Drying Herbs and Freezing Rhubarb

(originally posted August 10, 2010....reposting because I am suffering from gardening withdrawals and need to see some pretty pictures of fresh food and flowers!)

I did a good harvest of the Berry Bed yesterday....

here's a bunch of chives. I snipped them and set them on cookie sheets to dry.

Over here, you can see another way I use to dry our herbs....

We will be moving the rhubarb plants into their new beds this year, so I pulled most of the rhubarb of the one plant.

It's important to remember, if you want rhubarb to continuing growing, do NOT pull all the stalks. Leave some!

A basket full of lovage! Lovage has a celery like taste, it is really good!

 I snipped the leaves and now they are also drying on cookie sheets.

I used the food processor on the rhubarb, measured 4 cups into each Ziplock...

now they are in the deep freeze, to be dealt with later!

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Houston, We Have a Problem (The Dreaded Phone Call)

Uh oh.....I just got the phone call.

We've been expecting this call for a couple of weeks - we Knew it was coming for at least 2 months. But are we prepared? Uh....NO!

You've read about our trying to empty our freezers, in an attempt to get ready to refill our freezers! Only on a homestead intent on providing as much of our own meat and veggies could this happen (I think).

Remember all those tomatoes and zuccini I pulled out of the freezer, in order to free up room for....now what was it for? Ah yes....pork.

Since this years pork went in the freezer, we have also added 1 goat to our freezer camp. We still have to take out a bunch of trout and Kokanee salmon we caught and can it all up.

I have a feeling the Gman may be firing up the smoker this weekend, so we can smoke fish before we can fish. I have the feeling I'll be pulling out all the fish this morning and put it into coolers to thaw it slowly.

Why am I getting this feeling? Well, because of the dreaded phone call. The one we knew was coming but still are not ready for.

I got the message half an hour ago....our beef is ready....gulp! This is a side of beef in exchange for one pig.....

My only question is.....Where? Where is this beef going to go? Where I ask? Houston, we gots a problem all right!

Can I fit a side of beef in here? I don't think so! We've got about a dozen meat birds underneath that box.

(See all the little Annie packages? Those are for me to take down to Kelowna when I go....homegrown food for me, even when I'm in the city!)

And some good news, at least to me! I KNEW we had a store bought bag of green peas somwhere...ha! There it is, right in the freezer door, I shoulda opened my eyes!

(We've got lots of snap peas frozen, but ya know, there's times when a girl just has to have herself some shelled peas with dinner!)

This freezer is stuffed full with a bunch of homegrown or foraged berries and some yogurt containers full of dog food.

And boy, is da Wolf ever going to eating well the next few days! The neighbours just came by with 2 big bags of meaty bones for him...out of Their freezer! Why?? Well, cause they are on their way to town to pick up Their side of beef and find themselves in the same predicament we're in!

Not that I am complaining about having TOO much food, I just need a place to put it, is all!

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Harvesting Peas for the Freezer

Well, the peas are coming on fast and furious.....this is a pic of the Snap Peas we grew this year. As you can see, some of the pods are Pretty Darn Plump, with the peas inside.

I have always grown shell peas, but this year, I knew I had to try Snap Peas. I just don't have the time to spend 3 hours on the porch, shelling massive amounts of shell peas. (I wish)

We picked these snap peas a little late....ideally, the peas should not be so darn plump. But we tried them, and they still tasted absolutely fantastic. So I went ahead and got them ready for the freezer.

Snap peas are eaten shells and all, so that not only saves a lot of time, but you have a much bigger harvest too! Awesome....

I cut the tops off, and put them in some water...set on stove to boil.

Blanched (boiled, not a rolling boil, just a nice boil) for 2 minutes.

Took them off the stove Immediately, and dunked them in cold cold water in the sink. I ran the tap over the top of the colander to speed up the cooling down.

Once cooled, I spread the peas out on cookie sheets, trying hard to get a single layer on each sheet.

Stuck them in the freezer, where I forgot all about them till the following day. Brought them back out, used a spatula to "unstick" them off the cookie sheets, and put them all into one big honking freezer bag.

Now, over the winter, we should be able to shake out however many peas we need for dinner, bring them back to a boil and serve.

Easy to do, really nutritious and really really yummy too! Most frozen veggies are prepared in this exact same way. Blanch 2 minutes, toss in freezer. Do you freeze at least some veggies to use over the winter time?

Next time you are in the grocery store, really look at the price on those bags of frozen broccoli, peas and beans. Think of how much money you could save by doing it this way instead!!

Enjoy!

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Preserving (Freezing) Squash

Last Fall, a friend picked us up a box of squash from a farm somewhere in the Fraser Canyon.....

We put it downstairs in the little room under the stairs....we set it on blocks, because we didn't want the box in direct contact with the cement floor (too cold).

We kept it there, instead of in the cold room, because squash needs to be kept in a warmer spot than our coldroom, which we like to keep around 38 - 40F ideally.

So, over the winter, we've been enjoying baked squash. Last week we noticed that some of the squash was starting to go bad. Brought it all upstairs, cut away the few bad areas and started cutting the rest of the squash in pieces.

got a few things together, butter, maple syrup and nutmeg...

Put all the pieces in the big roasting pan....cut some cubes of butter and dotted it over the squash. Then I poured a bit of maple syrup over top....and sprinkled the whole thing with nutmeg. I put just a bit of water in the roaster as well.

Baked it for about an hour at 350...then let it cool. Dayum, that looks good (and it smelt delicious too!)

Once it cooled, I scooped all the squash out from the shells....put it all in a dish and mashed it well with the potato masher.....(the shells went to the chickens, who will pick all the bits of leftover squash out of them)

Once it was nicely pureed, I started putting it into freezer bags. Expel the air, and threw the bags in the freezer. Now we can enjoy squash when we like, just by heating it back up!

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