Hints and Tips for Freezing

Yay! I am getting enough produce from my garden for there to be a need for me to freeze some of it! That is a true blessing, indeed!! 

I am so thankful that I asked google how to freeze yellow squash! In years past I have cut my squash much smaller and of course after 3 minutes of blanching I already had kind of mushy squash- and that was not good. So when I cut the slices 1/2 inches thick this time, I am much happier with the results. 

I decided to free portions the size of a small tupperware that's a bowl. Which is perfect size of what I need when I make squash casserole!! So I did 4 batches back to back. 

And this was the results - 4 bags of squash for the freezer!! Yay! 

On the same day - I picked my beets and decided to process my beets to see what I could get done. 

Blanching beets takes much longer time. It is recommended to cook much longer than 3 minutes- but you cook them whole and at the end you can just twist around and get skins off and then slice or cube - what ever you decide to do. During this sessions I was able to get 5 good portion sizes done. And I have 2 gallon sized bags of more beets that I will need to process to free- probably 3/4 of them. And 1/4 I will roast. 
I sliced the first batch. I am thinking about cubing the next batches I do so that I can pull them out of freezer and roast them. I think it will be awesome to have choices of what I want to do with my beets. 

By the way I have never had this big of a harvest of beets before! I tried something new. Someone on a garden group I am a member of on Facebook said that they start their beets inside and then transfer. So this is what I did. About 10 days or so after I started my seeds - I set outside and transplanted a whole lot of little beet plants. But the rewards were SO worth it. I have tried to grow from seeds before and I just was not successful. I may someday try to grow from seed being sowed in the garden bed before - but for now I plan on doing this method.

And before I leave you - I wanted to share this important information. This is a great Tupperware bowl I found at a thrift store and only paid a few dollars for- I wish I had the time to go look it up. 

Anyway so I fill this bowl up in my sink with about half water and then add a lot of ice to it. 

What I have found is that when you blanch things in order to free them - once the time is up you pull the stuff out of boiling water with a large slotted spoon and put them directly into ice water. And it seems to work great to leave them there a few minutes to get cooled off. Then with the same slotted spool - pull the produce out of the ice water and place on a cookie sheet with a towel to absorb the moisture. After a bit it is time to bag up your produce and label. It is pretty simple and doing it in batches instead of trying to do a whole lot at one time is much easier and works better. 

I hope this has been helpful to you all. 

Oh by the way - you can also free store bought great deals. This time of year we get pretty good deals on corn on the cob- so we buy what we can and then we freeze the rest for a later time. Its great to have fresh corn on the cob in the freezer!