Alphabet Veggie Soup with Mini Chicken Meatballs

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of The Frozen Food Foundation. All opinions are 100% mine.

I have a confession to make. Sometimes I waste fruits and vegetables. I buy them with the best of intentions. Beautiful little potato orbs just begging to be made into some warm German potato salad wind up looking like a science experiment. Spindly hairs shoot from what were recently bold orange carrots clamoring to be roasted and pureed into some creamy hummus. Crunchy celery stalks once destined to become the log to some peanut butter and raisins now lie soft an limp and neglected at the bottom of my crisper. Cartons of berries that formerly held the promise of summer sunshine, only to wind up cloaked in a fuzzy blanket. Name-calling and insults fly; head-smacking ensues. It's not pretty.

If only nature had a pause button. Oh wait - it does! Freezing fruits and vegetables is a simple way to reduce spoilage and waste. It also saves money, because while I love a rich compost pile, I wouldn't intentionally buy a fresh load of fruits and veggies from the market or farm stand and deposit them directly into it. I wouldn't shred my dollar bills and throw them in. Yet, I sometimes feel like that's exactly what I'm doing.

So, while I'm guilty of these infractions sometimes, I'm not all the time. Because I actually do keep several bags of frozen fruit and veggies in my freezer at all times. Not only are they a convenient option, they're a healthy one since our bodies need the essential nutrients fruits and veggies add to our diet. Did you know that eating a diet rich in a variety of colorful fruits and vegetables is more important than ever (eat the rainbow) given the increase in chronic disease rates among age groups!? Sadly, that's because nearly 80 percent of American fail to actually consume the daily recommended amounts of fruit, that percentage rises to 90 when we're talking vegetables. Crazy!