People who grow hard-to-use veggies should only give them away cooked and ready to eat!

[CoalTit]

I'm in the southern hemisphere and I've received a great big bunch of rhubarb to take home after a family get-together. I said it was too much to take home on the train, but then a relative turned up at my house with it a couple of days later.
I do like rhubarb, in small quantities, with apple and custard, but I'm going to be buying and stewing fruit all winter to use this lot up. No-one else wanted it because it's horrible by itself.
I feel indignant.
I'm always grateful to be given pumpkin, but I met someone who says she accepts pumpkin to be polite, then throws it away because it's too much trouble to peel and cook.
And then there are the zucchini/courgettes that have got enormous and woody because people plant too many plants then don't pick them while they're still nice to eat
AIBU?

Use what you want then put the rest in your organic waste bin, you don't have to spend time and money using it if you don't want to, that bits on you.

Say no thank you

donate to food bank

Chuck in bin

Chuck in compost heap

it’s really not that deep - if you don’t want to use it - don’t!

Rhubarb is lovely and doesn't need other fruit with it. I'd be so happy to be given some. Try it with vanilla or star anise if you don't like it plain. Or make it into jam with ginger.

Pumpkin is great. Courgettes that are turning into marrows less so. But my compost heap would be grateful for anything too bad to eat.

You can wash and chop rhubard up and freeze it in a bag, cut the corner off and let the juice drain out then add water, sugar, wine yeast and ferment it out to make a relatively quick wine.

What the others said. Compost anything you don’t want to use.

My MIL has form for this. I'm grateful for the pumpkins now, because I have time to wrestle with them and prepare them... but wasn't so grateful when I had a baby and a toddler to wrangle at the same time.

And the courgettes! Every year she complains how many courgettes she has. She gives them to all the neighbours as well as to us (I secretly pass them on to my neighbours too). She practically lives on courgettes for a month herself. Then the following year, she plants THE SAME NUMBER of courgettes and it all begins again. Year 12 and counting. I don't actually like courgettes, but it's too late to say so now.

Chop up your lovely rhubarb and freeze it! That is very easy- enjoy... (I love rhubarb)

For large courgettes, I just take out the inside seeds, and then cook. You can cook just what you need for one meal and compost the rest.

Rhubarb doesn't need other fruit imo but if you don't want it you can just put it in food waste bin it isn't a huge deal, and the next time someone offers you something you won't eat just say you don't want it/like it.

YABU. None of the plants listed are hard to use! I thought you were going to say tapioca or something exotic that needs washing and boiling 10x to remove the cyanide and toxins!

Stew and freeze
Donate to a food bank
Give to a neighbour
Put a sign out the front 'free'
Or make it clearer you don't want it!

As for overgrown zucchinis, we call them marrows in the UK. These recipes are good and the jam is excellent IMO:
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/marrow-ginger-jam
https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/stuffed_marrow_43279
www.rachelredlaw.com/recipes2/2018/9/17/thai-style-stuffed-marrow

I’ll take some if you are sandgroping.

I love this when people are exchanging buckets of fruit and veg😂
Where I grew up it was also common. The courgette issue seems to be all over😂 i remember the year we ended up with ridiculous amoumt of them and everyone got courgettes. Colleagues, friends, family. It was ridicolous yet we planted same number of plants as usual😂
We did get eggs, cherries etc back from others then. When we got too much of something we passed it on to someone else.

Either freeze it, pass it on, or compost it. Dh actually just eats most rhubarb raw as well.....

rhubarb - stew it and freeze it, shove it in crumble later on. If you don’t have freezer space, make rhubarb jam, find the biggest jar and give it back to relative who gave you it- trust me, they won’t supply it to you anymore! Alternatively put it on your local community page to ask if anyone wants some.
I grow courgettes but I don’t like them or give them away, they do grate well to go into bolognaise or other mince dishes. Can be frozen into cubes for later use. Pumpkins- apart from carving or feeding chickens or pigs (I don’t have either!) them I have no idea what you’d use them for!

Put spare veg/fruit on your front wall/porch, with a ‘please take’ sign. That way, somebody will be pleased with it (I would definitely be sweeping up rhubarb).

We used to have rhubarb in our last houses garden, it was there when we moved in , anyway i stewed it and a few of my elderly neighbours would take it to help them "go" there was always whispering about being bunged up, I didn't really need to hear about bowel movements they could just take some 😀

Rhubarb is really easy. Chop it and freeze it. Cook some when you want it. If freezer space is an issue, cook a pan full and freeze it bagged up. It cooks down to take up much less space.

I was expecting talk of celeriac or beetroot.

You need about 6-8 decent sized stems of rhubarb to make one crumble so I suspect you haven’t really been given a ridiculous amount of rhubarb.

its expensive and delicious. You should either accept with thanks and pass it to a neighbour or say “thank you that’s kind but we don’t eat rhubarb”. It’s hardly a big deal.

This, you can freeze fruit and veg. I freeze rhubarb and make crumbles with it. Carrots, butternut squash, swede, parsnip etc get frozen and used in soup.

rhubarb doesn't really fall into "hard to use" with these recipes @CoalTit 😋

So someone is giving you something for free and you are complaining about it? Nobody is forcing you to take it, or use it! Say no thanks, or take it and give it away to someone who'd be grateful (that's most people).

Home grown veg are far more nutritious than shop bought, and tastier too. The veg you mention aren't even difficult ones! Rhubarb in particular is an absolute piece of piss to prep.

I stew rhubarb then mix it with a carton of bog standard supermarket custard. Looks revolting but tastes nice and the DC will eat buckets for pudding.
Maybe just compost what you don’t want or offer to friends secretly?

A lot of people who are " generous" with produce just have way more than they want and just want rid without guilt.

Just bin what you don't want.

If I’m given a glut, I’ll share it onwards with my own neighbours. Maybe some of your friends and neighbours would love some rhubarb? I know I would!

My mum had a damson tree in her garden and most people haven’t a clue about them, but the whole street got to know how to make damson jam, and which damsons would be sweet enough to eat.

Offer them on the Olio app.

I plant 4 courgette plants most years (some years I can't nanage it). SOME years I get loads of courgettes, other years 3 of them fail and I don't get enough, but usually it's about right. I try to harvest every few days and make sure there's never more than 2 or 3 that are bigger than a finger (finger-sized ones are lush in salads) and those larger ones aren't allowed to get bigger than a baby's arm. Nevertheless sometimes I still find a bleeding marrow the size of a dachshund under a leaf because the bastards HIDE. I suspect that by the time I am someone's MIL I will be equally irritating but im theory the situation is supposed to be under control.