Wednesday, August 8, 2012

And now what???

Well, we went back to help out at the community garden a week after we received our initial stash, and lo and behold, more zucchini and squash!  While I love getting produce fresh from the garden, what are we going to do with tons and tons of this stuff?  (For the record, we also ended up with a huge stash of plums, jalapeno peppers, anaheim peppers, and a handful of cucumbers.)

Mom, this is heavy, can I please put it down now?

This is our second stash - and believe me, we could have gotten more if we wanted...


With this much stuff on hand, We decided to go ahead and freeze some of it so that we don't have to worry about eating it all right away.  The only reason that I didn't freeze all of it is that it takes up a lot of space, and we have a small freezer (and a lot of ice cream.  Ok, its not all ice cream, but regardless, our freezer is pretty full).

So the plan is, to slice the stuff up into pieces that will be easy to just throw into a meal sometime in the future.  For this round, I sliced my squash (one whole squash).  I cubed my zucchini.  (Sorry, no photo, but by now, you should know what cubed zucchini looks like)


I read somewhere online that zucchini & summer squash freezes best if you blanch it first.  This adds a little bit to the process, but better safe than sorry, right?  I planned to blanch the larger pieces for about two minutes and the smaller pieces for about one.  I also prepared an ice bath to drop them in afterward. 

Looks like my ice is melting, probably need to dig some more out of the back of my jam packed freezer...

Once your water is boiling, drop in your prepared veggies and boil for the predetermined time (Again, I did two minutes on these, one minute on my zukes.)


After they've been blanched, take them out and.... 


Drop them into your ice bath to cool and stop the cooking process.  After leaving them in the ice bath for a few minutes, I drained mine in a colander before putting them into serving-sized freezer bags. 

 Seriously, I need some more ice if I am calling this an ice bath.


This appears to have worked out really well.  I guess I can give you an update later in the year after we defrost some of this stuff for dinner.  Anyhow, I portioned mine prior to freezing so I can easily pull out and thaw one bag to throw into dinner.


 Now, we better go have some dessert so we can clear out more space in the freezer!

1 comment:

  1. Oh the joys of summer squash! I'm a little relieved that our CSA is over for the year so we don't have to figure out what the heck to do with all that squash and zucchini. Especially since I pretty much only like it in spaghetti sauce, and that gets old pretty fast...

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