freezing & canning Archives - A Way To Garden

farm-fresh peaches, frozen to perfection

margaret — Fri, 17 Jul 2020 16:00:09 +0000

AFRIEND WITH AN OLD PEACH TREE made me a beneficiary of too many fruits to keep up with one bumper-crop year, and into the freezer some went. But in my overzealous drive to avoid added sugar in my diet, I made an error that affected the quality and storage life of the frozen fruit—a mistake I didn’t make again. I’m sharing my tactics for freezing farm-fresh peaches this summer, so you can make peachy recipes anytime you please. My semi-failed batch of peaches went wrong for a couple of reasons, besides skipping the sugar entirely. How to freeze peaches: what I did wrong when freezing peaches: I let the peach fruit get overripe before putting it into suspended animation. If you’re freezing fresh (uncooked) fruit, you want it to be ripe but still firm—not already so soft as to be on a downhill slide. Fruit that drips down your chin when you bite into may be a sensuous summer pleasure, but it’s too far gone for putting up. More treacherous, though… I didn’t reckon with the air pockets inherent in stuffing any irregular-shaped pieces of something solid into freezer bags, boxes or jars. Air pockets invite freezer burn, which means […]

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3 variations on baked beans: sweet, smoky, spicy

margaret — Wed, 22 Apr 2020 12:11:43 +0000

THE FREEZERS WERE too tightly packed till now to do anything but choose the forward-facing foods. (Sound familiar?) But I’ve happily eaten my way to some wiggle room, and it’s clear I have some cooking—a.k.a. restocking–to do. I’m running low on portions of my favorite food: three variations on a baked-bean theme, from sweet to smoky to spicy. The recipes, plus a nudge to try growing beans for drying next year, too. (In the slideshow above, toggle between slides by clicking a thumbnail image, or hover over the right edge of the big photos to reveal navigational arrows.) the recipes, and dry-bean how-to ALL THE RECIPES are easy, and delicious as a side dish or even as a whole meal-in-a-bowl, served over brown rice with something green tucked alongside. Bonus: My midwinter freezer check revealed a few bags of whole paste tomatoes that will go into the mix—meaning more room for the incoming bean concoctions, and for the soups I see I need to replenish, too. The recipes: Heirloom baked beans with maple, molasses, and mustard Smoky, spicy baked black-eyed peas with chipotle Barbecued baked lentils (minus the grill) How to grow and cook dry beans Dry bean 101 with […]

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winter squash-coconut milk soup with garam masala

margaret — Fri, 29 Nov 2019 20:44:09 +0000

THE RABBITS got the beans that year. The cold weather all that same “summer” got some of the tomatoes. But I got the winter squash, in spades–a bumper crop. Meaning: Let there be soup. Winter Squash-Coconut Milk Soup with Garam Masala, to be specific. The house was full of squash, in fact, that year–from my desk, where they sat, expectant, beside my laptop (below) to the entire mudroom (bottom of page), where horse-collar-shaped oddities like ‘Tromboncino’ joined the smaller ‘Butternut’ types. I made up this recipe at freezer-emptying time in early summer the next year, when I found two containers of roasted, mashed winter squash still remaining in my deep-freeze, and needed the room for incoming garden-fresh goodies. It is based on a soup with a coconut undertone and Indian spices that I had eaten in a restaurant and wanted to try to emulate. My first pass went like this: winter squash-coconut milk soup with garam masala ingredients: 4 cups fine-grained winter squash, such as ‘Butternut’ or ‘Blue Hubbard,’ roasted and mashed 3 Tablespoons olive oil 1½ cups diced onion 3 cloves garlic, chopped garam masala powder (start with 1 Tablespoon; I used 3 Tablespoons; see note below about this […]

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