Chop day!!

[chris-md]

Lord I’m EXHAUSTED!! If you count the clean up, this was easily 4 hours of work. Thankfully for the first time ever my partner. Eddie helped. Without him it would have been easily 6.

https://imgur.com/gallery/6605N

4 months of food at least. Despite my previous thread wanting to keep this simple 6-8 ingredients, some last minute additions pushed it to more like 14-16 (more of you count the individual beans used for sprouts). From memory here’s what’s in:

Red peppers
Broccoli
Water chestnuts
Carrots
Kale (leaves and stems separated to make a more interesting batch)
Purple cabbage
Parsley
Fennel (apparently he loves this fresh too!)
Brown rice
Cooked sprouts (alone 6-8 types of legumes)
Sweet potatoes
Chia seeds
Flax seeds
A couple types of frozen fruits
Green beans
Peas

Most of the leafy veggies were put through the food processor and blanched for 90 seconds, sweet potato as well.

So glad this only happens every few months!:24:

 

[Terry57]

That looks delicious! I bet Parker will really appreciate all the hard work. It is amazing how much time doing a large chop takes, but definitely pays off.

 

[Soyajam]

Woo! That looks great! Nice variety too

I only got a month out of mine - more to see how the mix makes it through the freeze/thaw phase. I can already see I need to tweak - mine seems to get a bit wet.

I agree though bulk making food is definitely the way to go. I don't mind chopping a bit of extra food on a whim but doing it manually every way wouldn't work for me... I can barely feed myself! ;-)

 

[chris-md]

You aren’t kidding terry!

Sam, they always will be wet, you’re dealing with veggies after all I combat this with 2 things. First is the use of flax and chia seeds. They soak up the water and begin sprouting - you have to move quickly though because of you take too long (like we did today) they start giving off a sort of mucus (they are what are referred to as mucillagenous seeds) which can give a slight snotty consistency. Oats will help soak water up to.

Second is simple: when loading the finished product into the bags at the end, I squeeze each handful over a strainer in the sink to manually wring our a bunch of water before putting it in the bag. Over a strainer because you invariably lose food in the process and you can reclaim it at the end from the strainer. Usually one bag worth (2-3 meals).

 

[katie_fleming]

Wonderful!!

 

[skylala]

Great job! I love chop, but every single time I make it, after it's been frozen it turns to yucky slush =\ So, I've given up on it.
Haven't made any in a very long time. Maybe I'll try again.

 

[wrench13]

Salty loves his chop. We zap it for 30 seconds to thaw, and mix it with a table spoon of roken up Avicake to soak up some moisture and give him some vitamins and seeds. This current atch has 3 colors of califlower in ti, and as usual lot n lots of hot hot peppers. 90 some odd bags of it, we wont run out til Feb of '18. We vary dinner with yams one nite, and 1/2 a mini squash or pumpkin others. And the occasional pizza crust and chicken bone.

 

[chris-md]

Great job! I love chop, but every single time I make it, after it's been frozen it turns to yucky slush =\ So, I've given up on it.
Haven't made any in a very long time. Maybe I'll try again.

I know that all too well. I stayed away from chop for a while for this reason. But I learned and adapted. To help this issue, the secret is:

1) how you prepare the ingredients, minimizing water, and
2) what ingredients you use - which also minimizes water.

Just think about it: rice and carrots don’t get soggy when thawed. Leafy greens will, which is gonna happen anyways because you need to Blanche them first before freezing them. Frozen fruit naturally becomes mushy when thawed. Avoid frozen fruits.

Work from there. It’ll always be a little soggy, but these steps make a big difference.

 

[chris-md]

Salty loves his chop. We zap it for 30 seconds to thaw, and mix it with a table spoon of roken up Avicake to soak up some moisture and give him some vitamins and seeds. This current atch has 3 colors of califlower in ti, and as usual lot n lots of hot hot peppers. 90 some odd bags of it, we wont run out til Feb of '18. We vary dinner with yams one nite, and 1/2 a mini squash or pumpkin others. And the occasional pizza crust and chicken bone.

Funny you mention the cauliflower. I went through a point ehen shopping for this batch where I wanted to avoid it, because it’s been in every batch. But every ingredient I had in my cart was GREEN! Hardly nutritionally diverse, so I caved and went searching for purple cauliflower. Store didn’t have any that day.

Which is how this list ballooned from 8 to 16+. I got some bags of frozen mixed veggies which had things like red peppers.