and undid the wire holders and flattened
out both bunches of fresh asparagus into the foodsaver bag and "saved"
it. I got a really great vacuum on them too! :-) The plasic nicely form
fitted itself around the asparagus spears.

I checked them every couple of days for spoilage and finally after a
solid 2 WEEKS a couple of stems started going soft and I started to lose
the tight seal around the spears. I assume that is because spoiling
veggies produce a small amount of gas.

I opened the package to cook them and I had to toss one entire spear,
and 2 lower stems. That's it. The rest of the asparagus tips were
perfect and the stems etc. of the remaining ones were still fresh and
crisp enough to "snap" the tougher part of the stems off and break them
up into bite size pieces.

I sauteed' them in butter and olive oil with leeks and shrimp.

I've not experimented yet with any other fresh produce, and am wondering
if anyone else has or does???

Thanks!
Kat

--
K.

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