What types of produce and ingredients do you have the most trouble using up?

@Lindsay-Jean. Usually you or other editors use a thread like this a base for a feature article. Surprised not to see some editorial coming out of this. Or is it something to do with your forthcoming book on cooking with scraps?

Thank you all so much for weighing in (and sharing suggestions with others!)! In case you haven't seen it yet, I wanted to share the video that resulted from this thread, we share a few ideas for putting hard-to-use-up items to good use: https://www.facebook.com/food52/videos/10155539812184016/

I have a great trick for peppers of any kind when they’ve seen better days. You can roast them in the oven alone or with onions. I slice them in half & roast them under the broiler until they are charred. Put them in a bag to steam and then skin them. You can do 2 things. 1) you can freeze them until you make salsa. 2) marinate them with olive oil, garlic & basil and serve them with a baguette on an appetizer platter.

I've never been able to use up a can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. This thread got me thinking because I had just opened a can. I did a quick online search and decided to mix one into some homemade mayo with my immersion blender. It was great on a burger topped with avocado last night.

I also tend to have small amounts of various sauces in my fridge that I can't seem to use up before they go bad. I think I need to get more creative with them to try to use them up because I can't stand tossing out food.

For some reason, I always get stuck with fresh pears (what’s with that?). They go too soft before my family will eat them. Lately I’ve been poaching them in red wine or juice, and that seems to improve the consumption rate. My other solution is to dice and freeze, then add to smoothies or baked goods (instead of mashed bananas, etc.). Yesterday I made Alice Medrich’s Buckwheat Persimmon Bread, only with mashed pears and made into muffins. With a dash of frozen cranberries in each serving, they are delicious!

Easy: cilantro and scallions!

Even in Kenji Lopez-Alt's recommended container type, cilantro doesn't last as well as parsley does. And green onions -- I now keep them in cloth bags, and they'll dry out but not slime out, which is an improvement.

For ginger, I slice it into coins and drop them into a mason jar of dry sherry. This preserves them for a long time! And the sherry is good for adding to dishes and concoctions.

Green peppers and celery are my two veggies I have problems using up. Thanks for the suggestion of chopping celery and carrots and freezing. Never done that. As for ginger, I’ve always frozen it as recipes call for so little.

I am good at using everything up. I learned from my mother to buy prudently and wisely. Most important: don’t overbuy. Make a general plan of meals. I share herbs, spices and items that don’t get used up with family and friends. At the end of the week I make a frittata w all leftover veges and herbs. Fruits get poached or puréed into applesauce or baked into muffins. My European Mother taught me to use everything and not waste food.

Celery. I use it in some soups and an occasional salad. It is a natural source of "salt" and I am watching my salt/sodium intake.

Casseroles containing stsrches

I always have trouble using up fresh herbs, which means I hardly ever buy them unless I have a specific use for them in mind.

I also buy half and half for my coffee, but I'm the only one in the house that uses it, so the pint goes bad well before the use-by date, as I can't go through a pint in even a month. I don't cook with cream, and don't bake often, so sadly, the now-spoiled organic cream generally goes in the garbage.

For me it's probably heavy/double cream. It's very hard to find a size at the store that is just enough for your recipe, especially if you're cooking for yourself or for two. It does last a while but it often takes me longer to find something else to use it for again.

As for fresh herbs, I often use the cut flower method - I've even put cilantro/parsley with the stems in a glass of water in the fridge, and put a plastic produce bag over the top with some holes poked in, fastened to the glass with a rubber band. This often keeps those herbs fresh for a week or so. Don't do this, however, if your fridge is very cold or is notorious for having cold spots.

Leafy herbs that have long stems such as parsley, cilantro or basil, you can treat as cut flowers. Fill a glass half way with water and put the stem ends in. They will usually keep for days this way, even up to a week. Much better than the fridge.

Produce of all sorts, at times- if I go to a good produce store or farmer's market, everything looks too good to leave behind. If I go to the supermarket most of the produce is now prepackaged in quantities practically guaranteed not to be what I need. Fortunately I run a very active compost pile. Cilantro is the worst- it's SO nasty when it goes.

Not really. If I have green peppers I make stuffed peppers. If I decide not to make them and peppers are starting to wither, slice the peppers, an onion, olive oil and pan roast. I use them on sandwiches, in salads or add them to tomato sauce. Every item can be turned into multiple dishes. You paid good money for it, don’t make your trash rich, you should enjoy it!

Store-bought fresh herbs are the bane of my existence. Those teensy packets are so expensive, and though they're small, I can never seem to use them up before they dry out or go moldy. I wish someone would sell them by the sprig!

Some fresh herbs although I try to make green sauce (Amanda's recipe), mint chutney (Meera Sodha has a great recipe in Made in India) or salsa verde before they get too wilty.

We never seem to be able to use a whole tub of sour cream before it turns.

Guilty on so many counts but I have learnt to either wash and freeze the vegetables and herbs. Once in the freezer when I have amassed enough they go into the stock pot with the chicken bones that I also keep and they become soup. Or they head to the compost and eventually go into the garden soil. To grow more vegetables.....

Avocados. I can't seem to judge ripeness. I must throw half of the ones I buy away.

Green bell peppers. I hardly ever buy them, but whenever they do end up in my fridge, they dither around for weeks before I work up the motivation to use them. I feel like I don't know any dishes that aren't Mexican-inspired to use them in.

Mine tends to be lettuce. I'm single, I live alone, and don't host many dinner parties. Despite the many salad recipes here, I remain a "meat and potatoes" type- and salads aren't high on my list. I buy it for taco topping or to round out an Italian sub- and try to use the rest in a salad on my "health kick" days.

We have a CSA, and sometimes we just get too many damn cabbages. I like cabbage, but a head (or three!) every week for a month is just too much. Luckily, they last forever in the fridge, so it's easy to just toss them in the produce drawer and come back in a couple of weeks when more inspired.

I'm going to list some ingredients I have trouble using up, and some ways I try to use them up. Excited to hear other suggestions as well!

Cilantro! I love it, but usually the bundles are so big, and it gets mushy so fast. Lately we've taken to making chimichurri type stuff and freezing it.

Fresh ginger. Maybe I just buy too much? The number of dried, withered ginger nubs I've found in the back of my fridge...those I simmer for about 10-20 min and use for green-ginger tea with honey. Delicious hot or iced.

Carrots and celery (and lots of other random veggie scraps) Yes, I know they're very common with lots of uses, but they are not anywhere near my favorite vegetables. In my dream world I would only buy 1-2 each when needed for soups, but the world doesn't work that way. Even when looking for the smallest bundle of each, I still usually have too much leftover. So I chop and freeze them them for a future soup - personally there's not much else I want to do with them.

Kumquats (when they're in season in CA). Ok, definitely my fault because I 100% overbuy them. Typically I end up subbing them in for recipes that call for preserved lemons, slice them and add to salads, and when I really need to use up a bunch, make marmalade.

Flax meal. I buy it because it's supposed to be healthy, and add it here and there to batters and doughs, but it takes me forever to get through. What other uses are there for flax meal? At what point should I get concerned about the age of that bag of flax meal in my fridge?

Parsley. I always have parsley wilting/dying in the fridge. And I've tried just about every tip to extend. I even have hard time using up the parsley in the garden. Unlike coriander seeds, them parsley seeds sow very easily and they thrive no matter how much you ignore them :)

Fresh herbs, nothing else comes close.

There are strategies for long term storage of fresh herbs (freezing, drying, etc.) but the resultant product is never quite the same as the fresh stuff. Dried parsley is almost completely flavorless. The frozen stuff works for some preparations, but you're not going to chop up defrosted parsley to garnish a dish.

Luckily, my garden is generating a fair quantity of certain herbs, so I don't feel so guilty when I toss the unused portion away (composting at my location is problematic).

The freshly picked stuff blows doors on anything you can buy at a market, including the farmers market.

Luckily, here in the SF Bay Area, a wide range of herbs can be grown outdoors for most of the year.