Planning - Frozen vs. Fresh vs. Canned part 1

     Possibly one of the greatest misconceptions about cooking great food is that you must use things that are in the produce or butcher section of your grocery store.  In short, it's believed that you can't use anything canned or frozen to make a good meal.  I beg to differ.  In many cases, frozen and canned foods are not only as good as fresh food, but are able to be kept indefinitely in your cabinet or freezer (choose wisely, haha).     Now, I won't argue that fresh fruits, vegetables, and meats are the best, but I'm not sure where this belief that things can't be frozen and remain good.  For goodness sake, I freeze the meat I buy to make it last longer, why can't manufacturers do the same?  It's also worth mentioning that even some of the fresh foods you find in the grocery store might be of worse quality than what you find in the freezer section, so here I'm going to go over fresh, canned, and frozen fruits, vegetables, and meats so that you can determine what's best for your situation.

     I was going to try to write this all in one week, but after I got started, it was so long, I just couldn't bear to subject you to the whole thing (you're welcome).  So, this week, I'm doing fresh food.  Next week, I'll either do canned or both canned and frozen.

Fresh:
     The big issue with a lot of fresh foods is that they must be bought in season in order to keep them to our budget.  That means you can only have certain items at a certain time of year before they start having to be shipped from Chile to get them.  Nothing against Chile, but strawberries that are shipped from there are going to cost more than the ones that came from the farm up the road.  I experienced my first organic food market when I lived in California, and it only sold fruits, vegetables, and meat from farms within 100 miles.  For the longest time, I didn't understand what people were talking about when they said organic food cost more because those prices were the lowest in the town.  You know why? because they didn't have to pay nearly as much in gas and transportation costs as did the grocery stores that were getting off season items from Mexico.  If off-season items are on sale, the chance is pretty high that they're selling unripe food and expecting you to ripen it on your own.
     The other problem with buying fresh produce and meat is that you can't store it like you can frozen and canned food.  Like most of the things on this blog, fresh produce has no preservatives and will go bad within a week or less, depending on its ripeness.  Now, with the meats, as I've already lined out, you can buy in bulk and freeze, but it's very rare that you can do the same with anything that didn't come out of the butcher's section.  Trust me here, you can try to freeze your own fruits and vegetables, but it won't go well.  That being said, if you want to write an article on home canning, email me and we'll talk.
Meat & Poultry:
     Meat is one of those things that doesn't ever seem to go out of season.  With the amount of meat storage that many manufacturers have now, we have access to all types of meat throughout the year.  That being said, beef, pork, and chicken are pretty much immune to season prices.  That means that the beef, pork, and chicken industries have good enough storage and high enough production rate that they never have to worry that they're going to run out.
     When you're shopping for red meat, it may surprise you that it doesn't actually need to be red to be good.  Most producers of meat use sodium nitrate to "fix" the color in the meat.  That means that it actually dyes the meat red.  The brighter the red on your meat, the more preservatives are in it.  I like to try to find brown or pink meat because I don't like the idea of artificial colors.  However, that's not usually fiscally responsible.
     The basic rule of meat and poultry is that, if it's not green, it's fine to buy.  My favorite section of the meat department is the "day old" section where they put the meat that's going to expire within the next two days.  That stuff is about half the price of everything else, and as long as you either use it immediately or freeze it, it's fine for consumption.
Fish & Seafood:
     Conversely, meat that comes out of the water has definite seasons.  There are times you just can't find certain fishes and seafood in the fresh section of your grocery store, and even more times you can find it for an incredibly high price.  It doesn't matter if its fresh or saltwater fish, there are certainly times that they're less expensive than the others.  Most people don't spend the money on fish, but as I'm going to line out someday in Luxuries, they're really essential to your kids' brain development.
     Some of the fish and seafood you'll see will say that it's never been frozen - not that important to me - but the thing I rely on most is the smell. You know that old saying "it smells fishy"?  Well, fish should never "smell fishy" because that fishy smell is the release of ammonia from the dying carcass of the fish.  Seriously, if your grocer's fish counter ever smells like that, walk away, quickly.
     As far as shellfish goes, here's a quick and easy calendar you can click on and print to know when different seafoods are in season here in the U.S. and Canada.  If you live in the UK, you can go to this site to make your own.  All other countries, tweet me and tell me what your websites are and I'll add them too.

No, I'm not expecting you to go buy lobster, like ever, but it was included in the different types of seafood.
Vegetables:

     Vegetables are tricky.  There are some that never seem to go out of season and there are others that you can never find on sale.  Some of them will never be in your grocer's frozen or canned sections (lettuce), some of them, you can't find anywhere else (palm hearts).  Vegetables are far more hardy than fruits, so they'll stay good longer.  When you're looking at vegetables that are on sale, ask the store's produce guy how to tell if an item is ripe or not before you buy it.  Well, you can do that or use a smart phone to search the internet.  The produce guys in my grocery stores always know, and sometimes the store puts a guide to buying ripe vegetables on the signs.

 Now, that's not anywhere near all the vegetables that you could possibly find.  If you want a full, comprehensive list for the US, look here.

Fruits:

     Fruits are delicate, to say the least.   When you buy a ripe peach, you're lucky to get through 2 whole days before it starts to rot.  If you buy an unripe fruit and ripen it yourself, you won't get the same taste as a tree or vine ripened of the same variety.  Further, some vegetables will never taste right, if your store or you don't treat them right.  A perfect example of that is the tomato.  Did you know refrigeration stops the ripening process of tomatoes?  That means that, if your grocery store transports its fruits and vegetables in a refrigerated truck, you will never get a ripe tomato from the produce section.  Depending on where you live, those types of fruits might be best bought canned or frozen.

I don't know how your brain works, whether you prefer to have these in categories, or all at once, but while I made the lists, I kept a comprehensive list going in alphabetical order.  You can just print this one:

All of that information was obtained through this site, but I thought it'd be easier for you to see it put together like that.  You can always visit here to see what's in season this week.

     If you'd like to get some inexpensive vegetables that are in season where you are, you should check out sites like bountifulbaskets.org that provide low-cost fresh vegetables from local farmers.   We've done that a few times and have always had a great time trying to figure out what dishes we were going to make from 2 heads of cauliflower and an eggplant.