You can often find a lone cart in the dark recesses of the produce section in your local grocery store, where produce that’s past its prime sells at bargain-basement prices. You’ll find bags of aged green peppers, overripe peaches, bruised apples and more. But just what do you do with a slightly browned banana, a wilted chili pepper, or an overripe blueberry?

Well, thanks to Linsey Knerl over at Wise Bread, we have a few ideas. And Linsey’s tips for how to make use of sub-par produce not only apply to the grocery store, but also to ‘past its prime’ produce in our own kitchens — food that we’d otherwise compost.

Here are her 7 suggestions in brief:

1. Dehydrate (bananas, apples, chili peppers…)
2. Breads (bananas, carrots, cabbage, celery…)
3. Soups (potatoes, all veggies, onions…)
4. Freezing (peppers, celery, berries, fruit…)
5. Jams & Jellies (strawberries, peaches, blueberries…)
6. Juice (berries, carrots, apples…)
7. Baby Food (apples, broccoli, carrots, pears…)

And her possible 8th? Feed it to the hens….

In addition to tips for how to make use of sub-par produce, Linsey also shares some valuable information about post-date foods you should pass over:

… potatoes, for example, are chock full of vitamins when the skin is left on (just avoid anything that has already begun to sprout or places where the skin is green – this signifies a high glycoalkaloid content, which is toxic!)

She also features several great links to recipes and short cuts for making good use of produce.

Here’s the link to her article on Wise Bread:

7 Ways to Make Use of Sub-Par Produce

So perhaps the next time you are in the produce aisle, you might consider taking a second look at some not-so-perfect, but still delicious, produce.

Also, here’s a little food for thought from the New York Times:

Americans waste an astounding amount of food — an estimated 27 percent of the food available for consumption, according to a government study — and it happens at the supermarket, in restaurants and cafeterias and in your very own kitchen. It works out to about a pound of food every day for every American.

How do you make use of “sub-par” produce? Share with the community by posting a comment below. And thanks for being a Tip Hero!

Homepage photo credit: Trellina