Brave, brave woman. Is there a culinary Purple Heart?

Yes, a braver gal than I, though I don't hesitate to buy many a strange looking, unfamiliar food at ethnic markets, just to see what it tastes like.

But canned broccoli and cauliflower???

LOL, Colleen, you are courageous!

I once bought canned strawberries. YUK! Dark, mushy, small. BUT the liquid they were in was delicious! I drank that, threw out the rest. As I recall, it was QUITE expensive. I was a young Navy wife at the time, and where I was, I probably could've bought fresh cheaper. But I was "stocking up" and didn't want something going bad in the refrigerator before I could use it. It might've made good strawberry pie, but then I never have liked strawberry pie made the traditional way. I like my strawberry pie made with fresh uncooked berries in a cornstarch and strawberry glaze and a pre-baked pie shell, with whipped cream on top!

Colleen, you could probably make quiche or veggie fritata with those canned veggies. I found a big bag of frozen "winter mix" veggies in the freezer and I had some frozen spinach and shredded zucchini I wanted to use up. So I mixed together a couple of eggs, about a cup of homemade Bisquik, a cup of dry nonfat milk, the spinach, zucchini, some of the winter mix, a chopped onion and about a cup of grated cheddar cheese, poured it all into a 9x13 cake pan and baked it till the center was done. I thought it was quite good. Without a crust, I don't know if you can quite call it a quiche.

That's interesting that the cucumbers were actually bread and butter pickles! Who would have thought! It's funny how people call things by different names in different areas. I've known people who call cucumbers -- ANY kind of cucumbers -- "pickles"! Another thing that goes by lots of different names is what my family always called home-made egg noodles. Apparently some people call them "sliders" and other people call them "dumplings" (I don't know what word they would use to describe 'real' dumplings -- maybe they don't eat them! I've never had pickles out of a can. Did they taste like the can?

We used to go to one of those "all you can eat" buffets (I was raising a couple of teenagers and DH was working as a welder then so he always had a big appetite. They liked to go there.) There was always pudding on the buffet and I would never eat any of that because it came out of a can and had kind of a metallic taste. Yuk! Some of their other stuff was good, though.

colleen, you're a better woman than I am, LOL. I'd not have even tried the cucumbers and so I'd have never known they were actually pickles.

The cauliflower and broccoli, well, I hope you can find something to do with them. I wish I had a good idea, but I don't.

Maybe you could mush up the cauliflower to use as a thickener for vegetable soup?

Annie

Hooray for you Coleenoz! I am so glad you tried those cukes. I am amazed they were even eatable never mind good. They should have been labeled more appropriately, but had that been the case you probably would not have started that thread and think of the missed opportunities for the rest of us to gripe.

I have a dear friend who often says, " what is to be learned from this experience?"

In this case I guess it is that canned veggies really do have their place in our pantries for those desperate moments when soup is needed in a hurry or there is a blackout or something like that. I don't think all the nutrition is lost in the processing so its not so terrible to rely on those step savers when necessary (or desired).

LOL, Colleen, you are awesome! Thanks for your courage and for sharing your experience. Do tell us how the soup turns out!

~Amanda

The soup wasn't bad. I've had better, but I've had worse too so I guess if you wanted a pantry staple for soup making in a blackout or when fresh is very expensive it would work. The broccoli and cauliflower really were too mushy for frittata or quiche though. While the florets were intact in the can, they didn't stay that way long out of the can and the texture was like paste. I did notice when revisiting the supermarket the shelf ticket had "DNR" (Do Not Reorder) pencilled across it so I guess others have had the same opinion as me :-D
The pickles didn't taste "tinny", I guess because the whole can was lined with a sprayed on layer of plastic, which had turned a disturbing shade of fluorescent greeny yellow :-)

"the whole can was lined with a sprayed on layer of plastic, which had turned a disturbing shade of fluorescent greeny yellow"

EWWWW! You are even braver than I thought!

Mimsic, your friend is right on! Every experience is a learning opportunity.

I think I have a recipe somewhere for vegetable crackers that would probably lend itself to a substitution of the canned veggies, as long as they were well drained.

I think the store had the righr idea.

Oh yes, you definitely win the Five Year Cooking Forum Award for Bravery!

Beverly