how to eat last year's tomatoes

freezer burn is a social construct

In the rare moments when I cleaned my room as a child, I’d occasionally toss out—forgive me—a penny or nickel. Every single time my mother would find them, scold me for throwing out three cents. Or she’d find the broken watch I’d chucked and asked if I really wanted to get rid of it? She could smell it, I was convinced, when I’d given up on something that still had value. It drove me nuts. But wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles, it’s a habit that has infiltrated my own kitchen.

I hate waste, I hate it. Composting lessens the sting of tossing a quarter cup of soured lentils, but just barely. And I will—you’ve heard me say this before if you’ve been here for a minute—squirrel away little bits of sauce and soup and pesto and bean before I let them go bad. Which is how I have been harboring a little pint of tomato sauce since, oh god, last August?

Conventional wisdom says things last in the freezer for 3 to 6 months, and then they begin to taste off. I don’t disagree with this but I think there are ways to right that off, to make off into something delicious and economical and productive.

(Though I will say, it’s best to let something defrost and then give it the sniff test—or, if you feel comfortable, the taste test—before tossing it into a pot of something.)

Here is a list of things that have lasted far too long in my freezer that I am still using or planning to:

• one and a half boxes of puff pastry

• a few tablespoons of garlic scape pesto, flattened in a zip loc

• shards of bacon fat

• leftover black bean cooking liquid (VERY WORTH KEEPING—MAKES A SORT OF “PERPETUAL STEW” SITUATION WITH EVERY NEW POT OF BLACK BEANS)

• old lemongrass stalks

• and more….

…..though I will say i FINALLY trashed a half-opened tray of pierogies from [redacted month/year] because I do have a few shreds of dignity left.

But this pint of sauce, it was made with good tomatoes, the little sweet kind, fresh from someone’s farm. They became sauce because they were turning slack; I didn’t want to disrespect and disregard the work it took to get those tomatoes from someone’s farm into my apartment. After I turned them to sauce and ate half of it, the last two languishing cups went into the freezer to avoid more waste. Last week they finally came out of the freezer to avoid waste. You might call this a neurosis.

beans and tomatoes over fried toast <3

I made a pot of big fat rancho gordo beans last week, which felt like an easy way to repurpose this admittedly freezer-burnt sauce. Once the beans were cooked, I set to work: in a small pot over medium-high heat, I cooked some sliced onions in a fat glug of olive oil until they were a hearty golden brown, then added the tomato sauce (about two cups) and slipped in two cups of beans, plus a little cooking liquid. Shook in some paprika and garlic powder (why not), and let everything simmer for forty minutes or so. By this point the sauce had reduced and gotten jammy. The freezer taste had evaporated with the wind and was replaced with a sweet-tart sauce that had infiltrated the beans’ creamy bellies. I served it all over a slice of fried toast one day. The next day I served it over a plate of charred escarole. I was quite pleased with my own stubborn refusal to throw things out, and that tendency’s delicious ends.

Of course, you could also do this with canned sauce and canned beans, especially if you have half a jar of Rao’s kicking around in your fridge. Marry them with a few slices of oil-sizzled garlic, or the last squeeze of tomato paste or harissa or chili crisp, or an errant anchovy, or some just-about-to-wilt kale.

bubbling…..jammy…..beautiful……

You could also skip the beans, and just char the onion and simmer the weird sauce, and turn it into:

• pappa al pomodoro

• eggs in purgatory or shakshuka

• pasta sauce

• sauce for eggplant or chicken parm

• dipping sauce for GARLIC BREAD or GRILLED CHEESE

• et cetera et cetera et cetera.

Is this a recipe? Sort of! Is it also a nudge to look in the scary back corner depths of your freezer and imagine what those odds and ends can be? Yes absolutely. That’s half the fun.

Stay cool this weekend, love you. xo