squirreling it away #1: pestos + pre-sautéed vegetables
a series to share my thoughts and strategies to make kitchen life easy and delicious
It’s Lovingly Made’s first real post! Big moment!
This post is the first of a series that I’m going to call “Squirreling It Away.” The purpose is to share with everyone the things that I have found helpful to make in mass amounts and why they are good and underrated strategies for furthering your abilities in your home kitchen. For the sentiment of the series, I’ve been influenced by the great
with this quote from her post “Cookies are made for sharing” :“And they fit so well with my idea for our FRIENDSHIP FOOD project. The inspiration for the series grew from my conviction (one that I think that you as bakers and cooks share), that making food together, eating food together, offering food to one another is a way to bring us together and put more kindness into the world.”
The part that I love the most about Dorie’s project is the name. FRIENDSHIP FOOD. It sums up everything about why making food at home is so enjoyable. You share what you make with the people you care about the most. So when you feel like you’ve maybe made too much of a good thing (what?) or you don’t have the freezer space due to size or number of things already in there (guilty!), the recipes that you’ll find in Squirreling It Away can also be shared with your friends and loved ones. Make that dinner party you chose to host just a little bit easier but also super impressive. Give a jar of whatever to thank your friend for cat-sitting. Take some chicken broth out to thaw when a loved one is sick. Food is for sharing.
Late spring has passed us by, and now we are into the summer times ☀️🕶️🩴🌊 - the best times, the glorious times when it comes to produce in the Midwest. All the colors are popping up at the farmers market, and you must take advantage. And you must freeze these colors and flavors in time. Because the dark times of winter catch up to you faster and faster as the years go by. We all experience time in this way - each unit of time is lived faster and faster as we age. It’s why my high school years went by at a glacier’s pace and I now feel like my 2 ½ year old was born yesterday 🥴
Before that gets too dark and moody - I’m going to give you a storage tip. Owning a deep freezer is like owning a time capsule for each season of the year. You give yourself more space to freeze all the produce and sauces and broths and soups. And then you have a stockpile and rotation to eat from. So, like Woody says about moving buddies in Toy Story (whisper-sings: *I’m a toddler mom*), I will say the same about deep freezers: If you don’t have one - get one!
So! What should we squirrel away in our freezers while the produce is bountiful?
My current top two:
PESTOS + OTHER HERB SAUCES
PRE-SAUTÉED VEGETABLES
FIRST: There are tons of vegetables that are sold with all the greens intact - carrots, beets, and fennel are the first ones that come to mind. It does look fabulous when you spread out your haul on the kitchen counter, but it’s not just for show! Please do not throw these greens away! This is the method that will bring vibrant greens to your wintertime meals, and you can relive your memories from that past spring and summer.
With a decent blender or food processor, you can turn these greens once destined for the trash/compost into beautiful non-traditional pestos. Use a jar for the week that you make them, and then you freeze the extra and forget about them until January when you start to see more brown than green at the markets. I currently have at least 8 jars of various pestos that I’ve squirreled away in our deep freezer from this spring already! Just make sure that the glass jars that you use to freeze have wide-mouth openings and no “shoulder”. See this reference page for a comprehensive and nerdy guide to freezing liquids in glass.
According to the internet, the general ratio you’ll want to use for a pesto is 1 : 2 : 2 : 8 - nuts : oil : cheese : greens - then add garlic cloves, lemon juice, salt + pepper, to taste. While I won’t claim that I’ve always used this ratio, I will claim that I have made some delicious pesto by eyeballing. And then I wrote those eyeballed measurements out for you to peruse below.
LATE SPRING/EARLY SUMMER PESTOS OF MY PAST AND PRESENT
CARROT TOP + ARUGULA PESTO (makes an overly full 16oz jar)
1 ½ cups carrot tops
5 cups arugula
⅜ cup pumpkin seeds
⅛ cup walnuts
¼ cup lemon juice
⅔ cup EVOO
1 cup parmesan
1 tsp kosher salt
¼ tsp pepper
BEET GREEN + CARROT TOP + PARSLEY (makes 21-24 oz)
1 bunch beet greens, approx 8 cups
1 bunch trimmed carrot tops (ideally leaves + thin stems only), approx 2-3 cups
1 cup packed parsley leaves
5 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
¾ + cup pine nuts
⅔ cup EVOO
juice of 1 lemon
kosher salt + fresh cracked pepper, to taste
FENNEL FROND + BASIL (makes ~12 oz)
1 bunch fennel fronds, approx 4 cups (tiny thin stems ok, no thick stems)
1 cup lightly packed basil leaves
3 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
½ cup EVOO
½ cup pine nuts
½-⅔ cup finely shredded parmesan
juice of ½ lemon
kosher salt + fresh cracked pepper, to taste
Notes:
EVOO = extra-virgin olive oil
for salt + pepper, start slow with ¼ tsp each (especially if feeding to infants!) and add as needed in small increments (pinches or ¼ tsps)
if your greens are taking up most of the space in your blender/food processor, start by blending the greens, garlic, and EVOO together to get the volume down to lessen the stress on the blades, they will cut through everything else much easier when you divide the ingredients into two blending sessions
As you can see, I am all over the map with my ratios. All of these greens have very different taste profiles, so I try to adjust according to what tastes good to me. If your taste buds feel like my approximations are a little off, that’s fine - they are your taste buds! Let me be the person to give you permission to experiment with ratios, substitutions, every aspect of making a pesto. You might like your pesto to be more fatty, so add more nuts for a chewier mouthfeel or more EVOO for a thinner sauce. Substitute the pine nuts with almonds or walnuts or pumpkin seeds. You might be lactose-intolerant, so use nutritional yeast in place of the parm. Pump up the acid with more lemon juice or white vinegar. It’s your food! You do you, boo 😘
HOW TO USE
spread over salmon before or after baking/broiling
with eggs - spread on toast and top with a fried egg or mix a couple spoonfuls into scrambled eggs (Green Eggs and Ham, anyone?)
mix into pasta and add our next topic: pre-sautéed vegetables!
SECOND: There’s nothing like a good guilt trip in the middle of winter when you’re buying things out of season at the grocery store and already have some light seasonal depression. They are more expensive, not looking their best, and they just don’t taste as good.
There is totally a time and place for buying out of season, and it’s when your freezer has run out of the colorful things and you just need some color to tide you over until their inevitable return. In my opinion, there are a few produce items that you can feel less guilty buying year-round at the grocery store: garlic, onions, and mushrooms. Garlic and onions are such staples that I can’t get away with not buying them out of season. (God bless the aromatics.) Most mushrooms are grown indoors from compost and then sometimes exposed to UV light to increase vitamin D levels. They have also been dubbed one of the Clean 15, so buying organic or local is not as much a necessity like it is with the Dirty Dozen. Outdoor and artisanal mushrooms are 🤩, but definitely 💸.
BUT! If your budget allows it during the summer months, do this! For your local economy and for sustainability! Buy extra vegetables in season and sauté them using the method spelled out below.
PRE-SAUTÉED VEGETABLES
1 medium or large onion, diced
2 small or medium red bell peppers, diced
¾ lb baby bella/cremini mushrooms, finely chopped or diced
1 tablespoon salted butter (and a little extra if you’re a butter lover)
extra drizzles of EVOO
salt + pepper, to taste
garlic powder, to taste
Directions:
in a cast-iron skillet over medium high heat, add your salted butter and melt
caramelize the onions: sweat out some moisture; once they start to brown, lower the heat to medium and add a few cranks of salt to sweat out more moisture
once the onions are a slightly darker brown and most moisture has been cooked down, add the mushrooms and let them sweat most of their moisture out
add drizzles of EVOO if anything is sticking too aggressively to the skillet
add the red bell pepper, turn the heat down to medium low or low, and lightly cook - leave a little “crunch” to help maintain texture
turn heat off and season to taste with salt, pepper, and garlic powder (a dusting, if you will)
let cool and store in tupperware of choice [link], will keep up to 1 week in fridge
My favorite part of this method is that you can freeze any extra that you have after a week’s stay in the fridge or just make a batch and freeze it right away. Ice cube trays are my go-to, and then I like to keep the vegetable cubes in a silicone bag.
Again, please mess around with ratios and types of vegetables. I’ve done it with more mushrooms and bell pepper and it worked great, I just didn’t write it down. This is just the method, not a strict recipe. Trust your gut, but be cognizant if you’re just starting your home cooking journey and watch carefully. I haven’t done it before, but I could see this strategy absolutely excel with a classic mirepoix (onion, carrot, celery) and throwing in to the first step of whatever recipe you’re making that needs mirepoix. Convenience at its finest!
HOW TO USE
mix into scrambled eggs/omelets
mix into rice+protein dishes
mix into pasta sauce
mix into soup
mix into whatever you need to sneak some vegetables in
And that’s it! My first issue is complete!
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I’m so excited to write about all things Squirreling It Away, and I can’t wait to hear about what all you squirrels are up to and who you’re sharing your creations with.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you for being here.
❤️ Sarah