At the start of the new year, everyone is scrambling to find healthy recipes and initiate their New Year’s resolutions. Grocery store carts and baskets are filled with the latest in nutrition, fiber and vitamins. Healthy-food-eating goal setters are trying food items they’ve rarely tried, ranging from vegan dishes to mind-diet recipes. But before you load up on grocery items to put in a crockpot and ignore one bowl later, evaluate what’s already in your refrigerator. You may be able to make yourself a Round-To-It healthy crockpot recipe without spending any extra money at all. Here’s how.

Story Behind Making a Round-To-It Recipe

Round-To-It is short for “around to it.” It’s the items in your refrigerator that you buy and never use. You usually end up throwing them out whenever you clean your refrigerator. They’re in the back row in a plastic container or bag, and they seemed like that one healthy item you should eat but you just couldn’t find much use for. They could even be something you grew in your winter garden or during the summer months, and you grew bored with it shortly after it was pulled out of the soil. The beauty of a crockpot is blending this abandoned food with ones you already want to eat can make for a wonderful meal, and you don’t have to depend on one item as the main course.

Why the Round-To-It Healthy Crockpot Recipe Matters

When making this kind of recipe, the goal is to look for foods that have been ignored in your refrigerator or cabinets, not the ones on your grocery list to buy later. You can avoid being a contributor to food waste. According to Earth.org, the top foods that are thrown away the most in a year are: bread (240 million slices), milk (5.9 million glasses), potatoes (5.8 million), and fruits and vegetables (60 million tons). The last one is especially interesting because it’s not always that the food went bad. Half of produce is discarded for being too “ugly” to eat, and that makes it a perfect healthy crockpot recipe for your Round-To-It crockpot recipe.

Optional Ingredients for Round-To-It Healthy Crockpot Recipe

Find as many of these potentially ignored items as you can in your fridge without buying them.

• Potatoes (red, white or sweet)
• Carrots (frozen or fresh)
• Onions (fresh, powder or minced)
• Celery
• Mushrooms
• Garlic (fresh, powder or minced)
• Butternut squash
• Brussels sprouts
• Green beans
• Tomatoes (baby or whole, green or red)
• Zucchini
• Leftover bread (including “ends” of loaves)
• Broth (any variation, including vegetable, plant-based, chicken, beef) -or- Milk (for a creamy base)
• 1 tablespoon of olive oil
• Seasonings of your choice (black pepper, red pepper, Italian seasoning, flaxseed)
• Margarine or butter of your choice

Directions for Round-To-It Healthy Crockpot Recipe

1. Wash any fresh vegetables that weren’t already frozen.
2. Place all vegetables into a nonstick cooking crockpot.
3. Pour olive on top of vegetables.
4. Sprinkle seasonings on top of vegetables. (Do not ignore seasonings in your cabinet that you think have gone bad. Open them. Smell them. Taste them. If they still taste OK, feel free to add in whatever enhances the vegetable flavors.)
5. Cook on high for approximately 4 hours. (If you choose a low setting, cook for 5-7 hours.)
6. Once crockpot soup is complete, turn the oven on to 350 degrees.
7. Spread butter and garlic powder on bread.
8. Toast for 5-7 minutes (depending on oven power).
9. Remove from the oven.
10. Serve soup and bread immediately.

The Round-To-It Healthy Crockpot Recipe Is Flexible On Purpose

First, there are no rules for what should and shouldn’t be in a vegetable soup. A mixture of vegetables often brings out the aromas and the flavors of its neighbors. More importantly, when it’s in a crockpot and being prepared, there is no such thing as “ugly” vegetables. It’s all going to taste good as long as it’s fresh. Those extra eyes on a potato or the weird dent in a tomato or the sweet potato that looks like it has one hip won’t make any difference while the heating coils are warming up so the crockpot can cook them all. It’s all “pretty” in the pot.

As for the bread on the side, margarine and garlic are going to be a winning combination no matter which part of the bread you put it on. While end bread is often ignored when you make a grilled cheese or snack sandwich, enjoy those end pieces as garlic bread.

Round-To-It Bread and Soup Combo Plus Dessert

This healthy crockpot recipe is your chance to take full advantage of all of those grocery items you paid good money for (or gardening time) and enjoy them before you have to throw them away. Best of all, Round-To-It crockpot recipes are full of fiber and vitamins, and you’ll have time to work on the rest of your resolutions while you wait for it to be done.

Bonus Treat for Healthy Crockpot Recipe

If you’ve used this recipe above to make the most of your leftover vegetables but are wondering what to do with that “ugly” fruit before you have to throw it away, you can also make the most of these sweets as a dessert. You probably were getting Round-To-It with eating them and just never did. No worries. Pull out your blender, and blend remaining fruit into smoothies. If you don’t want them now, freeze them. Bananas are a perfect example of a fruit that’s often discarded but could’ve been enjoyed as banana bread, bananas on toast, frozen bananas as “ice cream” or a banana smoothie with milk. Pretty much any fruit blended with (plant-based) milk can become a dessert after you finish your crockpot meal. Eat up!