A few months ago, "Eating Well" magazine (one of my favorite reads, along with "Vegetarian Times" - an amazing gift from my sister), featured how to freeze a lot of fresh produce to be used in the winter. The chart features about 10-15 foods and has the recommended blanching time before freezing, along with the dethawing time when you are ready to eat them. I cut it out and put it on the fridge in anticipation of the (hopeful) overflow from our garden and CSA produce.
I'm trying to get started now with freezing a bit at a time so in the winter, if I want to grill some asparagus, I'll have some handy in the freezer. I'm taking small portions of what I have now and saving it for later.
This morning I made an asparagus and wild rice frittata, sort of a hodge podge of a few recipes I had. I took the rest of the asparagus and with my new $3.99 Ziploc vacuum freezing pump (that I was way too giddy about for some reason and couldn't stop vacuum suctioning air out of an empty bag for last night) and froze the rest. When I took the trash out this morning, I noticed that I now had 7 more red tomatoes...on just four of the five plants. I forgot to check the other one. I gave two away to my neighbor, kept two for a pasta sauce I want to make this week and froze the remaining three.
I know it's just two small bags of food but envisioning the freezer drawers slowly filling with fresh food is making me happy. I'm also going to make a turnip/carrot soup and vegan vegetable soup this week and freeze them as well. Here's to a happy, frozen food winter...
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