Freezing summer's harvest
Today I'm cooking tomato sauce to freeze. Home preserving is a delicious way to save money and enjoy the tastes of summer during the cold winter months.
One simple way to preserve fruits and veggies -- whether from your garden, the farmer's market or even the supermarket -- is to freeze them. It's fast and simple and requires very little special equipment to get started. You can use the freezer section of the your refrigerator to begin.
Some fruits and vegetables need minimal preparation before freezing. For example, just wash and dry blueberries and blackberries. Place them on a cookie sheet in a single layer and freeze for 24 hours. Then put the frozen berries into a labeled freezer bag or container and pop them back in the freezer.
I've used the same technique for unpeeled tomatoes. The peel slips off easily when you thaw the tomato. An even better way to freeze tomatoes is to peel them first. Just dip the tomatoes briefly in boiling water and then peel. Pack the tomates, whole or cut into chunks, into a labeled freezer container. According to Susan Morgan of the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service, scalding the tomatoes before peeling stops the ripening process, so that the tomatoes will keep a little longer in the freezer. However frozen tomatoes are only fit for cooking.
For fried green tomato fans, Susan Morgan says that unpeeled green tomatoes can be sliced and frozen with freezer wrap or waxed paper between the slices. The tomato slices can be fried while they are still frozen, which helps them keep their shape.
Some vegetables like beans and peas need a bit more processing before freezing to kill the enzymes that can cause them to spoil. These vegetables should be blanched (boiled in water or steamed for a few minutes). The University of Missouri Extension Service has handy charts showing which fruit and vegetable needs what.
If you're freezing eggplants, zucchini or other summer squash, try precooking the slices in butter or olive oil for a few minutes instead of blanching for more flavor and better texture.
Another way to preserve the harvest is to make a large quantity of your favorite recipes using vegetables from your garden or bargains from the market. Have some for dinner and freeze the rest. Tomatoes can be frozen as spaghetti sauce. Eggplants can be preserved in eggplant parmesan or ratatouille (a yummy vegetable dish with eggplants, peppers, tomatoes and other garden goodies). And, of course, over the years countless zucchini have been baked into bread and frozen.
This approach works for fruit too. Turn summer fruit into jams or pie fillings and freeze to enjoy during the winter months. You can add summer fruit to ice cream recipes. But homemade ice cream is too good to last long!
I've put some links to online resources about freezing foods. And if you'd prefer to try canning, check the home canning page for information.
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