A tip for you: Saving Celery

I recently attended a sales party for Food Storage products. Among the other attendees were some younger Moms who were a little less experienced in matters of budgeting and cooking and such. I don't think of myself as any kind of an expert, but during the course of the party they were impressed with some of the tips I shared with them, and told me that I should start a blog teaching skills and giving ideas for people to learn how to budget and save time and energy in the kitchen.
I toyed with the idea of having a separate blog for this, but I think that it will fit right in here at my regular blog. I haven't felt much like posting lately due to the winter blues, and maybe posting some tips here and there will get me out of my blog funk. With that in mind I took a few pictures recently while cooking up one of my staples.
I tend to shop in bulk because I have a large family and I live in a small town, where the options for grocery shopping are generally higher priced stores. I love making soups and stews and would buy celery to include in those recipes. It is usually cheaper to buy a large amount of celery at the local Cash and Carry or at Costco vs buying a smaller amount at a regular store. However, I was often throwing away more than half of the celery, and even though it was still cheaper to only be using part of it, it felt wrong. I looked around on the Internet and found that celery doesn't generally freeze well. Then I came up with an idea for freezing it that has worked out great for me. A soup recipe that we love starts out with cooking onions, celery and carrots in butter along with some basil and oregano. I realized that the start to that recipe would easily convert into many other kinds of soups and stews. This has become the base for several different recipes that I make, including a couple of kinds of soups, stew and my own pot pie recipe. I start out by chopping up onion, carrots, and celery. Generally I will use one large onion, a full bunch of celery and three or four carrots. I use a food processor to chop them up small and put them in a large stock pot. Next I add a stick of butter along with some dried oregano and basil. How much of the spices you add will depend on your personal tastes. I tend to eyeball things like that. You could also use Italian spices in place of the basil and oregano if you wanted to use this in more Italian style soups, or you could leave the spices out and add them in when you are making each recipe. If you are trying to stay away from butter, this will also work with olive oil. You just need to have enough oil for the ingredients to cook down well.
I cook the ingredients over medium heat, stirring the butter to the bottom so that it will melt, and then simmer it until the onions and celery are translucent. After everything has cooked down well, I spoon the mixture into muffin tins.
Then I cover the top of each muffin tin with waxed paper and put them in a level spot in the freezer. Be careful because the tins can get hot. I usually put a dish towel between the tins and whatever I put them on in the freezer to keep them from melting whatever they come in contact with. Once they are frozen, peel the wax paper off the top, and dip the bottom of each tin in a shallow pan of hot water for a few seconds to loosen the edges (be careful not to leave it in the water for too long or it will start to melt). Turn the muffin tin over and pop the mixture out like giant ice cubes. You can also use a table knife along the edge of each circle and pop them out that way. Put the discs into Ziploc freezer bags and store in the freezer until you need to use them. The amounts above generally make about 12 discs. When I make large pots of soup and other recipes for my family of nine, I usually use three of the muffin sized discs of soup starter. This technique not only helps me not waste so much celery, but it saves me time chopping and cooking when I make soups. Instead I just toss the frozen discs into my soup pot and cook on medium until the soup base has melted and is ready to continue the recipe. I hope you can use this to help save time and energy yourselves! Soon I will be posting my pot pie recipe that I use these in, and some soup recipes too to get you started. Let me know what you think!